slick_william
Member
Hello all,
We have a customer with about 10 PLC's which they want to synchronize the time (TOD, date, etc). These are mostly 1756-L82's with 32.014 firmware.
The customer has a central time server which can broadcast the time via NTP (Network Time Protocol) and possibly PTP. However with PTP, traffic is a concern as it seems to update/sync the time incredibly often and add tons of traffic to the network.
We have been looking at the 1756-TIME module, but this customer currently does not have one and would prefer to message the time server directly (if that's even possible?) vs. having to buy new equipment.
Questions:
1) If in fact the customer's time server can respond to PTP time requests, would it be possible to use PTP to sync up these PLC's? The idea was to have one PLC message the time server, then have all the other PLC's message the master PLC to sync the time.
2) If it IS possible to use PTP as mentioned above, is it possible to only poll the time when we want to sync it (as opposed to having it constantly sync at all times continuously)? I am thinking of something like "if time of day = 8 am then ... initiate MSG / open socket to time server and sync..."
3) Or would it be easier / less headache to just buy the 1756-TIME module and use that? This thing looks expensive as hell and all it does is synchronize time? (I'm in the wrong business, should have went into designing industrial time sync hardware)
Thanks all,
Slick
We have a customer with about 10 PLC's which they want to synchronize the time (TOD, date, etc). These are mostly 1756-L82's with 32.014 firmware.
The customer has a central time server which can broadcast the time via NTP (Network Time Protocol) and possibly PTP. However with PTP, traffic is a concern as it seems to update/sync the time incredibly often and add tons of traffic to the network.
We have been looking at the 1756-TIME module, but this customer currently does not have one and would prefer to message the time server directly (if that's even possible?) vs. having to buy new equipment.
Questions:
1) If in fact the customer's time server can respond to PTP time requests, would it be possible to use PTP to sync up these PLC's? The idea was to have one PLC message the time server, then have all the other PLC's message the master PLC to sync the time.
2) If it IS possible to use PTP as mentioned above, is it possible to only poll the time when we want to sync it (as opposed to having it constantly sync at all times continuously)? I am thinking of something like "if time of day = 8 am then ... initiate MSG / open socket to time server and sync..."
3) Or would it be easier / less headache to just buy the 1756-TIME module and use that? This thing looks expensive as hell and all it does is synchronize time? (I'm in the wrong business, should have went into designing industrial time sync hardware)
Thanks all,
Slick
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