Profinet (In Development)

The PROFINET driver implements a class 3 real time controller. Which is able to communicate with multiple devices on the same network segment.

Connection String Options

On linux as the Java executable won’t have permission to capture raw packets, this needs to be enabled via:-

sudo setcap cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin=eip /usr/lib/jvm/jdk-19/bin/java

The executable will change based on the jdk and OS you are using.

Name Value Description

Code

profinet

Name

Profinet

Maven Dependency

 
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.plc4x</groupId>
  <artifactId>plc4j-driver-profinet</artifactId>
  <version>{current-last-released-version}</version>
</dependency>

Default Transport:

 raw

Compatible Transports:

  • raw - Profinet uses a bunch of protocols, LLDP, PN-DCP, PNIO over UDP or Profinet. It makes sense just to select the raw transport for this.

Supported Operations

subscribe

Only the subscription service is currently supported.

Options

devices

(Required) Allows you to specify the devices you would like to communicate to, their device access module (Taken from the GSD file) as well as a list of submodules.

This parameter has the format

[[{device-1},{device-access},({submodule-1},{submodule-2})],[{device-2},{device-access},({submodule-1},{submodule-2})],....]

For each available slot specified in the GSD file a submodule needs to be in the connection string, however it can be left blank e.g.

[[{device},{device-access},({submodule-1},)]]

If there is no submodule configured.

gsddirectory

The directory that is used to store any GSD files. This is used to look up the GSD for device found.

sendclockfactor

(Default 32) This is used to scale the frequency in which cyclic packets are sent. Increasing this slows down communication

reductionratio

(Default 4) Is also used to scale the frequency. The formula to calculate the overall cycle time is Cycle Time = SendClockFactor * Reduction Ratio * 31.23us

watchdogfactor

Used to specify the maximum number of cycles that is allowed to be missed by a device. An alarm is generated if this is exceeded

dataholdfactor

Specifies the number of cycles a device will keep its outputs in a non-safe state when it hasn’t received a cyclic packet. This must be equal to or be greater than the watchdog factor

Connection String

The Profinet driver uses the connection string

profinet:raw://{ip-address}:{port}?{options}

Where the {ip-address}, unlike other PLC4X driver, uses the local IP address of the network interface you would like to bind to. This allows us to connect to multiple devices at once via the devices parameter.

An example of this connection string which has two devices test-device-1 and test-device-2, connected on the localhost interface would be:-

profinet:raw://127.0.0.1?gsddirectory=/Profinet/GSD&devices=[[test-device-1,MOD_1,(SUBMOD_1,,SUBMOD_1,)],[test-device-2,MOD_1,(SUBMOD_1,,SUBMOD_1,)]]

Note the transport, port fields shouldn’t have to be changed

Address Format

The format of address will be in the format.

device.slot.id.module_name.channel.bit:format

An example would be

device-1.1.1.DIGITAL_INPUT.0.1:BOOL

Note:-

Data Types

The following data types are supported

  • BOOL (boolean)

  • SINT (int 8)

  • USINT (uint 8)

  • BYTE (uint 8)

  • INT (int 16)

  • UINT (uint 16)

  • WORD (uint 16)

  • DINT (int 32)

  • UDINT (uint 32)

  • DWORD (uint 32)

  • LINT (int 64)

  • ULINT (uint 64)

  • LWORD (uint 64)

  • REAL (float)

  • LREAL (double)

  • CHAR (char)

  • WCHAR (2 byte char)

  • STRING (utf-8)

  • WSTRING (utf-16)

Some useful tips

Although the GSD file contains all the information needed to configure which data will be available from a device. The easiest approach is to use the browsing function of the Profinet driver to return a list of all available tags. Then only the addresses of interest can be selected.