Dongle Activation Question

Hey guys,

Our facility has RS software activations for various products scattered troughout our assembly lines and office computers. I want to rehost the activations to dongles so I can use all of our RS software on my office computer. The problem is that a few of our computers run RS software 24/7. will removing the activation on thoughs computers and placing them on a dongle cause problems? Is the activation only needed when starting software up and/or reprogramming the processors, or would the dongle need to be plugged into the computer during the 24/7 operation.

The computers run 24/7 becaues they are used like a "pannelview" operation. I believe the software that interfaces with the PLC is RSview or something similar...

Thanks, Cory

I think that what you are asking circumvents the licensing agreement for your Rockwell software. If you have to run two copies at the same time on two different computers then you need to buy two licenses. No one here will help you with illegal copies of software.

Technically, you do not place anything on the RSView dongle. The dongle is simply a device that has a unique serial number ID. Nothing gets stored on it, it has no memory that can be written to. The dongle activation does not work the same way the old floppy disk activations worked.

If the software is only running in a PanelView-like configuration, it sounds like you should have RSView runtime but are using a full-blown version instead. If this is the case and all you want on the floor is an HMI application, you might want to consider using a third-party HMI software for your HMI and moving the Rockwell software to your office PC. These third-party softwares can be pretty inexpensive - especially compared the AB prices. Take a look at PeakHMI, for example. I have tested it with a MicroLogix 1000 via DF1 and it works well - doesn't need any OPC drivers with the MicroLogix, either.

Steve

Alaric - Thank you for your response, but you did not understand my question. In addition, I understand the point of an activation and the legality of them. The computer running our machine operates under a runtime app (thanks Steve) and there for does not need the activation to be node locked at that station. Putting the activation on my computer is perfectly legal, otherwise there would be no such Activation transfer Tool.

Steve – thanks again.

I see a handful of problems with this approach:

1. If the activation is an older-style EVRSI activation it cannot be transferred while it's in use. RSView32 probably uses this type of activation, and RSView ME/SE used it until version 5.

2. If the activation is a new style FactoryTalk activation it gets checked periodically during runtime. I'm not totally certain about this but I know that I see license warnings (Grace Period warnings, in fact) when the link between my development virtual machine and my host (that holds the Activations) is lost.

But the software that doesn't run 24/7 could benefit from being licensed to a dongle. You could have local copies of tools like FTView Studio or RSLogix 5000 loaded on engineering workstations in remote parts of the plant, and just activate them by walking out there with the dongle. Since you don't run those software packages often, you don't need them to be activated all the time.

Step 1 is to go ahead and do an inventory of the serial numbers and license types scattered out there in the facility.