I am looking for some suggestions and I was wondering if you can help me out with a few things!
I want to implement running a machine where it is at my companies engineering office. I was wondering if I am on site, if I could theoretically connect the PLC to my laptop, and run the software on a physically machine that is at my engineering office? The reason why we want to do this is typical IT cooperate bs where they do not want to change our laptops. I would be physcially connecting my laptop with the PLC, and then use something like remote desktop to login into the better machine.
Will my ports and such transfer over from my laptop into the remote desktop connection?
You want to use your laptop as a pass-through device for connecting the PLC to a remote computer running the PLC dev software. Took me a few minutes to wrap my head around the question.
Can you do this?
- Technically yes. You could use RDP to access a remote system, and RDP would pass through your connections. There are also VNC protocols that could work with the right configuration. It might even look something like bridging two network connections on your laptop, essentially turning your laptop into a complicated switch.
- You shouldn’t. It’s a lot of messing about with configurations and would requires you to either open the remote PC to the internet or to use a VPN Hardware/software solution to facilitate a secure connection.
Is there an alternative?
- Yes, if you are going to use a VPN solution for the above it would be better to configure it for a more direct connection method. You would need to configure the VPN so that the Remote PC and the PLC are on the same subnet and connect the remote PC and PLC directly, you would use the laptop just to access the Remote PC; again, either with RDP or VNC.
Should you consider something entirely different?
- YES! Virtual machine. setup a Virtual on your laptop and run the software in that VM. it gets the software off the host and generally IT will be more receptive. You still get port passthrough and you can better control the environment your software is installed in.
Many PLC IDEs can connect to the PLC through a gateway PC. You would have to install the gateway software (differs by PLC brand) on the PC local to the PLC location and connect it to the PLC. Then connect the remote computer that has the IDE to the local PC running the gateway software via some VPN connection. I always used Teamviewer VPN; you can enable it on the local computer from the remote computer via a regular Teamviewer connection, which is crucial if someone non-technical is manning the local PC. You then configure the remote PC to use the local PC as a gateway to connect to the PLC.
I’ve done this with Rockwell using Linx Gateway and with B&R using PVI and a “remote connection”.
There is a slight bonus to this, you get a much more stable connection to the PLC than using something like an eWON to go direct to the PLC. If you start a download, it is transferred to the local gateway PC first, then that PC sends it to the PLC locally instead of trying to download direct to the PLC from the remote PC over the internet.
PLC - Local PC with Gateway Software - VPN Connection - Remote PC with the IDE
For B&R, if I could get someone on site on the phone that had a laptop with wifi internet and a wired ethernet port connected to the PLC, I could talk them through downloading TeamViewer and running it and us getting a TeamViewer connection going. Once I had that, I could take over their laptop and install PVI Manager (now Runtime Utility Center), setup their network settings correctly, and enable the TeamViewer VPN and be off to the races.
For Rockwell, I think Linx Gateway requires a license, but I could transfer the installer to them over TeamViewer and it had a grace period.
I think the process with Beckhoff is similar to B&R using an ADS Gateway, but I’m not actually sure.
Doing this is uncommon enough that people that have used a platform for years will not only not have heard anything about using another PC as a gateway, but they will probably confidently and incorrectly tell you it isn’t a thing you can do. They also won’t know why you’d want to do it in the age of eWONs, but I can confirm that at least with B&R, it has a much higher chance of success over a shaky connection.
I agree with you on virtual machine, however our engineering laptops are the biggest POS device ever lol. This is why I was thinking an alternative route! I will have to talk to IT and see what they can come up with, as its getting quite frustrating to deal with RS Studio and Control Expert Classic crashing constantly. Dont even get me started with CAD
Yes, both of those devices are installed in the electrical panel and then hooked to the network. You can then sit on your couch and connect to them remotely for programming. They are more responsive than a remote desktop since they act as an extension of the communication cable between your laptop and the PLC.
OpenVPN/SonicWall are also good options that require just a little more setup.
Any connection that allows you to use your own applications on your PC will respond better than anything that you remote into and use the application from there. We have used LogMeIn, TeamViewer, Chrome’s extension, nothing is nearly as good as a VPN connection where you can use your own applications on your own PC.
