VIPA SLIO HW: W: No hardware found for symbol xxxx with address xxxx

Hello fabioga66

How did you implement the I/O module and the remote station? By GSD file?

In that case the modul driver wizard will not consider them, because only modules listed in the document "SIMATIC Process Control System PCS 7 Released modules" are supported by the modul driver wizard.

I'm not familar with VIPA, but I once heared that their concept was (or maybe still is) that their components are compatible to Siemens modules. In that case you configure the corressponding Siemens hardware in your project, but in reality you use VIPA components. If you find a compatible Siemens component to your VIPA component in the document "...Released modules" you configure this and if you can do this for all the VIPA components (IM and I/O-modules), then the driver wizard would work.

So to answer your question: By default the channel driver where you connected the symbol which is causing that warning will not work. But you could configure the input "Mode" manually. Of course by this you won't get any diagnosis of the hardware, but at least you could use functions of the channel driver like scaling (analog input driver) and/or simulation.

Best regards...

Hello fabioga66

The input Mode is a DWORD (4 Bytes) which you edit in hex. Byte 0 and 1 are containing the mode of a channel and depending of the kind of anlog input (current, voltage, etc) and the measuring range (0-20mA, 4-20mA etc) different numbers must be used. I will give later in this explanation more info on how to find the correct number for analog inputs and outputs.

For digital inputs for Byte 0 and 1 always FFFF ist used, for digital outputs FFFE (have a close look - the last sign is an E at digital outputs).

Byte 2 and 3 contain the actual status and are normally changed dynamically by a generated block in the @Charts which is connected to the input mode. As you don't have this connection you configure 8001 (means 80=good, 01=restart has been carried out). You will use 8001 for byte 2 and 3 for all kind of driver blocks (Pcs7AnIn, Pcs7AnOu, Pcs7DiIn, Pcs7DiOu).

Here the complete value for digital inputs: 16#8001FFFF.

For digital outputs you configure; 16#8001FFFE.

To find the correct values for analog inputs and analog outputs for byte 0 and byte 1 it is the best to look into the documentation. Just select any block in CFC and press F1. In the now opened help search for "Mode Settings for SM Modules". Take the first result of the search.

I will give you here the complete mode for the most used types of analog in- and outputs:

analog input 4-20mA : 16#80010203

analog output 4-20mA: 16#80010203

Hopefully Vipa is using the same raw data range for anlog I/O channels like Siemens. Otherwise scaling won't work properly.

There is also the possibility to use adresses directly in CFC, I mean without any channel driver... For digital inputs and outputs you only need to know that you can't connect an address directly to an input of type Structure. Workaround: place and OR-block, the old one from family BIT_LGC in your CFC. Here you can connect an address like I0.0 (at an input of that OR-block) and Q0.0 (at the output of the OR-block.

For analog inputs and outputs it is more complex because you need to scale the raw value to an value of type REAL.

Would be nice if you could give a feedback if the scaling with Pcs7AnIn and PCS7AnOu is working with the Vipa modules (in case you have anlog in- and output cards from Vipa in your project).

Best regards....