PLC historical data logging software advice required

[Amellor03]

Hi everyone

id like to start by saying im not a PLC programmer so my technical terminology is limited. i would like advice on what software is available (possibly free?) to look at historical data.

Background: I work for an engineering company in Sheffield UK and we use PLC's to run complex machines. Our equipment is running on PC based PLC's with GE Proficy Machine edition (7.0 i think). As part of R&D we use TrendX to look at historical data and its terrible! its a nightmare to get onto modern laptops etc, its limited in what you can do with it and it crashes constantly. its +20 years old so this isn't to surprising.

Our PLC engineer is nearing retirement and has been clearly holding us back from modern software so isn't much help. we have a plan as a company to replace all the PLC's with siemens modern units but this is likely gong to take +5 years.

TrendX is +20years old and I bet there is software that is free or a minimal cost that could do a far superior job. companies we have had in have tried to sell us historian which at +£50k is difficult to justify against TrendX that is free! the whole R&D team is developed internally so we have no idea what other companies use or whats available.

My basic understanding is i need to extract and save the data in a certain format that can then be read by the matched logging software.

apologies if i have mixed up terminology etc i will try to answer any questions you have

Adam

 

[Mark-]

Hello,

PeakHMI can communicate with GE and Siemens, with several data collection, logging and trending features.

 

[Old Man]

You owe it to yourself and your company to look at "Ignition Scada" even though this is probably more then you seek (for now). The demo is FREE and it will run
without any restriction except you have to restart it ever 2 hours.

This way you can actually build a full-blown MES system with real data and if you decide to purchase just plug in the License and it's up and running.

 

[Rockfordmfg]

+1 Peak HMI

We have been using it for a few years to collect data and it works very well. You need some basic knowledge of high level languages, it's PASCAL based. Most things are easy to set up and it has a very detailed users manual.

 

[rootboy]

A clearer idea of which GE hardware that you are using would be needed, but Kepware supports GE. (90-30; 90-70; Rx3i; Rx7i; VersaMax; Horner OCS; GE Micro; Series Five; Series Six CCM2; EGD; SRTP; GE CCM) That will get you talking at least. (if anyone is still using Series Sixes, please call me!)

And unless I'm missing something, all that you really need is an OPC server that groks GE. Correct? It does you no good to install a new HMI and then have to push/pull the data from that.