Me Again

Hi, Yes, It's me again.
This is a forum, so therefore => my questions and answers

I want to know how to communicate an S7 profibusnetwork with a Visual Basic program. Hardware is simple, just a CP5611 card in the PC and that part is done. But now we need to communicate several bits/variables (let's say a DB) of the CPU with the visual basic program.

I know there are scada packadges like WInCC and FIX; but it's something I wanna test, because we have such a system. But I don't understand how it communicates with eachother.

I think it's with a sertain driver, called OPC or something. Is there anybody who could give me some tips how to start, how it works ?


Best Regards

Combo

We have a bag packing system controlled by an S7-316 PLC. For data collection, this is connected via the MPI connection- MPI/RS232 converter- PC. The PC has a custom Visual Basic program which looks for a particular bit at the PLC having a value 1 (this is set by the PLC after a bag is filled and various fill parameters are transferred to a DB), then transfers the contents of the datablock to an Access database within the PC, then resets the bit. When we first installed this we also looked at a Profibus connection which from memory, required a CP5611 card installed at the PC and S7 Comm's driver software at the PC, and some OPC server software to transfer the data to an Access database or whatever.
Hope that's of some interest.

I understand till know

I'm gonna test something. We have something that runs allready on this concept, is it possible for us to do the same on an other PC; I would take the drivers from the PC that runs allready on this concept ...

If having troubles, can you help a bit, because I didn't ever tried somehting with scada systems, only HMI.

Best regards,

Gerry