AB DL40 replacment

Hi All,
I HAVE to replace a bunch of DL40’s in my plant, it’s long overdue.
Rockwell doesn’t seem to have a small 4 line message display similar to the DL40. There are about a dozen DL40’s to replace.

My first question is..Does anyone know of an alternate product which can connect to PLC-5’s via RIO or Ethernet via a CL gateway ?

I have written a small app with VB6 to emulate a DL40 and connect to the PLC via RSLinx with DDE. It’s not the best way to go but my test app has worked faultlessly for a couple of months. I’m considering using a cheap panel PC with a VB6 or VB 2008 app.

Next question is... should I take the home brew app route, what would be the best product to connect to the PLC’s, like Kepware, Matrikon, etc and use OPC.

The last option could be a super cheap SCADA package to run on a cheap panel PC. All it would do is display 4x lines of text with a couple of variables embedded and use a large font similar to LED message displays. Does such a basic SCADA package exist ??
Thanks
Malcolm Moorhouse
Johannesburg, South Africa

Malcolmt said:

Hi All,
I HAVE to replace a bunch of DL40’s in my plant, it’s long overdue.
Rockwell doesn’t seem to have a small 4 line message display similar to the DL40. There are about a dozen DL40’s to replace.

My first question is..Does anyone know of an alternate product

Click to expand...

Have you looked at these:
http://www.vorne.com/message-displays-2100ser.htm

Yep, have seen these but didnt see any direct comms to our PLC-5's.
is there something I missed ?