InTouch 10.1 (Standalone): View Live Tag Data?

[SoftwareJanitor]

Is there any way to view live tag data with InTouch 10.1? I know you can do it with Archestra IDE with the "watch" window, but I don't see a way with this particular Standalone app.

I'd like to watch some tag values in some scripts.

Also don't see any RSLinx - probably because this app is not talking to any Rockwell PLC ... it's a set of MTL Controllers.

I see something called "Universal Server" (?) on this machine - and it's set up to connect to this computer, but I don't see any way to view data in it.

 

[NetNathan]

Do you have a development license?
Who makes the Universal Server? Are you sure it is used to communicate between Intouch and the devices?

 

[robertmee]

Not sure I follow the question. You can of course view any tag value...just create a numerical analog display for it. If you're talking about filling in a chart during realtime to see any tag you want, I don't believe that exists. You could use a runtime trend and select different pens to view current values if you wanted, but you'd need to build the screen with the chart on it and enable it for runtime changes.

 

[SoftwareJanitor]

NetNathan:

Yep! Verified it's using "Universal Server".

http://www.modbus.org/images/devices/MOST_Datasheet.pdf

And yeah, we have a Development License here for InTouch, but not on this machine. I suppose I could make a debug app and load it on the machine in question.

robertmee:

Yeah, I was hoping I could do some kind of "live data" view without having to load any new software. Since InTouch doesn't seem capable, the next thing would've been the Universal Server, but that thing is totally locked down. Can't see anything in there. What a pain!

------------
The problem is - the InTouch app (thinks it?) keeps losing communication about every hour. It has a "Maintenance Display" that shows the clock timestamps for each Controller (20 of them) that it is monitoring, and they are all constantly changing - until about every hour when they *all* freeze at once, a script counts off 15 seconds, and then ... an alarm occurs! During the freeze, verified that each Controller PINGs successfully, so it's not like this WW machine cannot reach any of those Controllers. And if there really *was* a problem reaching these Controllers (which collect I/O), the Process Controllers that talk to them would detect it and FastStop themselves - and that's not happening. So it's a WW or Universal Server issue, I'm thinking, but I just don't know how. This WW app is a Safety Panel program that is also reading other critical switches, and even checking to make sure the Process Controllers are running - and there's no failures occurring there, so it's quite a mystery why this is happening.

 

[JaxGTO]

You can use any DDE type program (Excel etc) to connect to Window Viewer and monitor it's tags. App is VIEW and topic is TAGNAME.

 

[brendan.buchan]

You should be able to go into the DA Server diagnostics in the System Management Console and view the live tag structure.

 

[NetNathan]

Accessing InTouch Tag Data from Other
Applications

When another application requests a data value from the
InTouch HMI, it also must know three I/O address items.
Follow these InTouch I/O address conventions.

VIEW (application name) identifies the InTouch run-time
program that contains the data element.

TAGNAME (topic name) is the word always used when
reading/writing to a tag.

ActualTagname (Item Name) is the actual tag defined for the
item in the InTouch Tagname Dictionary.

For example, to access a data value in the InTouch HMI from
Excel, a DDE Remote Reference formula is specified for the
cell in which the data is written:
=VIEW|TAGNAME!'ActualTag_name'

 

[diat150]

NetNathan:

Yep! Verified it's using "Universal Server".

http://www.modbus.org/images/devices/MOST_Datasheet.pdf

And yeah, we have a Development License here for InTouch, but not on this machine. I suppose I could make a debug app and load it on the machine in question.

robertmee:

Yeah, I was hoping I could do some kind of "live data" view without having to load any new software. Since InTouch doesn't seem capable, the next thing would've been the Universal Server, but that thing is totally locked down. Can't see anything in there. What a pain!

------------
The problem is - the InTouch app (thinks it?) keeps losing communication about every hour. It has a "Maintenance Display" that shows the clock timestamps for each Controller (20 of them) that it is monitoring, and they are all constantly changing - until about every hour when they *all* freeze at once, a script counts off 15 seconds, and then ... an alarm occurs! During the freeze, verified that each Controller PINGs successfully, so it's not like this WW machine cannot reach any of those Controllers. And if there really *was* a problem reaching these Controllers (which collect I/O), the Process Controllers that talk to them would detect it and FastStop themselves - and that's not happening. So it's a WW or Universal Server issue, I'm thinking, but I just don't know how. This WW app is a Safety Panel program that is also reading other critical switches, and even checking to make sure the Process Controllers are running - and there's no failures occurring there, so it's quite a mystery why this is happening.

universal server is a opc server also so you should be able to load matrikon explorer and connect to it via opc. if you see the values continue to change over opc then you know the issue is between USS and wonderware via dde. next you would want to setup the wwclient to connect to uss over dde and then you can troubleshoot and see if uss is properly serving the values over dde. if both of those are good then the issue is with wonderware.

USS is a deprecated product but it was a pretty good product for the most part. btw, the opc namespace should be stacserver.