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CP 243-1 or CP 243-1IT or something completely different?

Created by: Viro1 at: 7/16/2008 6:31 PM (7 Replies)

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7/16/2008 6:31 PM	Rate (0)
Viro1 Posts: 7 Rating: (0)	I'm trying to find a way to make remote machines wireless, meaning the machines can send their data to te central server. At first glance no big deal. However the machines are spread out all over North America and some even at sea. And on top of that they change location on a regular basis, so setting up a router to go through a building's wireless network won't do as the machines are not staying in one building or one city for that matter. Any suggestions on how to make it work, besides giving each machine it's own cellphone?
Viro1 Posts: 7 Rating: (0)
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7/17/2008 9:11 AM	Rate (0)
Robster Platinum Member Joined: 5/28/2008 Last visit: 11/11/2025 Posts: 1344 Rating: (141)	Hi, mabye have a look to MAS21: http://support.automation.siemens.com/WW/view/en/22537809 It based on wireless communication via GPRS. I think it can help you to figure out your problem. Please give a short information in this thread, if MAS21 is a possible solution for you or if you search for some other solutions. best regards robster

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7/18/2008 6:21 PM	Rate (0)
Viro1 Posts: 7 Rating: (0)	Hi Robster, I looked it over and it looks to be a viable option if it weren't for the fact tha each machine needs its own SIM card. With over 100 machines and rapidly growing, this option might prove too expensive as each machine will send an update right after it terminated a cycle (5mins to 1hr cycles). However, I will keep this option in mind as it is a possible solution. Thank you for your input
Viro1 Posts: 7 Rating: (0)
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7/21/2008 10:22 AM	Rate (0)
Robster Platinum Member Joined: 5/28/2008 Last visit: 11/11/2025 Posts: 1344 Rating: (141)	Hi Viro, you're right. It sounds a little bit strange when you think about 100 Sim Cards. But I would aks the provider at first. Maybe he can make you a good offer. I know it from Germany. Here you can get one contract with Multi-SIM Option. That means, you get 100 Sim Cards with the same number in one contract. Additionally, you can get SIM-Cards only with data-option, no voice. How big is your amount of data? F.e. if you have 100 machines and every machine sends 100 byte per hour. you have 10 MB per hour, 240MB per day, 7200MB per month. In Germany are some providers, were you can get a GPRS-Option with 10000MB inclusive for 25 Euro a month or a Flatrate (unlimited volume) for 40 Euro a month. In consideration of these fact, I would proposed you to ask your provider for a good offer adjusted to your application. One question is left. How did you configurate your machines now? Have you connected them by wire? How does it operates with the machines on sea or the mobil machines? Greeting Robster

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7/21/2008 10:24 AM	Rate (0)
Helmut_13 Posts: 2930 Rating: (432)	Hi, basically you are right. For each substation you will need a SIM-card. In the past 2 years the price for m-2-m communication has decreased extreamly. In EU the profiders offers special m-2-m contracts. The price for 5MB data/mounth via GPRS is ~ 5€. If you need to transfere200bytes, then for this example you can send 5MB/200B in one mounth for 5€. This is 25.000 times per mounthor 833 time a day. And you don't need to spend money for the network. Ask your avaliable providers what kind of m-2-m contracts they can offer and calculate. Information aboute the data per transmition (Header, handshake, user data) you can find in the description of Set21. I hope this helps. Helmut
Helmut_13 Posts: 2930 Rating: (432)
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7/21/2008 6:00 PM	Rate (0)
Viro1 Posts: 7 Rating: (0)	Hi Robster, Hi Helmut, Thank you very much foryourinput. I'll check around with providers here in North America. The only other thing right now is the fact that Siemens only provides software to handle up to 256 machines. Within one year we will surpass that number by a factor of 4 at least. So either I'll have to dedicate 4 computers and pay 4 licenses or hope they will have a program that can handle more machines. For now we have no realtime connection with our machines in the field and theyrequire a technician to go make changes manually and download the required data straight from the machine. That is a slow and unefficient way. Very shortly we will have over 70 machines in the field, so we need to have a solution to get the efficiency up. As for the data package: it's about 40kb per send, but each machine will send a package after each cycle (5 mins to 45 mins per cycle) so that will add up to a lot of packages send. So for one machine on the 5min cycle it would come down to 11.25Mb per day. Once we go to 100 machines we will be looking at close to 1Gb per day. And that number will be rising exponentially if the projections stand for the next 4 years for North America alone. But I do agree that going with GPRS would solve some issues. J
Viro1 Posts: 7 Rating: (0)
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7/22/2008 3:38 PM	Rate (0)
Helmut_13 Posts: 2930 Rating: (432)	Hi, here some more infromation. If you have such amount of data then you will run in problems with radio modems also as long as you only have one "Headstation". The communication through radio modems is a slow point to point connection. For GPRS I heard that Siemens in USA have a GPRS demo system so you can get more information and maybe an demonstration. Try Rick Dries from Siemens maybe he can help in this case. I hear a version for more then 256 stations will be dicussed. An other option is to use the datalog function in the substations. With this function you can record data and store it on a memory card. Via a remote connection (modem, cell phone modem, WLAN) you can upload the recorded data and store it on a PC (once a day for example) automatically. The record is in CSV format so you can direct open it with MS Excel. But anyway you wrote your want to send 40KB of data. The S7-200 do not have such a large memory. How do want to handle that? What kind of data do you need to tranfere (values, time+date, counters, settings, ...)? regards helmut
Helmut_13 Posts: 2930 Rating: (432)
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7/22/2008 6:05 PM	Rate (0)
Viro1 Posts: 7 Rating: (0)	Hi Helmut, The data currently gets stored and written over on the memory cartridge inside the machine. Right now we only get the data if something goes wrong. As they are not hooked up to a network right now we can not take preliminary action to prevent it getting to that point. It doesn't happen often, but better to avoid having to send someone to fix the problem. Thank you for the contact information. Are you by any chance working for or closely with Siemens? You seem to have dealt with this sort of problem before. J
Viro1 Posts: 7 Rating: (0)
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