Siemens S7-TCP/IP Devices

The S7 TCP/IP (Simatic Step 7 - Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) is used to communicate with S7-300/400 or S7-1500 PLCs.

More information about how to configure this device is available in the PLC Datasource hands-on section of the documentation.

TIA Devices (Symbolic Addressing)

The S7 TCP/IP TIA stands for Simatic Step 7 - Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol with the TIA (Totally Integrated Automation) Portal. This type of device supports automatic browsing through the PLC name space. It uses symbolic addresses, whereby symbolic names are assigned to the absolute addresses. This type of device can translate the symbolic names into the required absolute addresses automatically.

In order to connect with the PLC, it is necessary to provide the Host Name or IP during configuration.

I/O-Items can also be created manually, if the path to the TIA tag or component is known. The following script creates an I/O-Item which reads data from a string tag with symbolic address PLC.Blocks.DB1.Text:

Manual creation of a S7-1500 TIA I/O-Item
syslib.mass({
    {
        class = syslib.model.classes.IoItem,
        operation = syslib.model.codes.MassOp.UPSERT,
        path = "/System/Core/Connector/S7-1500/Text",
        ObjectName = "Text",
        ItemID = "PLC.Blocks.DB1.Text"
    }
})

The connection type of a S7-TCP/IP TIA devices specifies how inmation identifies itself when connecting to the PLC. There are 3 Connection Types for this type of device:

  • HMI: Connect to the PLC as HMI (Human Machine Interface).

  • Dev: Connect to the PLC as a development system (TIA Portal).

  • Other: Connect to the PLC as a generic system.

Non-TIA Devices (Absolute Addressing)

With absolute addressing the PLC’s namespace cannot be browsed, so I/O Items need to be created manually. As data is directly read from and written to the memory of the device, each I/O Item needs to have its ItemID property configured, comprising the address identifier and the memory location.

For example, I/O Items can be created using the following Lua scripting Mass configuration example:

Manual creation of a S7-300/400 I/O-Item
syslib.mass({
    {
        class = syslib.model.classes.IoItem,
        operation = syslib.model.codes.MassOp.UPSERT,
        path = "/System/Core/Connector/S7-300/DT1",
        ObjectName = "DT1",
        ItemID = "DB1.DT14",
        IoType = syslib.model.codes.IoTypeMode.IOITEMTYPEPLCS7_300_400
    }
})

For a detailed description of the ItemID syntax, see the S7-TCP/IP ItemID section.

The available connection types for this device are:

  • OP Connection

  • PG Connection

  • Projected

  • Routing

  • Other

Supported Data Types

The tables below list supported data types by inmation when communicating with a Siemens S7 PLC. Not all types are supported by every S7 PLC model, consult the Siemens documentation of your device for details.

Elementary Data Types

The following elementary data types are supported:

Table 1. Elementary data types
Data Type Description Normalized Type Range

Binary numbers

BOOL

Single bit value

VT_BOOL

0 or 1

Bit strings

BYTE

Bit string of 8 bits

VT_I1

0x00 …​ 0xFF

WORD

Bit string of 16 bits

VT_I2

0x0000 …​ 0xFFFF

DWORD

Bit string of 32 bits

VT_I4

0x00000000 …​ 0xFFFFFFFF

LWORD

Bit string of 64 bits

VT_I8

0x0000000000000000 …​ 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Integers

SINT

Signed 8-bit integer value

VT_I1

-128 …​ 127

INT

Signed 16-bit integer value

VT_I2

-32,768 …​ 32,767

DINT

Signed 32-bit integer value

VT_I4

-2,147,483,648 …​ 2,147,483,647

USINT

Unsigned 8-bit integer value

VT_UI1

0 …​ 255

UINT

Unsigned 16-bit integer value

VT_UI2

0 …​ 65,535

UDINT

Unsigned 32-bit integer value

VT_UI4

0 …​ 4,294,967,295

LINT

Signed 64-bit integer value

VT_I8

-9,223,372,036,854,775,808 …​ 9,223,372,036,854,775,807

ULINT

Unsigned 64-bit integer value

VT_UI8

0 …​ 18,446,744,073,709,551,615

Floating-point numbers

REAL

32-bit IEEE single-precision floating point value

VT_R4

\$-3.40282347E^38...-1.17549435E^-38\$ (negative values)

0

\$1.17549435E^-38...3.40282347E^38\$ (positive values)

LREAL

64-bit IEEE double-precision floating point value

VT_R8

\$-1.7976931348623157E^308 ... -2.2250738585072014E^−308\$ (negative values)

0

\$2.2250738585072014E^−308 ... 1.7976931348623157E^308\$ (positive values)

Timers

S5TIME

A 16-bit timer, representing a duration as the product from a time in the range 0 to 999 and a time basis. The time basis encodes the resolution of the duration.

VT_I4

Resolution

Range

0.01 s

10 ms to 9 s 990 ms

0.1 s

100 ms to 1 min 39 s 900 ms

1 s

1 s to 16 min 39 s

10 s

10 s to 2 h 46 min 30 s

inmation provides this data as a number of milliseconds:

0 …​ 9990000

TIME

A 32-bit timer, representing a signed duration as a number of milliseconds.

VT_I4

-2,147,483,648 …​ 2,147,483,647

which is equal to

-24d 20h 31m 23s 648ms …​ 24d 20h 31m 23s 647ms

LTIME

A 64-bit timer, representing a signed duration as a number of nanoseconds.

VT_I8

-9,223,372,036,854,775,808 …​ 9,223,372,036,854,775,807

which is equal to

-106751d 23h 47m 16s 854ms 775μs 808ns …​ 106751d 23h 47m 16s 854ms 775μs 807ns

Date and time

DATE

A 16-bit unsigned integer representation of the number of days since 1990-01-01.

VT_UI2

0 …​ 65,535

which is equal to

1990-01-01 …​ 2169-06-06

TIME_OF_DAY (TOD)

A 32-bit unsigned integer representation of the number of milliseconds since the beginning of the day.

VT_UI4

0 …​ 4,294,967,295

which is equal to

00:00:00.000 …​ 23:59:59.999

LTOD (LTIME_OF_DAY)

A 64-bit unsigned integer representation of the number of nanoseconds since the beginning of the day.

VT_UI8

0 …​ 18,446,744,073,709,551,615

which is equal to

00:00:00.000000000 …​ 23:59:59.999999999

Complex Data Types

The following complex data types are supported:

Table 2. Complex data types
Data Type Description Normalized Type Range

DT (DATE_AND_TIME)

Represents date and time information. inmation provides this data as a JSON string in the I/O Items value, e.g.:

{
    "year":2018,
    "month":2,
    "day":8,
    "weekDay":5,
    "hour":17,
    "minute":30,
    "second":0,
    "millisecond":0
}

VT_BSTR

1990-01-01-00:00:00.000 …​ 2089-12-31-23:59:59.999

LDT

Represents date and time-of-day information in nanoseconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00.

VT_I8

1970-01-01-00:00:00.000000000 …​ 2262-04-11-23:47:16.854775807

DTL

Represents date and time information in a structured way. inmation provides this data as a JSON string in the I/O Items value, e.g.:

[source,json] ---- { "year":2019, "month":9, "weekDay":2, "day":22, "hour":15, "minute":27, "second":51, "nanosecond":314 } ----

VT_BSTR

1970-01-01-00:00:00.000000000 …​ 2262-04-11-23:47:16.854775807

Character strings

CHAR

Represents a single character in ASCII coding.

VT_BSTR

ASCII character set

WCHAR

Represents a single character of an expanded character set in UTF-16 coding. inmation provides this data as a UTF-8 encoded string in the I/O Items value.

VT_BSTR

$0000 …​ $D7FF

STRING

Represents a string of up to 254 characters of the codepage used to create the string. See the Siemens documentation for details. inmation uses the current codepage of the system the Datasource is running on to convert the string to UTF-8 encoding for the I/O Items value.

VT_BSTR

0 to 254 characters

WSTRING

Represents Unicode characters of type WCHAR in one character string. inmation converts the string data to UTF-8 encoding for the I/O Items value.

VT_BSTR

0 to 16382 characters

ARRAY

Represents a fixed number of components of the same data type.

VT_ARRAY

STRUCT (anonymous)

Represents a data structure that consists of a fixed number of components of different data types. inmation supports direct access to individual structure components.

<type of component>

User-defined Data Types

User-defined data types (UDTs) are currently not supported.