Data Mining of PLC5

Join Date
Jul 2008
Location
Oklahoma
Posts
5
Myself and a Collegue are working on acquiring data from many PLC's and logging the data. Lets just say we want to talk to 20 processors and pull data from each about every minute and a half. Then there is other data we want at 5 sec. intervals, and yet more data pulled at specific times, based on certain inputs or bits.

Now, I know that there is currently software out there to handle this, yet the price is a little steep. So, we have come up with ONE method. A plc5 has it's own "WEB PAGE" and we are coding an application in VB to pull that data and store in a CSV file. If successful, then great. So far, it's looking good, just not sure if I fully want to invest my time on this train of thought. SO, I am finally getting to my question. Is there a way, excluding RSLinx, to communicate with a PLC and explore the data contained within? It would be more efficient to be able to monitor the RAW data instead of constantly reading and refreshing an HTML document. Any thoughts? I'm in GREAT need.

Email is [email protected] or just reply on forum.

Thank you in advance.
 
You can program the PLC serial port to give you the data at the specified conditions you want. AB website had a few examples. It will be a lot easier than polling from outside. There are many DF1 drivers including one for the web. Use a search engine and I think there is a company on the West Coast that will sell you one for a few hundred.
 
I have used the Squirting data from the Serial Port method very successfully but you will need to do Serial to Ethernet conversion. It was easy for me as an embedded PLC was included in the machine so I had 8 Serial ports to play with and all in close proximity to the PLCs.

I don't know the answer to this because I don't know enough about Ethernet, can you get a PLC to squirt data straight out of an Ethernet port to another IP address?

Bryan
 
Chris.

If you are logging data from 20 processors at 5 second intervals then a CSV file is going to get very big very quickly. I would seriously consider using an industrial strength database for this. SQL Server for a single PC is a free download from Microsoft so cost should not be an issue. Ethernet would be the way to go if the processors support it and developing a driver is not trivial but you would only need to do it once and you would not necessarily have to include the full command set. I am sure this could be done with VB even if it would not be the most efficient solution.
Andybr
 
The magic word here is "OPC server"; search the forum and you will find a lot on the topic. Check www.kepware.com for product called KEPServer; download their demo: it is fully functional with a lot of various PLC drivers, the only limitation being it would run for 2 hours then would have to be restarted. Comes with several VB, VB.NET and C sample programs.There are also packages that take a step further and provide features to link a PLC (quite often via an OPC server, btw) and a database storage with little or no custom coding. Search the forum for "FactorySQL", for example. The latest revisions of KEPServer now come with optional (i.e. a separate license required) Datalogger plug-in which allows to do some fairly simple things of the sort.
 
Hi Chris:

Yes, the magic word here is OPC server and rslinx is the right one, I collect data from 17 plc´s at the same time (slc´s, contrologix, micrologix and compactlogix), I use excel as an OPC client, inside excel there is an application called XLreporter, you can try it free from www.sytech.com, your reports in excel can be updated by time elapsed, by event etc.
All you have to do is create a topic in rslinx and from within excel you select the topic and the tag you want to get data from.
Excel files are created any way you want, daily, by shift, by event etc.
There other methods like a SQL database but they are more expensive.
 
KepServer will likely outperform RSLinx. Rockwell actually bundles the product with some of their own. Matrikon makes a quality OPC server as well. No offense, but all of them will likely outperform a VB app that's thrown together by someone asking the types of questions that you are.

Ethernet's probably a better bet, but serial works too - that connection will likely become your bottleneck.

A product like FactorySQL would be the ideal way to go for a datalogging application. The geek in me enjoys custom programming where it makes sense, but this isn't one of those cases. For a high performance application you probably don't want to start from scratch, particularly in dealing with the threading, scheduling of concurrent access, etc. It'll cost you more in time to write such application unless you have the most basic of requirements (logging data on 20 PLCs probably exceeding that threshold).

chris_d_sanders said:
OK, thank you. I am looking into that. You dont have any problems with RSLinx bogging down from so much traffic?
 
OK...... successfully installed KepServerEX and FactorySQL and Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Was able to add a device to Kep and a tag or two. Then was able to look at that tag through FactorySQL. Now the question is HOW DO I WANT TO INTERACT AND DISPLAY the data. Do I use FactoryPMI? or does anyone know of a way to View the data through lets say.... Internet explorer from an HTML format.


If I'm at my boss's desk, I want to be able to just type in a URL in the address bar and navigate to a page to look at.... DOWN TIME. I would love to trend the data for different time frames.. to compare. My problem is how do I do the EQUIVALENT of a trend in an HTML environment?
 
FactoryPMI is a Java based HMI - so you'll be able to pull up the entire application on your bosses computer via a web browser. Videos at the link below should show you how to begin.

If you really want to use HTML in IE in a web browser then you'll have to dabble in server side scripting languages. IE, PHP or ASP interacting with the SQL database - dynamically spitting out web pages. Much easier (and better for many reasons) to use a product like FactoryPMI.

http://www.inductiveautomation.com/support/videos/
 
To all who use KEPServerEx, FactorySQL and FactoryPMI:

I have been dabbling with FactorySQL/PMI for about a week now. I am curious if any of you use Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for you database. Also, what sort of hardware setup have you found to be the best. I'm also curious about Alarms. I'm not 100% sure how they are "Alerting" and saving to the database since their alerts are in the PMI environment. Have any of you logged alarms and duration of alarms? If so, could you explain to me how YOU do it.

Thank you in advance.
-Chris
 
I've used FactorySQL/PMI with SQL Server 2005. There aren't any special hardware requirements for your typical setup. Here are the Full Inductive Automation Benchmark or a summary for an estimate on performance metrics. Typically, a PC or entry level server should work fine. As your project grows, it often makes sense to put the SQL database on a dedicated server.

Alerting refers to values exceeding alert ranges (setpoint values, etc). The action taken is logging to the SQL database and/or sending an email (often received as a text message/page). In all cases FactorySQL is performing the task. I think you're referring to setting alerts on SQLTags, where you configure that through FactoryPMI - the "alerting" is still done with FactorySQL.

You determine the duration of alarms by using alarm and alarm clear conditions, which can be set to log as separate events.

chris_d_sanders said:
To all who use KEPServerEx, FactorySQL and FactoryPMI:

I have been dabbling with FactorySQL/PMI for about a week now. I am curious if any of you use Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for you database. Also, what sort of hardware setup have you found to be the best. I'm also curious about Alarms. I'm not 100% sure how they are "Alerting" and saving to the database since their alerts are in the PMI environment. Have any of you logged alarms and duration of alarms? If so, could you explain to me how YOU do it.

Thank you in advance.
-Chris
 
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