Connecting-Siemens-PLC-with-Azure-and-Visual-Studio

My IOT Project about connecting PLC S7-1500 with Azure Cloud and simple visualisation in Visual Studio.

Main Idea

The project involves connecting a Siemens S7-1500 PLC controller with an Ewon industrial router to a cloud database, and then visualizing the results by loading data from this database. The main goal of the project is to learn how to create a Azure Cloud SQL Database that is connected to the physical IOT device. In a project, you can also learn how to manage and refer to the database by external programs such as Visual Studio. It was the final project to pass the Industrial Databases subject at the Automation and Robotics studies at Poznan University of Technology.

Final effect:

Hardware and software requirements

Siemens PLC S7-1200, S7-1500 or other programable controler.
Ewon Flexy (in my case it is 205)
Azure Account with some amount of cash. Some services are chargeable.
Visual Studio 2019
Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio

Step-by-step configuration

1. Tia Portal

In this section we need to enable connection with Ewon router from the PLC controller side. More detailed documentation is available on the developer's website [1].

Set IP Address of your PLC, it has to be in the same subnet as Ewon. In Tia go to: Device configuration → Profinet Interface → IP Protocol. Also you need to check "Use Router" and type Ewon adress in this field, like below.

Then in Device configuration → Protection & Security check the tab to enable PUT/GET connection with Ewon.

Last thing is to select your variable to send. It must have its own address. For testing purpose I created variable like below.

2. Ewon configuration

Now that we have configured the controller, you should now go to the Ewon router settings. I assume you have already configured a router and have created an IO Server that communicates with the PLC. If not, see the developer's documentation[2]. In the tags configuration tab, add a new variable with the same address with which you set it on the controller. You can see it below.

If the variable works correctly, now go to the Basic IDE section and write a program to communicate with the Azure cloud. Note, this will require a few extra steps from you, such as uploading the Certificate and Key files via FTP to the Ewon router. At this point, it's best to follow the instructions in the thread[4] and in the video[5] (YOU NEED TO DO IT).

When you finish the YT tutorial, you should have the code similar like below (I made my script smaller, you can find it here My Ewon Script)

Configuration of MQTT:

Assembling JSON Frame to send:

Do not run the program until you finish the next step.

If you want to know more about the script, see the documentation[3] and chapter "MQTT".

3. Microsoft Azure Portal

If the router has already been configured, we need to create three main services in Azure Platform.

IOT Hub - service that will receive messages coming from the Ewon router
SQL Database - it will store the information selected by us in the database
Stream Analytics Job - which will connect 2 previous services, i.e. send and select data that goes from the input of IOT Hub to the output, for us it is SQL Server. The short instruction for each service is below, for more information you can watch the video [6]:

IOT Hub

In Azure, select the new service and select IOT Hub, enter basic parameters such as hub name, select subscription and create. Once created, go to the service and select IOT Devices. Add a new device, remember to name it the same as the files previously uploaded via FTP. Select the self-signed key and then enter the footprint value in both of them, which is in the .crt file - this is explained in video [5]. You should add 1 device as below.

Now you can go back to your Ewon script, change the values of the variables - "DeviceId $" and "IotHubName $" for your settings and run the script. Go back to IOT Hub service, after some time you should see the message count should increase (as below). If that doesn't work, check your configuration again.

SQL Database

Select new service, and chose SQL Database. Name your database, and select subscription. Also you need to create server, it is important because you will need server name, login and password, to establish remote connection to your database. In the last step watch the tab review, and check billing(you can create test server for only few $ for a month), if it is okey, click create. Once the service is created, open it. Check the full server name - you will need it. Then click on the "Firewall" tab.

This is necessary to add IP addresses to the whitelist. Click "add client IP", and additionaly check "Yes" for "Allow azure services to access this server". Then you can be sure that the firewall will not stop yours services. Remember about this tab, because at various times Azure may ask you to add an IP address, e.g. your computer to the whitelist. You can add them directly here.

Stream Analytics Job

*Attention, you need to create a table where you will save your data. To do this, go to step 4 first and come back here afterwards.

If you created a table in your SQL Database, click on new service, and find Stream Analytics Job. Name it, select subscription what you want, deploy and open it. Now, you need to add an Input - it is your IOT Hub. Then add output - which is you SQL Server - here you also have to type server name, login, password and Table what you have created. If it is configured well, go to the SQL Query section then. Here you can watch input messages that are comming from IOT Hub, and test your queries with it. Here is my example command.

Now start your Analytics Job. If there is no errors, and you see that input and output on the graph is loading and saving, you sucesfully establish connection with your device and Azure Cloud. Now you can start your Analytics Job. If there are no errors and you can see that the inputs and outputs in the chart are loading and saving correctly then you successfully connected your device with the Azure Cloud.

4. Microsoft SQL Server

Since you created SQL Server, you can try to run it on external programs like Microsoft SQL Server. To connect to the server, open the program and click "Connect". You will see the panel as below. To connect, enter the Full Server Name and login, the password you have set. First time you'll probably see a message that you need to whitelist your IP address (see above for how to do this). If everything worked out fine, you'll see an open connection and your database name

In order to connect your IOT device to the SQL Database, you must first create tables where your data will be saved. To do it, on the top panel select - "New Query", and type SQL command to create the table. The columns of the table should match what you want to store in it. You can also use My SQL Script to create the basic table and display it. To ensure, everything is working check that you can add some records(that query is also in the script).

5. Visual Studio

When installing VS, you must also select the C ++ compiler, and after installation, you also need an additional extension for Visual Studio, which is SQL Server. If you already have these extensions, open SQL Server Object Explorer. Log in to your database [7] and you should see your database and tables.

When everything is working go to the file MyForm.h and in line 405 you need to add a connection parameters(server name, catalog name, ID and Password for loging in to the SQL Server). Save it.

If everything compiles correctly, now you can start program (CTRL + F5) and... voilà you have a Windows Form App with connection to your Azure Cloud SQL Server.

Note: The main aim of the project was to deal with the subject of IOT and connecting the device with a cloud database, so the application is very simple. In further projects, I will focus on other solutions how to connect to the database and visualize the effect - for example, Django.

Thanks for reading, I hope my tutorial was helpful.

Author: Tomasz Smaruj

tomaszsmaruj25 / Connecting-Siemens-PLC-with-Azure-and-Visual-Studio

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