Using XL with a DDE Topic to get PLC Data

Hi Guys,
This is my first post so not sure what response I will get.

I regularly use Excel to retrieve data from PLC's at work as it is quicker than getting IT to set something up.

My problem is that we are starting to use AOI's more and more and I cannot get to the data inside the AOI.
I know you could change the AOI so the data is output to view, but this a very large scale factory and to do this would be extremely time consuming.

Has anyone ever done this before ?

As an example below this would read from the Stn0085.IO_NUM in the controller tags
=rslinx|FIFO_034_2_5!Stn0085.IO_NUM

Any help much appreciated

Isn't that the benefit if AOIs... modify once, changes propagate to all instances? That's how it works in the Schneider world anyway.

Same in The Rockwell world

Hi
Yes it is the same just change it the once.

This is in full production facility with 50+ PLC's

Every small change requires multiple meetings, signatures etc.

So not an easy task

You'll need to make sure the tags within the AOI are set for external read access. What firmware version are you using? Rockwell changed up some things in v21+ which caused similar issues with communication drivers from other vendors. Given you are using RSLinx it should be OK, but you may need to be sure you have a recent version of RSLinx.

If you can't get to the AOI elements because their external access is set to "None" - well, that's not an AOI-specific problem, you can set any or all tags - AOI-scoped, program-scoped, or controller-scoped - to have no external access if you so desire.

IMO, there are not very many good reasons for doing this, unless spending all day going to meetings and getting signatures is your idea of a good time.

If the tags you want to access are not set to allow remote access, there's no way to get them with excel or anything else, other than changing them to read or read/write access, which means a download.

XL DDE accesS to AOI

Hi Guys,
Thank you for your suggestions.
I don't think I was very clear on the previous post.
It is not an external access issue to the parameters associated with the AOI.
It is to read the state of the local tags used within the AOI.
This is on RSLogix version 20.01 and I cannot see any way of altering these.

Let me know if you have any ideas.

Thanks
John

Local parameters are still externally accessible if you set them to be so - but by default, they are set to no external access.

You can't change this from within the AOI definition dialog (as far as I know). To change them, go to Controller Tags, and in the scope, click the "+" beside "Add-On Instructions", and select the relevant AOI. All parameters - inputs, outputs, inout and local - are shown here in alphabetical order, and the external access can be set from here.

Once again, it will require a download to do this.