Siemens

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The Siemens drivers in Ignition support basic connections to S7 devices. Ignition connects to these PLCs via TCP/IP using the S7 protocol. The available S7 device drivers are listed below by the module providing them:

Siemens Driver Module

• Siemens Driver: Connects to S7-300, S7-400, S7-1200, and S7-1500 devices. Supports browsing, symbolic access, and access to optimized data blocks when connected to S7-1200 and S7-1500 devices.

Legacy Siemens Drivers Module

• Siemens S7-300 Driver (Legacy): Connects to S7-300 PLCs, supports absolute addressing only.
• Siemens S7-400 Driver (Legacy): Connects to S7-400 PLCs, supports absolute addressing only.
• Siemens S7-1200 Driver (Legacy): Connects to S7-1200 PLCs, supports absolute addressing only.
• Siemens S7-1500 Driver (Legacy): Connects to S7-1500 PLCs, supports absolute addressing only.

Deciding what driver is best for you depends on a few factors, such as your operating system and hardware. The Legacy Siemens Drivers module is supported on Windows, Linux, Mac, and ARM. However, the Siemens Driver module is only supported for Windows, Linux/x64, and Linux/ARM, but not Mac. Therefore, the following drivers will be installed by default based on operating system:

• Windows: Siemens Driver
• macOS: S7-300 Driver (Legacy), S7-400 Driver (Legacy), S7-1200 Driver (Legacy), and S7-1500 Driver (Legacy)
• Linux x64/Linux ARM32/Linux ARM64: Siemens Driver

Required Symlinks

If you are installing Ignition on a clean Linux environment and you want to use secure connections when connecting to a PLC, you will need to create symlinks for your specific OpenSSL version. You can create the symlinks by installing the package libssl-dev, or you can manually create the symlinks with ln. Two symlinks are necessary. One symbolic link named libssl.so that links to your specific libssl library and another named libcrypto.so that links to your specific libcrypto library. Since these libraries are loaded by a native DLL, these symlinks must exist within the LD_LIBRARY_PATH. If you are using OpenSSL 3.0 on a 64-bit Ubuntu installation, you might create the symlinks by running:

:~# cd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu# ln -s libssl.so.3 libssl.so
:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu# ln -s libcrypto.so.3 libcrypto.so

These symlinks are provided automatically in the Docker images.

Regardless of your operating system, any existing 8.1 individual S7 driver connections will not be automatically upgraded to the Siemens Driver when upgrading from 8.1 to 8.3. Instead, the Gateway configurations will remain the same with the only change being an added Legacy label.

Considerations for 1200 and 1500 Devices

The requirements listed below apply when connecting to the S7-1200 and S7-1500 types, through either the Siemens Driver or the Siemens Legacy Driver options:

1. Only global DBs can be accessed.

2. Reading and writing is not supported for timer (TM) and counter (CT) areas.

3. The Optimized block access attribute option must be turned off.

   

4. When configuring the Protection & Security settings, make sure the Full access (no protection) and Permit access with PUT/GET communication options are selected.

   

   note

   This change may require the hardware configuration to be recompiled and downloaded. Additionally, disabling "optimized access" for the data block(s) you are attempting to read may also improve the reliability of tag reads.

Additionally, some S7-1200 and S7-1500 devices have an onboard OPC UA server that can be enabled to connect over the OPC UA server instead of using the Siemens driver. OPC UA allows you to browse tags, while the legacy drivers require you to address each tag manually.

Refer to the Siemens Driver and Siemens Legacy Drivers pages for more information on driver addressing and connection. The Siemens Legacy Drivers page covers addressing and connection settings for the S7-300, S7-400, S7-1200, and S7-1500 drivers.