How to use Diagnostic Buffer for SIEMENS PLC?

Today we are going to speak various helpful PLC tools such as the Diagnostic Buffer for Siemens PLC for troubleshooting Simatic S7 problems.

Last updated: September 28, 2022 2:23 pm

Hussien Ghareb

PLC Tutorials

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5 Min Read

Welcome back with SIEMENS PLCs, today we are going to continue discussing the different PLC troubleshooting techniques, if you are interested in such topics you have to read these topics:

Contents

Today we are going to speak about various helpful PLC tools such as the Diagnostic Buffer, how to use it, and how it can help us that is what we are going to speak about.

The function of the Diagnostic Buffer at SIEMENS PLCs?

The operating system of the PLC processor enters the errors detected by the CPU and the diagnostics-capable modules into the diagnostics buffer in the order in which they occurred.

This includes the following events:

Every mode change of the CPU (POWER UP, change to STOP mode, change to RUN mode)
Every hardware and diagnostic error interrupts

Advantages of the Diagnostic Buffer

After the CPU has changed to STOP mode, you can evaluate the last events prior to the STOP so that you can locate and identify the cause of the STOP.
You can detect and eliminate the causes of errors more quickly and thus increase the availability of the system.
You can evaluate and optimize the dynamic system response.

Diagnostic Buffer for SIEMENS PLC

Before going through that tool, you have to go online to open and deal with the diagnostic buffer to determine the status of your PLC.

If you do not know how to go online with your PLC please check the previous article (here)

Now and after going Online click on “Online & diagnostics” on the project tree as shown in the next figure.

As we can see in the next figure here are some of the system events that are ordered with the date and time that is occurred in.

Note

The diagnostics buffer is a ring buffer. With the S7-1200 CPUs, the maximum number of entries is 50.

When the diagnostics buffer is full and a further entry needs to be made, all existing entries are shifted one position (which means that the oldest entry is deleted) and the new entry is made at the first position that is now free (FIFO principle: first in, first out).

How to use Diagnostic Buffer for SIEMENS PLC

Siemens PLC Example

Here we will see a simple example to know how a diagnostic buffer can help us in troubleshooting.

We have here a situation that after some time of PLC running, the PLC goes to STOP mode by itself and after resetting the PLC it occurs again.

Download: PLC Program

After going to the PLC diagnostic buffer, we will see what is really happing inside

As we can see in the next figure the PLC goes to STOP mode because of the cycle time exceeded the limit of the scan cycle time, and that forced the CPU to go to the STOP mode by itself.

Read Diagnostic Buffer in a CPU of Simatic S7

If you still cannot understand what is going on you can click on “Help on the event” in the previous figure to open the Help dictionary.

We will see that there might be an infinity loop in our PLC code, or there is any reason that pushes the cycle time over the limit of the scan cycle time.

So, if we go back again to our code, we will find out that by mistake (obviously not) we have made an infinity loop in our code as we can see in the next figure.