OPC, VB, S7 and ACCESS ???

Hi,

We have 31 textile-machines. And all of them have an S7-200 PLC. This is for data-captation, to see if a machines are running or not, so they give 1 bit, that's all.

On a PC wich has a CP5611 profibus card, there is OPC installed + a vb application where you can see 31 shapes. A shape is green when machine runs and red when it's stoppen, really that simple.

I have only a basic knowledge of VB, I can program stuff like a running light, traffic light, calculations, really the basic...

So,

What the manager wants now is:

He wants to be able to see how many stops there were.

Example: he arrives @ offices and can see in a table all the stops of all machines + the times included. Or you have to click on the machine to see this...

Maybe this is something we can do:

You click on a machine, and you can see all the stops of the last 24 hours... there you don't need a database for...



But maybe someone has a database example that is 10 times better ?

I don't know which OPC server you use, but the latest version of Kepware KEPServer includes an additional utility called DataLogger plug-in (requires a separate license, approx. $900 worth).

It can be configured to automatically log each OPC tag (machine X running) into an ODBC database (Access, SQL Server, Oracle... whatever) any time the tag value changes (machine runs - machine stops). Including the timestamps. All this is done without any VB or any other custom code.

Once the historical data is in a database - it's all yours. Retreive it with VB app, Access project, import it with MS Excel... whatever you want to do with it.

My advice is to remove the VB application. Get a real SCADA-system like WinCC and start to build the application there. In WinCC you will be able to build controlpictures with trends and alarms. You will have a full Siemens solution and that is good when you have problems in the future and gonna need support. Remember always to have a backup of the PC-application, you must be prepared for a harddisk crash.

Combo,


I've never worked with an S7 PLC before but the OPC, VB, Access thing I've done a million times(or it seems so.)

You already have a functioning OPC application, so updating it shouldn't be too bad.

What version of VB is the current app written in? VB6? .net?

We should be able to help you through this.

Rich

A cheap solution maybe to use SQL Server Express Edition(Free)to log the info. You can then write some VB code to log the time/date and machine into a table. You could also then use Reporting Services (also free) to view the data in internet explorer.
Microsoft has some excellent video tutorials on how to use SQL SEE. There are also some tutorials on how you can use VB to work with SQL Server. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/express/aa718391.aspx