Comms from PLC5,SLC,S5,S7,Omron to PC

I've just been given the 'challenging' job of coming up with a way to collate data from the following list of PLC's on to one PC :

AB : PLC5's & SLC5/0x's on Ethernet, DH+ & DH485
Siemens : S5 & S7 on Profibus
Omron Sysmac C200H serial comms

plus misc. 'boxes' on serial.

I've got no details on which database is going to be using all this data, but I assume it will be something standard like SQL.

I've just been looking at an Applicom card which claims it can handle multiple ethernet & serial comms, but I was wondering if anyone out there had implemented anything along these lines before, or if you can spot any potential pitfalls.

Many thanks

Steve

Not sure,
Have a look at SCADA or CITECT systems as a PC frontend.

At the end of the day all the above mentioned PLC's will I/F with a PC.
The Above packages have drivers for the above PLC's.

My only suggestion is to maybe standardise to 1 comms bus.
(I think this is possible) - I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

Take a look at National Instruments Lookout. We us it to talk to all manor of PLC's with various protocols and hardware types even different protocols from one port such as DH+ and PPI from one serial port.....granted there is some hardware magic that we had to invent for that but it can be done.

You could also turn to KEPWare (or others in the same field), which delivers a DDE driver for different types of PLC's. If you're using SCADA packages like Outlook or Citect you would have to pay according to the numer of data items you need to collect. Could be a costly issue!

Kind regards

Jean Pierre Vandecandelaere

Yes, the Kepware route is looking quite attractive at the moment.

I've been told there's a User Defined Protocol which can be configured for serial devices not already covered by any kepware servers. Most of the serial devices I'm looking at use simple ASCII protocols using escape sequences.

Anybody out there used this with any success?

Citect comes with drivers fro most PLC's. I understand that the AB mindset is to have Citect charge a licence fee for many of the AB drivers. Just about all other drivers are free with the package.

You can check CIMPILICITY HMI/SCADA of GE Fanuc Automation. These software support multiple protocol of different PLC on a single PC. Allmost PLC protocol are bundled on the software, but some are optional. you buy separately

Although we aren't using it, we have looked into using Trend Historian from: Canary Labs It looks like it would be cheaper than running a full blown SCADA system if the only thing you need to do is collect data. You can connect to the sources using OPC.

I am currently using KEPServerEX with GE CCM drivers using ethernet encapsulation and AB ethernet drivers. They both work very well. I believe Kepware offers drivers for all of the plc's that you mentioned but the serial drivers don't support ethernet encapsulation. You could consider connecting your serial devices to your pc via your ethernet by using device servers and setting up what is referred to as a "serial tunnel". I have not tried this myself but in theory the ethernet connection is supposed to be transparent to your pc comm ports and the devices that they are communicating with. You can find more about device servers and serial tunneling at www.lantronix.com. RSView32 would give you direct connectivity to your Allen-Bradley Plc's and since it supports OPC as well it can be used to gather data from all of your other devices using an OPC server such as KEPServer. Good Luck!