SIMATIC Comfort Panel Siemens TP1500 – What Is It?

While the SIMATIC TP1500 Comfort Panel from Siemens was discontinued in 2017, it is still available in limited quantities from places like shop.oem-automation.com. When paired with the corresponding SIMATIC WinCC Comfort V16 Engineering Software, the TP1500 is designed to allow companies to implement high-performance visualization applications. ‘

Product Specifications

The SIMATIC TP1500 is able to display 16-million colors on its 15″ display. As with many of the Comfort Panels from Siemens, this product has a greater viewing angle than your conventional touchscreen. This is to allow them to be used in a whole host of different situations, including controlling machinery, or even in the service industry.

As mentioned previously, all configuration of the screen is carried out using the SIMATIC WinCC Comfort V16 Engineering Software. This is now a staple piece of software in the Siemen’s range and is purchased separately from the control panel itself. Other software can be utilized to program the apps that the Comfort Panel can help to control.

The SIMATIC TP1500 interface is PROFINET and MPI/PROFIBUS-DP, which is a staple interface for control touchscreens of this nature nowadays. This is to ensure that people are able to hook the touchscreen up into their system with ease. 

The TP1500 is regarded as a ‘basic panel’ by Siemens. This means that while it is robust, it is not as robust as other products in their Comfort Panel range. This means that it has been designed to be used indoors, although it can be used heavily indoors too. It just can’t be moved around a whole lot.

In order to aid configuration, the SIMATIC TP1500 comes complete with 24MB of configuration memory. This allows certain settings to be saved to memory to keep bootup times of the Comfort Panel to the absolute minimum.

Installation 

The SIMATIC TP1500 requires a 24 V DC power supply to run. It can be installed anywhere indoors where the temperature does not drop below 0C or go above 50C. 

In order to work and be configured, the device will need access to either a PROFINET or PROFIBUS interface. In order to connect via PROFINET, a RS-485 ethernet cable is required. PROFIBUS requires a USB-2 connector. Both should be staple connections for the vast majority of situations where a Comfort Panel like this would be used.

Despite the discontinued of this particular panel, Siemens has pledged to support it for the long term. This includes technical support and the supply of spare parts.