Most automation engineers are aware that OPC UA clients can exchange data with PLCs via OPC UA tags. But did you know that OPC UA clients can also use methods to pass input data to, and receive output data from,

The PLCnext controllers supports multiple ways of connecting to a cloud service. You could use IEC Function blocks from the IOT library, build your own .NET application, write a python script or compile a connector in GoLa

This tutorial shows how to create a simp

Hi all. Some time ago i needed simple access to variables AXC F 2152. And i wrote simple Python library to resolve this problem. Contributions to this project are welcome. https://github.com/AlexanderSkachkov/pyPLCn

In this Makers Blog article we discuss the possibilities and advantages which a Com Server provides to the PLCnext platform. Introduction The extensions modules that Phoenix Contact offers for its PLCs can for exampl

What Is Wake-on-LAN? Wake-on-LAN (sometimes abbreviated WoL) is an industry standard protocol for waking computers up from a very low power mode remotely. The definition of “low power mode” has changed a bit over time,

Open CV is one of the most used Computer Vision libraries out there. Open CV can be used for face recognition, object tracking, scanning barcodes and more important for this blog, detecting if a light is on or off. In this

 would like to share an application story from Ignacio Aláez, a Solution Engineering Expert from Phoenix Contact Spain, which might be of interest to the PLCnext Community. As part of a project we have the

The PLCnext REST Interface is a fantastic tool both to present and receive data from a back-end system. REST, or REpresentational State Transfer, is a software architecture style consisting of guidelines and best prac

Some weeks ago, I received following question. You need to upload a logging file towards a SFTP server, by using a program which runs in the ESM.The SSH File Transfer Protocol (also Secure File Transfer Protocol, or SFTP)

Abstract In this article I will explain how to define complex GDS ports like data structures in C++ and connect them to GDS port in IEC code. Data Structures How to declare data structures. Lets look at C++. #p

Abstract Did you know that the PLCnext Common Classes have built in support for XML serialization? This article shows how to use the IXmlSerializable interface to populate the data in a c++ class. You can f

Abstract In this article I will explain how to use catch2 to do unit testing. How to build To build the sources, you have to download a release from https://github.com/catchorg/Catch2/tags. Now you

Abstract In this article I will explain how to use linq to process data. With this library you can use filtering, selections, aggregations, groupings and many more. For full support it requires clang or gcc, a

Abstract In this article I will explain how to use pugixml to process XML data. With this processing library you can use a DOM parser to read and manipulate nodes and the XPATH notation to

This is an update to an article that was originally published in November 2018. All PLCnext Controls include an embedded OPC UA server. This server, like all OPC UA servers, includes the option to establish secure c

This video gives a brief introduction to the SNMP agent that is included in every PLCnext Control device. For this demonstration, FL Network Manager software is used as the SNMP manager. More info

The embedded datalogger is a wonderful tool to create databases of your process-data. The Notification manager and logger on the other hand is perfect to log user-actions or specific events. You can cre

If you can’t get enough Microsoft, and if you like using Powershell on Windows, then you might be interested to know that Powershell can also be installed on PLCnext Control devices. Please note the warning from M

Life of a programmer is hard enough as is. Why not make your life easier and outsource the version control of your projects to some dedicated services? Most programmers in the IT world are familiar with Git, but for some o