I’ve got a customer needing a little update in his PLC program, but their facility is about an 11 hour drive away, and nobody (customer or my bosses) wants to pay for 22 hours of driving and a hotel for 10 minutes of work. They don’t have a VPN set up but they do have internet and a laptop that could connect to the PLC, is there some sort of adhoc or software out there that I could use to use their laptop as a passthrough/bridge to get to the PLC? Having the customer purchase and download Logix Designer is an option but not ideal.
PLC: 1769-L33ER CompactLogix, Revision 30.011.
EDIT: I appreciate all the suggestions! The issue isn’t a dire one so the customer is fine waiting for my next field job that gets me semi close to their locale. Definitely looking into some of the suggestions for the future.
Some people will next day an E-Won Cosy to a customer for this type of problem. One place I did a few months contracting they put it together in a waterproof and shock-resistant case they could ship. All the customer had to do was open it up and plug it in.
I think there’s a way you can set up tunneling through a Windows computer, but the computer would need to have a public IP address for it to work.
Teamviewer to connect to connect to customer’s computer with connection to machine.
Download and install Logic Designer on their computer. Don’t need to buy license.
I use Teamviewer VPN to share rockwell license from my computer to customer computer. There is knowledge base article with list of firewall ports you will need to open on each computer. Need to enable network sharing in Activation manager on your computer. First connect to get license across the VPN will take a while.
Typically the move here is to remote desktop to a local PC that already has the software installed.
I have absolutely no idea if you can use another PC as a VPN… I’d be very interested to know, but I’m guessing not… at least not without installing some software that IT won’t be happy about.
Do you have the same PLC local to you? We will typically create an image and e-mail it to the customer, but you need a PLC to create the image. They can put it on an SD card and use that to update. Just make sure the PLC you create the image with is the same catalog number and has the same firmware loaded (unless you want to update that as well…).
Rust Desk or just a simple Ms teams meeting.
You can use Anydesk, I used TeamViewer before but I think that Anydesk is faster
RSLinx gateway and a USB-> ethernet adapter is how I got from the “office” to local PLC network thru a PC.
We send Cellular VPN Routers for that reason. We typically use Stridelinx from Automation Direct.
Reach out to your local Rockwell distributor and request a 30 day temporary license of Studio 5000.
Lot of the time we use TeamViewer. Not too bad if they can punch out to the internet
You can use ssh passthrough with no need to install software in the customer.
Teams, zoom, etc with their laptop.
I would do this with ZeroTier or TeamViewer. There’s a little fiddling to enable lan-to-lan routing and static routes, but I do it frequently with a general-purpose Windows box connected to the Internet and the machine LAN. I can keep the RSLogix 5000 software and the licenses on my own PC or network servers, and only pass the CIP protocol data through to the PLC.
It’s even easier with a Raspberry Pi set up with ZeroTier.
Some notes on doing it via TeamViewer:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PLC/comments/6e860r/help_with_vpn_connection/
My company will ship a computer with the necessary software, then connect to it using a remote desktop program called “lite manager” There’s some latency but workable. I’ve started up entire machines from 1000’s of miles away. Saves allot on travel costs. Worst Part is starting at the time zone of the machineI’m working on so I have on-site helpif needed.
I’ve used an SSH reverse tunnel to a DigitalOcean Droplet, then connect to another machine on your local network over SSH and do a SSH Local Forward tunnel to the Droplet, then you point RSLinx at the IP address of the computer you previously setup as a Local Forward. RSLinx will that computer as the PLC. I’ve done this with RSLogics 500 and RSLogix 5000 up until Ver. 21. It seems like the FT Linx does not work the same. I’ve had trouble getting to the PLC this with version 34. I’ve had sits that didn’t have internet use a cell phone as a hot spot from their PC and I reote into their PC and set evrything up. It used to work pretty damned good in a pinch. I would evne forwward VNC on the Panelview at the same time. Most of the time we use Stridelinx now, We used to send routers with our equipment and set it for VPN, but that was always a hassle.
We’ve probably got one of the same ones in the machine’s we’re building right meow. Will have to look and see if the customer is comfortable (Tech saavy) with doing an SD update. I think Windows 10 has a built in VPN available, and might be able to do some point to point tunneling, but still looking into it.
Wait this would actually work…
https://www.reddit.com/r/PLC/comments/11y2xt3/wireguard_to_remote_to_pc_in_plc_network/
I think someone already had it working with TailScale, which is built on top of WireGuard.