Zenon Time Sync

[Praveen Kumar Karthikeyan]

Hi Guys
Is there a way to sync the Time between 2 systems using Zenon? Consider I am having Zenon running on both the systems, is there any driver or procedure to configure in zenon to Sync the Time from System 1 to System 2? 
Also I need to sync the PLC time with the Zenon Server time. How to get the current date and time of the system into Zenon and write it to a PLC variable??

If this is irrelevant to Zenon Supervisor, please move the topic to the Relevant Category. 

Thank You.

[ursulak]

Do you know that in Windows there is a 'NTP client' service (but per default not activated)? Then it could synchronize your both systems with external time server (there are public time servers, google/ecosia it for your country). This solution can have precision of 1ms. This Windows service 'NTP client' need to be configured with the IP address of time server from outside, thus you would have to allow this also in your firewall. To configure the IP of external SNTP time server to synchronize your Windows you have to do as Admin:
1. cmd: gpedit
2. Local Computer Policy > Administrative Templates > System > Windows Time Service > Time Providers > Configure Windows NTP Client
- enter there IP of the server and enable the client.

If not by NTP client of Windows to the external time sources then you can exchange the information about time via a STRING variable and zenon functions (in group 'Variables'): 'read time from variable' and 'write time to variable'. This solution has precision of 1 second. Then in one system you would have to start zenon process Gateway or zenon Logic as a slave in some protocol able to transfer strings (e.g. MODBUS) and in second system - a zenon driver acting as master in this protocol.

Or you can solve it via time synchronization procedures in IEC60870 or DNP3 protocols. This solution has precision about 10-50ms.

Make sure to time synchronize the systems regularly, e.g. each 24(?) hours, else by time synchronization the clock can make a significant "jump" and disturb the sorting of events and alarms.


The time synchronization to a PLC depends on protocol used to communicate with this PLC and PLC's capabilities. Maybe this PLC can handle a string with time?