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ECSI

Getting Omron PLC Data to a Website

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Hi ! I am putting together a system using an Omron CJ2M PLC and two Omron NS15-V2 HMIs connected on ethernet. This is a packaging/weighing/traffic control system for potato processing. The PLC system will receive ascii data from six Rice Lake scales, indicating ID,time,date,and total weight. I plan on logging this data to a CF card in the PLC in .csv format. Now my dilemma. The customer has a web based software that they use for inventory tracking, sales and accounting. The customer would like to bring the logged data into this web based system. I spoke with their web developer about programming their software to access the FTP server on the PLC and transferring the .csv file as often as they need to. The web developer does not think this is possible, but is looking into it. Another issue is they are also wanting to see some live data from one of the scales. This would require a continuous data transfer, so ftp doesn't look like a good option to me. I am now looking at the web server capabilities of the NS15. The web developer explained to me that when accessing an external web page they can pull data off the page into their system using xml tags. This works on a regular website page. I am wondering if this is possible using the NS15. I could design a page on the NS15 to display all of the data required. I am wondering if it would then be possible to access and grab the data using xml tags?? Nothing I have read so far tells me that this is possible I know very little about web development, and the web developer knows nothing about PLCs. So, if any of you have any suggestions on how to accomplish this I would appreciate the help! Thanks Edited by ECSI

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No idea, I would assume that you would have to have a copy of the web page that is created, but my suspicion is that this will not happen, the NS Web Server deals with all of that as part of its OS. I would be looking at reading the data from the PLC directl. An ideal candidate would be the ActiveX created by PMCR available in the downloads section, providing your web developer can use it.. Care would need to be taken to ensure that mulitple reads are not issued at the same time.

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Hi, I agree with lostcontrol: FTP should be quite easy, depending on the language used. Also agree that you should not write live data to a CF as they have limited write cycles e.g. 100,000 which will easily be reached if you write every second! Everybody correct me if I'm wrong... (there's an open invitation !!) but doesn't the NS Web server work by just publishing its screen as a bitmap image? Therefore your web developer will not be able to read the html/xml tags. So my advice? If you're looking at an absolutely massive amount of data, then look at the Omron Storage Processing Unit (SPU) and EDMS software which collects data and uploads it to Access or SQL automatically. But it sounds like a smaller amount so a homebrew solution using that ActiveX looks interesting. I would also highlight the CX-Server Lite product for PLC Comms, which even includes an ASP.NET web server example, so might be worth asking for the Trial version too take a look. I know some will bulk at the idea of paying for extra software but IMO my time is too valuable to dabble with work that experts have already done. Regards, BB

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Take a look at the eWon units, may be usefull... they talk EIP and fins.

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Yes the ewon units look pretty good, I have on on order in fact. I'll post if I find anything interesting.

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also you could take a look at the SiteManager from secomea it is basically the same thing as the Ewon unit, just more graphical.

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