General Information
The BE-ICS group is mandated to give general PLC support to the CERN community. The CERN PLC users benefit from a comprehensive list of services.
CERN-wide PLC Services Offered
- Complete PLC support and information to CERN PLC users about the two official and supported PLC brands at CERN. This include advice about the hardware as well as possible architectures including safety and redundant PLCs.
- PLC application repository: A central repository of PLC applications. Users may use this tool to have a direct link to their current operational software version running in their PLCs. The service does not substitute SVN/GIT for the code versioning, but only provides a central place to have all operational versions at hand. The service is provided by a commercial tool: VersionDog.
- Central PLC Database (Layout). The group provide tools to automatically populate the database from existing project hardware configurations (Schneider and Siemens). This is a first attempt to have an asset database for components tracking. The database items are created in base of a CERN equipment catalogue.
- Diagnostics & monitoring: PLC agent. BE-ICS provides a central monitoring service based on both, MOON and DIAMON tools, to make the surveillance of the PLCs networked at CERN. No intrusive code is needed in the PLC. The additional load caused by this service has been stated to be meaningless.
- CD/CI on PLC. Methods to automatised and speed up continuous development and integration.
- Testing & Verification of PLC applications: The group provides expertise in testing and verification and provide tools to verify formally PLC applications.
- Test-benches. BE-ICS holds a set of demonstrators and test benches for training and or tests.
News
Please check out the latest news concerning both Siemens and Schneider.
Support
Any support issue must be communicated by e-mail to: plc.support@cern.ch or IceControls.Support@cern.ch
In case of a serious issue (e.g. PLC crash) related to a Siemens or Schneider PLCs you can follow the corresponding recovery procedures: