Find user stories of interesting ideas and solutions in this blog.
Note: The Makers Blog shows applications and user stories of community members that are not tested or reviewed by Phoenix Contact.
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In this article I will explain how to define complex GDS ports like data structures in C++ and connect them to GDS port in IEC code.
How to declare data structures. Lets look at C++.
Did you know that the PLCnext Common Classes have built in support for XML serialization? This article shows how to use the IXmlSerializable interface to populate the data in a c++ class.
You can find the Interface description in the API documentation of the PLCnext Common Classes.
Some weeks ago, I received following question. You need to upload a logging file towards a SFTP server, by using a program which runs in the ESM.
The SSH File Transfer Protocol (also Secure File Transfer Protocol, or SFTP) is a network protocol that provides file access, file transfer, and file management over any reliable data stream. It was designed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as an extension of the Secure Shell protocol (SSH) version 2.0 to provide secure file transfer capabilities.
The PLCnext REST Interface is a fantastic tool both to present and receive data from a back-end system. REST, or REpresentational State Transfer, is a software architecture style consisting of guidelines and best practices for creating scalable web services. There is a lot of great information already on the PLCnext infoportal, be sure to check it out! The URI's provided by the PLCnext Firmware are perfect if you can build your system from the ground up. However they are not ideal if you want to retrofit an existing REST interface on the PLCnext. This blog will show you how to set up your own URI's and connect them with your variables with a reverse proxy. We start with setting up a small example and work from there!
I would like to share an application story from Ignacio Aláez, a Solution Engineering Expert from Phoenix Contact Spain, which might be of interest to the PLCnext Community.
As part of a project we have the problem of accessing a Plcnext webserver when the IP is assigned via DHCP.
We found a workaround using the free service Duckdns : https://www.duckdns.org/
Open CV is one of the most used Computer Vision libraries out there. Open CV can be used for face recognition, object tracking, scanning barcodes and more important for this blog, detecting if a light is on or off. In this blog I'll help you get started with Open CV and Python on PLCnext and present a small code sample on how to preprocess your images for red light detection. This blog is an alternative way of using Open-CV on a PLCnext controller explained in earlier blog posts.
Wake-on-LAN (sometimes abbreviated WoL) is an industry standard protocol for waking computers up from a very low power mode remotely. The definition of “low power mode” has changed a bit over time, but we can take it to mean while the computer is “off” and has access to a power source.
Install wakeonlan on the PLCnext
We are going to use wakeonlan python package
to execute the UDP datagram and wake destination MAC address
Before we can do this we need to install ipk., Python and the pip package manager on the controller.
Ensure that you have a Ethernet connection.
TOSIBOX® Lock for Container (LfC) is a containerized software for connecting your IPCs, HMIs, PLCs, or any other industrial IoT devices to your TOSIBOX® network. It serves as an endpoint for secure remote connections.
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