Help : PC monitoring (reading/writing) DL205 via ECOM

Hi,

I am studying in mechanical engineering and i would like to do the following....

I have couple of PLCs (DL205) with ECOM 10BASE-T boards on the network. Here is the summary of what i want the Java program to be able to do...

1- PC writes (sets) Cxxxx to 1 every loop on every online PLC.
2- PC reads every PLC value Cyyyy (which is the same value for every PLC).
3-a) if PC reads Cyyyy = 0 , PC does nothing
3-b) if PC reads Cyyyy = 1 , PC reads Vzzzzzz.

At that point , Vzzz will be a recipe name, example : Broadway .

The PC now has to look in a certain folder for a txt file called Broadway. In that txt file, there will be a list of "C" and "V" addresses with values to upload to the PLC memory. The PC will have to write all theses values to the PLC memory. Once again, all via ECOM.

I am not asking for anyone to do everything and sent it to me, i also doubt anyone would... but i want to learn how to do this. I am relatively good with PLC programming and scripts, but i have no clue regarding Java.

Thanks for your time and i would really appreciate any of your help!

To help get the boat underway so to speak...

You are going to need a communications driver. Either OPC or using the HOST Engineering SDK. OPC Servers cost money, the SDK is free, but will take more of a time commitment on your part to understand it.

Either should take care of the really tough part, talking to the PLC. The rest is going to be data handling and it will be dependant on the method you choose to talk to the PLC.

Thanks for the reply,

I've played with the utilities they both offer, thanks for your links, but since i'll have to build my own utility, i would really like to have an hint on how to start writing the java code using OPC or SDK libraries to make my own app. Both allow me to write and read values from the PLC, but i want all that to be automated...

Maybe i am wrong and there is something i'm missing here.. Further help is very welcome!

Thanks

Anyone??

Here is an informal summary of the program i am building... If you guys could only explain what is the way to read / write data to the PLC i'd be all set!


Thanks