On Line Monitoring

Hello all.
I am fairly new to the programming world. I have been asked by a customer if it is possible to monitor some of their machines over the internet.

They are using AB's PLC 5/40 in some machines, and Siemens s7-300.

What is the easiest way of going about this

Sure it can be done, it's just matter of some time and price

over internet - mean just using tcp/ip as transfer protocol or the web based view ? Depend on "How 'realtime' the monitoring should be?" "How big that project is"

You can surely get solution from both mentioned companies, but maybe it would be better to use 3rd party software and their drivers for both systems. (i'm using visualisation system which is capable to run as web server as well to distribute data - maybe you need something similar)

There are two ways to do it:

1. Have a local HMI software act as a web-server. The web-server then displays the HMI information on the www. Most HMI softwares these days has web-server functionality built-in or as an option.

2. If the PLC's are on ethernet, then they can be accessed by any software that can connect to it via ethernet. To connect from an external network probably involves several steps. I believe there must be routers at both ends, and the firewalls that are common these days must be setup to pass outsiders though to the PLCs.
I havent tried it myself, but I would be interested in it too.

5/40s don't have ethernet support (5/40e does) and no Web server support so you're stuck with JerperMP's #1 solution

OR

you can get a Allen Bradley 1785-ENET Ethernet Interface module which has web server capability. You'll need the I/O slot next to the controller available and cable 1785-TC02 or TC15. There is more info available at the AB website.