Datalogging and Trending

[rajy2r]

Wondering if someone has a good solution for Datalogging and Trending. Don't have any specific HMI needs, so could run it on a PC or a VM.

So if anyone has any good suggestions that would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Robb B]

1st choice: Ignition - their collection of graphs and database connectivity is great.

 

[destination unknown]

Node-Red, InfluxDB and Grafana, if you want to go the Open-Source route

 

[rajy2r]

Node-Red, InfluxDB and Grafana, if you want to go the Open-Source route

I have not used these software before, so wondering how much is involved in the setup. I would require IO drivers for AB PLC ?

 

[rajy2r]

1st choice: Ignition - their collection of graphs and database connectivity is great.

What ball park costs are we looking at ? This isn't mission critical data, but just for troubleshooting generally for a single application.

 

[Robb B]

What ball park costs are we looking at ? This isn't mission critical data, but just for troubleshooting generally for a single application.

Get in touch with them, but I think the lower tiers is going to be north of $7k

 

[Mickey]

Another choice..


National Instruments™ LabVIEW - By National Instruments™
Ad·
https://www.ni.com/

 

[rajy2r]

Get in touch with them, but I think the lower tiers is going to be north of $7k

Thanks Robb. A bit of an overkill for what i am trying to do.

 

[mobil1syn]

Another choice..


National Instruments™ LabVIEW - By National Instruments™
Ad·
https://www.ni.com/

how does LabView compare to Lookout?

I have a bunch of sites running lookout on XP computers and well, yea theyre all ticking time bombs. would love to deploy ignition but its hard to sell people who dont understand the value of trends the on the cost of it.

 

[johnd_125]

If you are looking for something basic, you might consider a Weintek HMI. It can display trends and save data to a historical, .csv file which you can then copy to a USB drive or FTP to a computer on a network for further analysis. It will have drivers to connect to an AB PLC.....

 

[Manglemender]

NodeRed will speak to an AB PLC, put the data in InfluxDB and use Grafana for trend graphs. Lots of help online.

 

[cardosocea]

NodeRed will speak to an AB PLC, put the data in InfluxDB and use Grafana for trend graphs. Lots of help online.

It also allows for a basic web HMI/dashboard to be created directly from NodeRed.

 

[Rson]

I have no experience in this and will be looking myself in the future, but I saw PyLogix mentioned in other threads and it appears you could set that up to log any tag on a rockwell network.

 

[drbitboy]

I have no experience in this and will be looking myself in the future, but I saw PyLogix mentioned in other threads and it appears you could set that up to log any tag on a rockwell network.

Along those lines, here is a data logging framework using pylogix: https://github.com/drbitboy/pylogix_logger

It's got options to write several formats: CSV; eXcel; Google Sheets; MySQL. Classes could be added to email a .ZIP once a day, send alarms via SMS, etc. The primary piece that is needed is a Python-capable platform (Windows; MaxOS; Linux; WSL; RaspberryPI; etc.) with network access to the PLC and to the target host (MySQL; Google Sheet; etc.).

Let me know if you'd like to see the Google Sheet update in near-real time; it's been a year but I could probably get it running again.

To be fair, although this may look like a decent option, if the company does not devalue your time then those several-k$ commercial packages do not look so cheap. This is a hobby for me, so I could probably get you going with a prototype in an afternoon just for fun, and if you have a Python-head in your organization to take it from there then that might be enough. But if you paid my consulting fee for a proper job I doubt I could do it for under 5k$, and that still doesn't include your time and/or that of the Python-head that I would need for guidance and feedback. As the saying goes "We don't use free software because we can't afford it."

So the main advantage to a bespoke approach like this is just that: it's customizable.

 

[JordanCClark]

Get in touch with them, but I think the lower tiers is going to be north of $7k

Just going through the web quoting.