Rich’s Top 3 Enhancements
Back in November, Siemens released version 18 of the TIA portal. And just like I did with V17, I just wanted to put a video out there and give my top three highlights of what I see from a functionality perspective in this new version of software. So to get going with that, first of all, WinCC Unified. As many of you are aware, as of version 16, Siemens released their new WinCC Unified HMI platform for both the panel-based and PC-based HMI systems. A lot of new technology in there with regards to web compatibility with HTML5 and then changing the scripting over to JavaScript from VB scripting. But there’s been a lot of functionality enhancements that have taken place since V16 to make the usability better and the functionality better. And so V18 is a big leap.
1. WinCC Unified
So that’s number one on my list, is the WinCC Unified engineering system enhancements. Functionality on faceplates. Functionality for decluttering of screens. Also, there’s a new system diagnostics object to be able to get that PLC-based system diagnostics enunciated to the operator very quickly. So a lot of great things with V18 that you should definitely take a look at with regards to WinCC Unified.
2. Controller Hardware Performance
The second thing that I want to highlight is actually not even software related. It’s really more hardware related. So along with the version 18 software came firmware version 3.0 of the S7 1500 CPUs. And with that, for the 1516 CPU all the way on down to the ET 200 SP CPUs, so we’re talking about the 1510, 1512 CPUs. All of those CPUs, the hardware has been innovated. And the big hardware innovation is they went from a single core processor to a two-core processor, which is really going to enhance the performance of these CPUs. Matter of fact, the 1515 CPU has seen a four-fold performance increase with this innovation. So the great news is brand new hardware, new part numbers with very much increased performance, along with the backwards compatibilities of all the CPUs that you currently have installed in the field.
3. Long Term Trace Functionality
Finally, number three is regards to the system trace. As many of you are aware, when the S7 1500 PLC was released to market, there was a system trace functionality that was added to the TIA portal. The way that that trace worked is you could basically run a trace that could handle so many scans of whatever organization block or task that you were monitoring. And so there was a limited time of information that you could capture because that information was stored in the PLC or on the memory card of the PLC. Well, what Siemens has instituted with V18 is now it’s your call. You can either do the limited amount of data and be able to trigger it based on an event in the PLC, or you can do what we call a long-term trace. So that means you can keep a PC connected to the PLC. You can go ahead and start that tracing. And you can leave that trace go as long as you’d like to be able to get a long-term piece of data. So as much space as you have in the direct or your hard drive where you’re storing that data is as much that you can record with that PLC, what that tracing function.
So just to recap real quick, WinCC Unified. Check that out. A lot of new great functionality. Higher performance hardware by a long shot. So lots more memory, lots more processing performance, and then the long-term trace. So check those things out and give me a ring if you have any questions.
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