Monitor PLC's for alarms

I have a series of Micrologix 1400 PLC's that are connected to our corporate network via VPN so I can access them all as if they were locally connected to our network.
The PLC's will have a register value set to a certain value if an alarm condition is present.

I want to be able to monitor the PLC's periodically (maybe every 15 minutes) and check if the Register value is in alarm state.

What is the best way to do this?
I thought that I may be able to write a small utility that contacts the PLC's and reads the register value to check if alarm is on but I am not sure how to do this.
I understand there is some sort of RSLinx SDK that might provide the means to do this? If so, is there sample code or documentation that shows how to establish a connection and read a registry value?

Maybe there is a better way to accomplish what I want to do?

Any comments or ideas would be greatly appreciated as I am a relative newbie to this stuff.

Paul

What's your budget ?

More to the point, what do you want to have happen in the event of an alarm ?

You might just want to have an indicator appear in a VB form, or on an Excel spreadsheet.

Or you might want to log the event to an SQL database.

Or you might want to send an e-mail or text message to notify you of the event.

There are both big and small HMI software products to do this sort of thing. Some are hardware devices, others pure PC software.

If somebody told me "you have an hour to give me a dashboard showing the fault status of a bunch of MicroLogix 1400 controllers", I would get out my VMWare image of Inductive Automation's Ignition software and quickly build a server and some pages.

Others would get out Microsoft Excel and install an OPC/DDE client, or download AdvancedHMI (a Forum favorite), or grab a Red Lion DataStation Plus off the shelf (another Forum favorite).

Tell us more about your application and what software and hardware you have access to, and I'm sure folks will help you narrow your search.

Welcome to the Forum !

I currently get all the data via a custom VB application that connects to the PanelView associated to the PLC. Then I download the Datafiles that are generated by the PanelView program containing the PLC register data. The data is imported into a master SQL server database that has a dashboard front end for the customers or engineers to view. My email alerts system is based on the SQL database and the problem is that the entire process only happens every 30 minutes or so. I want to keep this process in place but have a different process to just grab the alarm register from the PLC more frequently.

I am a windows programmer (Visual studio 2010 typically), so I thought I might write a custom application that connects to each PLC in turn and just grab the alarm register values and store them in the SQL database. Once the data is in the SQL database the standard Email alert system takes over and and sends emails out as needed.

Paul

I have a series of Micrologix 1400 PLC's that are connected to our corporate network via VPN so I can access them all as if they were locally connected to our network.

Click to expand...

Bad mistake. PLCs can be infiltrated with viruses and worse from your corporate network. It is not even safe to use common flash drives. See the "Stuxnet" worm. Letting the corporate suits play around with numbers is one thing. Letting some outsider have control of dangerous equipment is an entirely different ball game. Yes I know you have protection, but the best protection is no connection.

Hi all, I have a question that I could not find an answer for after searching for the last while - has someone a way to datalog with AdvancedHMI to Excel or a csv file?

I have a ML1100 for my home and I wanted to log the analog inputs every scan that the PLC does (monitoring temperatures and the home's current draw). For the current draw portion, I want it to be at least 120 data points per second. The internal datalogger isn't what I need because I want it to log the points on a day-to-day basis (new day, new Excel or csv file).

Ideally, I don't wish to spend money on a solution (the ML1100 was replaced and was going to be tossed, so I grabbed it). If someone could either guide me to a free solution with AdvancedHMI (free in the sense that I could program it with limited knowledge of VB) or a reasonably priced solution, that would be much appreciated.

Paul,

So you have more information pertaining to some of the items mentioned in Ken's post...

You will likely require an OPC server that will enable the connection of your AB PLCs to the database you want to send data to in order to track that information. Below are several links to information on our web site relating to KepserverEX.

You will first require the AB Server Suite that will have the protocol you require for your AB controllers. Maunals, as well as downloading the latest version of KepserverEX are available through this link:

http://www.eternity-sales.com/Kepware/kepwaredownloads.htm


If you decide on going to an SQL you would need the ODBC suite.

http://www.eternity-sales.com/Kepware/ODBC_Client_Driver_OPC_Server.htm

In addition, you would require either LinkMaster or Advanced Tags to connect the tags of the different protocols.

http://www.eternity-sales.com/kepware/advancedtag.htm
http://www.eternity-sales.com/Kepware/linkmaster.htm

There is also the Alarms and Events plug-in that would provide additional capabilities.

http://www.eternity-sales.com/kepware/alarm_and_event_option.htm

Disclosure...ESI is a Kepware distributor.

I use a service called Cosm for this kind of thing. https://cosm.com/ You can push data or you can get cosm to pull.

Got it

I managed to hack together a simple VB application that does what I want.
I created a OPC Topic on the system with RSLinx (OPC Server)
Then I used that topic to grab the registry values.

Simple project is attached for anyone that needs a starting point for doing the same thing.

Paul