[Feature Request]: S7 - Symbolic Names Support

[qoomon]

What would you like to happen?

Problem or use case

Read the "Symbolic Names" from the Siemens PLCs instead of defining the "Addresses" of the values in the PLCs. Reading addresses is considered a legacy method to read values but it seems plc4x only supports this method

Preferred solution or suggestions
Implement "symbolic addressing" of values in the Siemens S7 PLCs.

Some Info:
https://www.360digitalgyan.com/what-is-absolute-and-symbolic-addressing-in-s7-300-plc

Programming Languages

• plc4j
• plc4go
• plc4c
• plc4net

Protocols

• AB-Ethernet
• ADS /AMS
• BACnet/IP
• CANopen
• DeltaV
• DF1
• EtherNet/IP
• Firmata
• KNXnet/IP
• Modbus
• OPC-UA
• S7

[chrisdutz]

Hi,

Well that's a known problem.
We also would like to provide symbolic addressing. However it's not that simple.
In order to do that, we would need to completely implement a new protocol (S7Comm Plus).
In the past it was impossible to do so because of legal reasons.

Even if Siemens has changed things that now make it possible to implement a S7Comm Plus driver, there is currently nobody able and willing to work on this. I personally have given up investing my free time if I'm not compensated for it in any form. Perhaps someone else is willing to pick up the ball.

So currently don't expect this to happen any time soon.

Chris

[qoomon]

@chrisdutz thanks for all your background informations.

I personally have given up investing my free time if I'm not compensated for it in any form.

I totally agree :-)

[qoomon]

Just for the sake of documentation following project seems to be promising and under active development
https://github.com/thomas-v2/S7CommPlusDriver/tree/master

[chrisdutz]

Yeah... I know Thomas and his work. But his stuff is gpl licensed, so we can't build a driver based on his code... Unfortunately