Can You Upload a Project File From a Phoenix Contacts Plc
Summary
PLCnext from Phoenix Contact is an automation and IoT product line combining an open real-time control platform, a Linux software development and execution environment, automation engineering software, and cloud integration. Information technology also includes a vendor supported online software shop and a supported programmer customs. PLCnext targets system 
integrators who (equally one executive noted) "want to evangelize PLC automation, simply who also desire to evangelize some other application, and these other apps may be quite important and differentiating for their offer."
PLCnext has played an outsized role in the ongoing development of standardized Open Process Automation (OPA). It has played an important part in several OPA projects and labs to engagement, and likely volition continue to exercise so. In this report, we will provide some background on PLCnext, and explicate its role in these OPA labs and projects, every bit well as its own user community.
PLCnext was introduced in Europe in 2017. Its modular hardware consists of a prepare of ARM-based processor units and a backplane with slots supporting Phoenix Contact'due south Axioline-F I/O module family. This is very much similar a normal PLC. Software is where PLCnext is unlike. The software stack consists of:
- A Linux kernel built with the preempt-rt patch. Phoenix Contact builds this kernel using the YOCTO toolkit, a very popular open-source projection for creating Linux operating systems targeting real-fourth dimension and embedded organisation applications.
- A runtime system for real-time applications providing both execution and synchronization and featuring a shared global data space. The runtime creates a "sandbox" within which multiple applications tin can collaborate without disturbing real-time system behavior.
- A full Linux execution environment that can support executables developed in many programming languages and tools, and also supports Docker containerized applications.
- Concluding but certainly non least is an online app store, which now features applications from Phoenix Contact and 26 other suppliers. These include IEC 61131 development tools from both Phoenix Contact and Codesys.
PLCnext in ExxonMobil Projects
Much of this adequacy was available from the 2022 launch of the PLCnext, so it attracted attention from ExxonMobil and 
Lockheed Martin who were then choosing partners to develop a proof-of-concept system for ExxonMobil's Open up Process Automation vision (this was before The Open Group began managing the O-PAS standards development).
At that time, support for PLCnext was concentrated in Europe, and given the support-intensive nature of such a project, Phoenix Contact chose not to participate. However, PLCnext has featured prominently in ExxonMobil'south subsequent open up automation projects.
Its start use was in the ExxonMobil OPA prototype project. This project developed an open up automation arrangement to control a pilot process unit for several months of operation in 2020. It included distributed control nodes (DCNs) supplied past Intel and Phoenix Contact (using PLCnext). Other I/O hardware was supplied past Yokogawa and Moxa. Interfaces were implemented to a process safety system and a gas chromatograph, while an advanced computing platform hosted soft controllers, HMI, information historian, and other applications.
This project highlighted the Linux environs within PLCnext. Rather than use Phoenix Contact software, the plan was to use the IEC 61499 runtime environment of nxtControl on a wide variety of hard and soft controllers. Using the Linux surroundings of PLCnext, the nxtControl runtime was ported to the PLCnext devices. I/O admission to PLCnext was provided via a Linux I/O API that was developed for the project.
When the paradigm projection ended, ExxonMobil moved the equipment to its Texas OPA Test Bed project. This projection will prepare the OPA engineering for field trials at ExxonMobil and will include a big number of control and I/O suppliers operating a simulated distillation unit of measurement. Work on this project is ongoing at this fourth dimension. ExxonMobil has plans to use the college functioning PLCnext processors as this work progresses.
Besides ExxonMobil, PLCnext is being used in OPA lab work past Saudi Aramco and Georgia Pacific and has been used in a demonstration of NAMUR module-type package (MTP) engineering science led by BASF. In the labs, PLCnext will initially run the IEC 61499 runtime both integrated and in a Docker container.
The MTP project demonstrated the ability of multiple modular unit operations to quickly integrate and have their operations orchestrated from a single betoken. This sit-in used a batch process and OPC UA for interoperability. The recipe management and orchestration software were developed by a major automation supplier, but all of this software was ported to PLCnext for execution in the sit-in. Again, this portability is evidence of how useful information technology is to have such a highly standardized software development and runtime environment in an automation product like PLCnext.
Given its use in so many of these demonstration projects where the PLCnext has served in a wide diversity of roles, this validates the wisdom of combining a standardized Linux environs with conventional automation capability and tools.
Besides this, ane of the more powerful demonstrations of the usefulness of PLCnext is the development of the PLCnext Shop and Community. At nowadays, there are 26 software suppliers also Phoenix Contact who accept software available through the PLCnext Store (see tabular array).
Conclusion
In ARC'southward view, PLCnext is a pre-standards model of an OPA production. Information technology demonstrates the potential value of a standardized software environment and an ecosystem of software providers. The fact that both Phoenix Contact and Codesys offer their (straight competing) IEC 61131 tools in the PLCnext Shop is evidence of the product's openness. Thus, PLCnext is something of a model that ARC sees other automation system and production suppliers adopting as well. The "consumerization" of industrial automation is beginning.
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Keywords: Linux, MTP, NAMUR, Phoenix Contact, PLCnext, Open Process Automation, ARC Advisory Group.
Source: https://www.arcweb.com/industry-best-practices/plcnext-open-automation
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