Setting the IP Address
Once you have assembled everything you need to get started, your PLCnext Control device will be powered up and plugged in to an Ethernet network with access to the internet. On AXC F 1152 and AXC F 2152 PLCnext Control devices it doesn't matter which of the two Ethernet ports are used; these are switched internally.
The factory default IP address of every PLCnext Control device is 192.168.1.10/24, but you will probably want to change this to something that suits your local network.
This section shows how to change the IP address of the PLCnext Control device from the default value. In the remainder of this book, all examples will use the default IP address (192.168.1.10).
Here are some possible ways to change the IP address of the PLCnext Control device:
Use netnames
Netnames is a utility from Phoenix Contact that assists with the management of Profinet devices. Netnames is available for Linux 64 bit and Windows operating systems. The remainder of this section uses the Linux version of Netnames.
Firstly, make sure that netnames can be executed. From the netnames installation directory, run the following command:
$ chmod a+x netnames
By default, each PLCnext Control device acts as a Profinet device, and so can be assigned an IP address using netnames.
Run the following command, substituting eth0 with the name of your Ethernet adapter. You should get a response similar to the one shown.
$ sudo ./netnames -i eth0 -c identify
axc-f-2152-1 AXC F 2152 00B0 0142 00:A0:45:A0:09:D8 192.168.1.10 255.255.255.0 0.0.0.0
The MAC address and current IP address details of the PLCnext Control device are shown in the response.
If you get no response, make sure the name of the Ethernet adapter is correct. Also, be aware that the Discovery and Configuration Protocol (DCP) used by netnames is a link layer protocol, and so is not routable.
The IP address, subnet mask and default gateway can be changed using a command similar to the following:
$ sudo ./netnames -i eth0 -c setip -m 00:A0:45:A0:09:D8 -ip 192.168.178.10 -sm 255.255.255.0 -sg 192.168.178.1
Device responded: OK
Obviously the above command will need to include parameters that suit your own device and network. The IP address of the device should be in the same subnet as the host, and the default gateway should give the device access to the internet.
Your device should now be accessible from your host machine, which can be verified using ping:
$ ping -c 3 192.168.178.10
PING 192.168.178.10 (192.168.178.10) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.178.10: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=5.73 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.10: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=4.87 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.178.10: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=18.4 ms
--- 192.168.178.10 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2010ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 4.877/9.690/18.464/6.214 ms
Use the Display (RFC only)
RFC controllers come with an integrated touch-screen display, which can be used to set the controller's IP address.
Use PLCnext Engineer
For Windows users, it is also possible to set the IP address of the PLCnext Control device using PLCnext Engineer software. Refer to the guide "Getting started with PLCnext Engineer" for instructions on how to do this.
Edit the interfaces file
Once the device is accessible over the network via ssh (for example), it is possible to change the IP address of the device by editing the file /etc/network/interfaces directly on the device.