Profinet

not very much. My experience was that it is harder to get/make than Profibus.

[...]

...if you have relaxed timing requirments, IOW you can use "RT". You need special hardware for "IRT". I assume you don't want to use CBA.

In my experience it _is_ bad.

We didn't even manage to get a PC based "Master simulator" as a plain software solution working with the existing network card. We bought a Hilscher CIFX 50-RE network card with a master license.

For Profibus, we use a simple and cheap RS232 dongle from Bihl+Wiedemann (IIRC) with "Master Simulator" software. That's easy.

Profinet seems to be even more bloated than Profibus, and it seems to have more quirks.

Oliver

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Oliver Betz, Munich
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Yes. It's a huge, bloated mess designed by a large comittee of rather officious people. [I swear, any time you put more than five German engineers in a room for more that two hours, they start inventing a new industrial protocol.] The newer Profinet IO spec doesn't seem to be quite as bad as the original Profinet protocol (now called Profinet CBA).

Yup. Profinet is a Siemens thing. They call it "open", but it's really Siemens driving the bus.

That sounds about right as far as size goes. I thought there were free reference implementations available, but I haven't looked into it for a couple years now, and I won't claim that the free reference implementations I once saw were suitable for use in a real product. As far as commercial stacks go, round up the usual suspects (Ixxat, Softing, and so on).

Yup.

Pretty much.

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Thanks (also to Oliver) for these answers. You are basically confirming my own suspicions as I've dug deeper into this, but it is always good to have independent second opinions (then I can go to the boss and say "it's not just me, /everybody/ hates Profinet" :-)

Seriously, we are investigating the possibility of using Profinet modules from Softing, otherwise we will fall back on "ordinary" Profibus DP or, if the customer agrees, something simple and sensible like Modbus TCP.

mvh.,

David

Hi David, I saw your posting on the Newsgroups about Profinet.

We are the UK distributor for Softing

Softing manufacture a range of ProfiBUS and ProfiNET tools, interfaces and software, and also provide training and consultancy services.

The following links may be useful:

1) There is a UK Profibus Group where you can obtain further information about Profibus and Profinet.

2) Manchester Metropolitan University provide training courses on Profinet, see:

3) Also see Verwer Training;

Best regards Dale Fittes

Technical Specialist Hitex UK Ltd Warwick University Science Park Coventry CV4 7EZ UK

Tel: +44 (0) 2476 692066 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              +44 (0) 2476

692066      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

Fax: +44 (0) 2476 692131 email: snipped-for-privacy@hitex.co.uk

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I am with the organization that supports PROFIBUS and PROFINET in North America: PI North America, formerly PTO. Here are my answers to your concerns:

No, much as we like to have members join, you can buy the spec from IEC and do it yourself. Naturally, we think there are advantages to belonging to the organization. We did help one developer use the spec to write his own stack for his 8-bit environment.

We recently created a website dedicated just to PROFINET:

There?s a developer section there with more details about developing PROFINET, including links to archived webinars specifically for developers.

If you are in North America, give me a call; I?d be happy to give you resources for your effort: 480-483-2456 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              480-483-2456      end_of_the_skype_highlighting. Outside North America, drop me an email and I?ll point you to your local support organization: carl henning profinet com

--Carl Henning

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Hi,

I've been in contact with Softing (after some helpful email exchanges with David Fittes) with a view to buying Profinet modules. I think that will be our most practical option. They are also geographically a little closer - we are in Norway, and they are in Germany, so we are at least in roughly the same time zones.

I'll have a look through your website - it looks like some useful information. Thanks for the link.

Thanks,

David

[...]

Deutschmann and Hilscher also offer Profinet (and other fieldbus) modules.

Oliver

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Oliver Betz, Munich
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