I’m new to PLCNext (in fact waiting on my hardware to show up), so I have a few questions. We’re porting a project over that was originally done on two separate networks, with a controller/HMI combo being the core device. This allowed us to give the application the ability to change the upstream controller port’s IP address, change through the various supported protocols (Modbus TCP adapter and EthernetIP adapter emulation and onboard OPCUA server), and also support remote HMI through that port (via VNC).
These are important for our field support as our customers and field service expect a "zero engineering tool" setup in 95% of the cases. I have to supply mappings to them, of course. We're going with an 2152 adapter. So, looking at my scenario: I'd prefer to keep the local IO and the local HMI on a separate network and allow the end user to plug into a separate port. However, that separate port has to support PLCNext HMI too. I'd gladly add Profinet adapter emulation too (we had to use a dedicated module on the one time we did do this in the field with Brand X). Does the Ethernet expansion module support embedded HMI, OPC UA, EthernetIP (which I see is baked in), or other direct manipulation (aka PLCNext Store Modbus libraries)? Is there a way to change the IP of any of the ports (reboot required is OK) via standard PLCNext? I figure there's probably a way via something in C or direct Linux manipulation but who knows what that will break. Oh, and one more vote for optional dynamic resizing of the web HMI so I don't have to rebuild for different HMI sizes. Or at least a static resizer inside PLCNext. This project is going to have a local XGA display and currently a WVGA remote display showing essentially the same data, driven by the PLCNext HMI.