ProfiNet: Read/write data to Siemens CP 1616

[OnlyOne]

Hello,

is someone using the Siemens CP 1616 (deivce) with Labview to exchange data with the S7 controller?

I only found the "PNIO Development Kit V 2.92 für CP1616" with some C-examples but nothing with Labview yet.

Or do i havve to create a c#-wrapper to the C-driver and use the DLL in Labview?

Thanks

[rolfk]

You also could directly call the C driver DLL using the LabVIEW Call Library Node in VIs. Not trivial to do as you need to know everything that you would need to know when calling that driver from a C program, but it is doable.

[OnlyOne]

Are there any generic Labview-VIs available to talk to ProfiNet? Or this only working by using the original driver-DLL?

[rolfk]

Profinet requires a specific hardware interface. And in any modern OS you need a device driver to access such hardware. And on top of that device driver you need a user space driver, which is almost always in the form of a DLL/shared library. And of course if you have a Siemens hardware you need the Siemens device drivers. If you had used a Hilscher hardware card instead, you would need the Hilscher driver. Hilscher used to have LabVIEW VIs for their DLL, but not entirely sure about their current state of support for this.

[OnlyOne]

OK, thanks.

Perhaps i have luck and someone already developed the c#-driver-wrapper and uses it in Labview to give me some hints.

BR

[rolfk]

You can always hope, but it won't be enough if someone already did this. He or she also will need to be willing and able to share that work.

I would consider the use of C# as a roundabout way, although I guess if you have no C programming experience and can simply reuse the .Net Interop driver that Siemens possibly delivers in their SDK, it may be the easier path, although certainly not the most performant way. If you have to do the .Net Interop part too, I would not advice to try to use C# at all. Developing the .Net Interop layer is at least as complicated as developing directly on LabVIEW level with the Call library Node. Except you add an extra complication and software in between that you need to maintain too.