Teamviewer + Rockwell Dongle

JZerb · Jan 20, 2019

So say i have someone in the field with Rockwell software installed on their laptop, but their 7 day grace period since the dongle was last plugged in has lapsed, what can i do?

James Mcquade · Jan 21, 2019

Have they connected the dongle back into the laptop and tried to restart the program?

If you are the one with the dongle and they have the laptop in another state for example, they will need to get the software and install the license key or buy a dongle and put the license on the dongle.

if I am incorrect, someone please correct me.
james

What is teamviewer?

JohnCalderwood · Jan 21, 2019

What is teamviewer?

https://www.teamviewer.com/en/

James, Teamviewer is remote support/access software - probably about the only one used by external companies that can access my IT PC without any grief.....

cjd1965 · Jan 21, 2019

you my be better to have a licence server at you company and let the field tech remote in via vpn to get the licence and then they can disconnect from server and revert back to grace period

Saffa · Jan 21, 2019

I don't use this because we very rarely use Rockwell these days but one of our less frequent clients has an activation server on their network. As long as the laptop can see it via VPN, then it renews the licence. That might be something you could implement? I believe the grace period still applies if you need to work offline.

Geospark · Jan 21, 2019

JZerb said:
So say i have someone in the field with Rockwell software installed on their laptop, but their 7 day grace period since the dongle was last plugged in has lapsed, what can i do?

If you are really stuck then you could perform a "Rehost" of the licence Activation(s) to remove the association with the hardware Host ID of the USB Dongle and Rehost it with say the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) of their workstation laptop to act as the new Host ID.

Later, back at base, you "should" be able to perform another Rehost yourselves to change the Host ID back to the USB Dongle. I say "should" because you can only perform 3 x Rehosts in 12 months for a product licence. If this were the case, then you can contact Rockwell and ask them to do it or allow it. It's usually not a big issue.

For future remote software use - issue a licence (or this licence) that is tied to a USB Dongle for this specific purpose and make sure that the travelling programmer brings the USB Dongle with them. Or, as mentioned, setup a licence on a computer acting as a Server which may be remotely accessed by the programmer so that they may remote in and borrow the licence from the Server computer. You must make sure a licence is available at the time they remote in. If others happened to be using the licence at the time it will not be available. Which ever method you might choose to use, this is why I say to dedicate a licence for this purpose so it should always be available to travellers. Anyone can still use the licence at base when no one is travelling.

Personally, I prefer to have a USB Dongle with me as option 1 as there is less messing around with remoting in to the Server from some locations. Option 2, if say the USB Dongle was lost/stolen/forgotten, is to fall back to remoting in to the Server. I also use TeamViewer (v12 at present). I use it for a number of local and remote services and it is very reliable.

Going into the field with only a Grace Period Activation is not really professional, in my opinion.

Regards,
George

Aabeck · Jan 21, 2019

Geospark said:
Going into the field with only a Grace Period Activation is not really professional, in my opinion.

Also, it was brought up on this forum a couple of years ago, RSL5K will not do any firmware updates during a grace period. Someone left his USB dongle and went on the road with his laptop, and he wanted to do an update.

sbaum · Jan 21, 2019

This is only an idea and not something I have tested.

USB Network gate software by Eltima software allows you to connect to USB devices on a remote computer. I frequently use this to communicate with USB connected PLCs over a VPN.

May be worth a try over Teamviewer VPN.

JZerb · Jan 21, 2019

Geospark said:
If you are really stuck then you could perform a "Rehost" of the licence Activation(s) to remove the association with the hardware Host ID of the USB Dongle and Rehost it with say the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) of their workstation laptop to act as the new Host ID.

Later, back at base, you "should" be able to perform another Rehost yourselves to change the Host ID back to the USB Dongle. I say "should" because you can only perform 3 x Rehosts in 12 months for a product licence. If this were the case, then you can contact Rockwell and ask them to do it or allow it. It's usually not a big issue.

For future remote software use - issue a licence (or this licence) that is tied to a USB Dongle for this specific purpose and make sure that the travelling programmer brings the USB Dongle with them. Or, as mentioned, setup a licence on a computer acting as a Server which may be remotely accessed by the programmer so that they may remote in and borrow the licence from the Server computer. You must make sure a licence is available at the time they remote in. If others happened to be using the licence at the time it will not be available. Which ever method you might choose to use, this is why I say to dedicate a licence for this purpose so it should always be available to travellers. Anyone can still use the licence at base when no one is travelling.

Personally, I prefer to have a USB Dongle with me as option 1 as there is less messing around with remoting in to the Server from some locations. Option 2, if say the USB Dongle was lost/stolen/forgotten, is to fall back to remoting in to the Server. I also use TeamViewer (v12 at present). I use it for a number of local and remote services and it is very reliable.

Going into the field with only a Grace Period Activation is not really professional, in my opinion.

Regards,
George

I completely agree with the USB dongle being taken into the field by the tech, the issue here is that i AM the tech and usually the one in the field it just so happened that i was booked to be elsewhere, with the USB dongle in my bag lol, then someone else with minor laptop skills was sent to another site.

I am going to try and install the VPN driver on teamviewer and then point the field laptop FT activation manager to look at my laptop, which ill attach the USB dongle to, to get the license file. if that doesnt work, rockwell is normally very good with helping out in these matters with ideas and/or just giving you a temp activation code for the software.

if the Teamviewer VPN works ill be sure to share.

Geospark · Jan 21, 2019

JZerb said:
I completely agree with the USB dongle being taken into the field by the tech, the issue here is that i AM the tech and usually the one in the field it just so happened that i was booked to be elsewhere, with the USB dongle in my bag lol, then someone else with minor laptop skills was sent to another site.

I am going to try and install the VPN driver on teamviewer and then point the field laptop FT activation manager to look at my laptop, which ill attach the USB dongle to, to get the license file. if that doesnt work, rockwell is normally very good with helping out in these matters with ideas and/or just giving you a temp activation code for the software.

if the TeamViewer VPN works ill be sure to share.

I was going to say if you are likely to ever have more than one programmer in the field at once then you could have a USB Dongle each, but the better method is to remote back to a Server, which of course can be just your laptop or any machine running FactoryTalk Activation Manager. There might be some stumbling blocks trying this if the user machine and the Server machine are not using the same versions of FTAM. So that is just a forewarning. The only other gotcha there is if two are remoting in at the same time then they would need a licence each from the Server.

TeamViewer does work for this so hopefully you can get it going.

Also, just to point out, when you remote in to the Server, it's not the Activation licence file you are looking for as such. That file is usually already present on the machine looking to Activate and use the software. What the remote workstation is looking for is the required hardware Host ID which unlocks the licence file, which happens to be the USB Dongle in this case.

Good luck!

Regards,
George

Aabeck · Jan 21, 2019

I have to add this:

NOTE TO ALL PLC MAKERS:

The use of remote desktop sessions in this industry is increasing, and will continue to increase. Please have your engineers start working on a way for a licensed installation of your software to be able to somehow activate a [remote/borrowed/???] license so we can get online with the PLC and troubleshoot the operation or make remote updates.

Geospark · Jan 21, 2019

Aabeck said:
I have to add this:

NOTE TO ALL PLC MAKERS:

The use of remote desktop sessions in this industry is increasing, and will continue to increase. Please have your engineers start working on a way for a licensed installation of your software to be able to somehow activate a [remote/borrowed/???] license so we can get online with the PLC and troubleshoot the operation or make remote updates.

Just to point out that Rockwell Automation's FactoryTalk Activation Manager fully supports the use of VPN connections to access Server based licensing solutions. However, it is not Rockwell's responsibility to ensure that a VPN connection is implemented correctly, or at all. Having said that, they do provide good practice guidelines in attempting to ensure a good connection can be established via LAN/WAN/VPN remote connections.

This technote outlines the basics and the version compatibility I mentioned...

612825 - Managing Remote FactoryTalk Activation Manager Servers
Access Level: Everyone

This technote is linked at the bottom of that first one and goes into greater detail on configuring and troubleshooting connections within advanced network environments...

35708 - FactoryTalk Activations in advanced network environments
Access Level: Everyone

Regards,
George

Ken Roach · Jan 21, 2019

My company has an OEM Toolkit, so we use a License Server running on one of our headquarters file server computers. If I can connect over VPN to my office (which I need to do daily for timesheet and archives), then I can perform a "Borrow" to activate my RA software.

Usually I remember to do an Activation Borrow before I leave. And usually I don't stay longer than my Activation Borrow was set to last.

But in JZerb's case, the options are

1. Get the dongle physically to the person in the field
2. Connect the dongle virtually to the field computer (Eltima FlexiHub)
3. Ask RA for a temporary activation or re-host to the computer in the field.

We have enterprise TeamViewer subscriptions and I use Eltima FlexiHub to connect USB dongles for other software to computers in the field. Both are worth the price.

Geospark · Jan 21, 2019

This "Eltima" has me intrigued now, having been mentioned twice? I shall endeavor to read up on them tomorrow, given the chance.

JZerb · Feb 7, 2019

Ken Roach said:
My company has an OEM Toolkit, so we use a License Server running on one of our headquarters file server computers. If I can connect over VPN to my office (which I need to do daily for timesheet and archives), then I can perform a "Borrow" to activate my RA software.

Usually I remember to do an Activation Borrow before I leave. And usually I don't stay longer than my Activation Borrow was set to last.

But in JZerb's case, the options are

1. Get the dongle physically to the person in the field
2. Connect the dongle virtually to the field computer (Eltima FlexiHub)
3. Ask RA for a temporary activation or re-host to the computer in the field.

We have enterprise TeamViewer subscriptions and I use Eltima FlexiHub to connect USB dongles for other software to computers in the field. Both are worth the price.

I was able to successfully do this today.

I installed FTActivation Manager on my local machine. I started a Teamvieweer session on the field laptop. I added a new search activation path on the field laptop 27000@(Computer-Name) , refreshed the server, refreshed activations, and everything worked. just thought it was some good info to share. I did setup the VPN in Teamviewer, but to be honest i didnt even use it and the above method worked just fine.

Teamviewer + Rockwell Dongle

JZerb

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James Mcquade

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