I’m working with a customer who has a legacy B&R Power Panel PP420 installation that is believed to date from around 2012. We’re currently assessing the system with a view to improving maintainability and potentially integrating operational data into modern digitalisation platforms.
As we don’t have much experience with this generation of B&R hardware, I’m hoping someone in the community can help answer a few questions:
What is the recommended method for taking a complete backup of a PP420 system?
Is it possible to create a full image that would allow recovery onto replacement hardware if the panel were to fail?
What software tools would have been used to develop and maintain these systems?
Are there any common pitfalls when attempting to recover or migrate older PP420 installations?
Is spare hardware still available, or are there recommended migration paths to newer B&R platforms?
What options exist for extracting operational data from these systems? OPC UA, SQL, TCP/IP, file exports, etc.
Are there any useful manuals, knowledge base articles or archived documentation available for this generation of hardware?
At this stage we’re simply trying to understand what is achievable before we begin any intrusive work on the production system.
If anyone has experience with PP420s, Automation Runtime versions from this era, or similar legacy B&R deployments, I’d be very interested to hear your recommendations and lessons learned.
The question is, what exactly do you want to achieve?
Backup: If you’re just looking to back up the system, you can create an image of the CF card. The CF card contains all application data, such as the operating system, the entire system’s firmware, applications, visu, etc. The only other storage is for remanent variables, which is battery-backed. Ideally it is programmed so that no important data is stored in this battery buffered storage.
With an image of the CF card, you could restore the entire system on a new panel in case of a damage. Please note, however, that the PowerPanel has already been discontinued and is no longer available from B&R. I’m not sure if it still can be repaired.
For everything else - if you need to change the software - the original software (“Automation Studio Project”) is required. With that, you could then make changes and updates. However, nearly all software components from this era have been discontinued or are not CRA-compatible. This applies to the VC4 visualization used for the PP420 and also to ACP10, if drives are in use.
Therefore, the following questions must first be clarified:
What is the goal?
Is the Automation Studio project available?
If you simply want to get some date out of this machine, this could be possible with PVI - maybe also without any change of the project running, so this also could be possible if you don’t have the Automation Studio project. OPC UA was not available at this time, and everything else except PVI is disabled per default.