PLC recipe storage

Jimbojones

Member
Join Date
Mar 2015
Location
NC
Posts
15
I'm looking for some advice on recipe backup on the AB CompactLogix line.

I store my recipes in a UDT array of size 50. The UDT is relatively large in size - 8300 bytes.

What I need is a way to:
-Backup the array to files (timestamped, preferably)
-Backups triggered periodically and by a button press
-Revert from a file back into the UDT array

Unfortunately, it is too late to change the recipe architecture (storage on a PLC). I know there are other options out there - and maybe they were better (using FTME recipe editor).

Bottomline is the customer will ultimately want to make backups of the recipes. Two options came to mind:

Option 1
-Provide a copy of Studio5000 Service Edition to allow the customer to connect a laptop and upload tag values per their backup schedule.

Problem is there is a cost associated with this software.

Option 2
-Integrate the CompactFlash sample code to store recipes to the SD Card (I assume the code would work with a SD card).

Problem with this is there appears to be no easy way to manage the backup file directory structure. For instance, I cannot (easily, at least) pull up a file listing on the HMI. It looks like I would need to use static filenames. Then the customer would need to remove the SD card whenever they wanted to bring the files over to a NAS.

Is there a third option I'm missing ? Just looking for advice on what others have experienced.

Thank you,
John
 
Third option:
Get some PC, load up AdvancedHMI on it, and use some VBA in that to periodically read out each recipe and dump it into a human interpretable format such as CSV or Excel.
Extra credit for also allowing modifications to be made in Excel, and dumped back to the PLC.
 
DDE would probably work in this case as well.

Jimbojones,

Do you have experience with VBA in Excel? If so, check out the DDE functions available there. You can use those to read/write direct from a terminal that has RSLinx on it to the processor. It's a fairly old protocol (predates OPC) but it works surprisingly well and it's built right in to Excel and RSLinx so no need to add libraries to your program.

If you search for DDE in this forum, you should come up with a bunch of posts on how to do it.

-radfahrer
 

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