profinet, test a node

I work for a radio remote control distributor and we have systems that communicate with Siemens PLCs by profinet. We currently do not have a way good way to verify that our profinet card is working correctly. What I would like is to have a device that we can plug our node into and monitor the bits on a computer so we can verify everything is working. If needed we have the GSD file to import.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Hello winston;

My first thought is that you could use your PLC's monitoring capacities to do what you need, once it is setup as a Profinet IO Controller and your IO Devices are configured.

If however what you are looking for is a separate PC software to do this job, then you should look for a Profinet Supervisor software, designed to do this kind of monitoring and validate Profinet networks.

One option I find very interesting is Profinet Commander (from ProfinetCommander.com) that is described in these links (there are quite a few Profinet Supervisor selections available on the web).

Getting started with PROFINET Commander

https://profinetuniversity.com/profinet-development/getting-started-profinet-commander/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIgCZqom2CA

There is a trial version of Profinet Commander you can download and use for testing purposes; the Profinet University article states that you can continue using the Profinet commander trial license even after it is expired, if you do not need further enhancements.

Hope this helps,

Daniel Chartier