Nathan

Searching under McAfee in the Rockwell Knowledge base showed a lot of workarounds, exposing the activation/registration files that Rockwell works so hard to hide. I did find a workaround to using Launcher.exe. According to #24985, launcher does nothing more than display a splash screen and open vstudio.exe. Point your shortcut directly to vstudio and you should be fine. Ironic that the fix is a cheesy hack for the question posted in the knowlegebase (launcher.exe causes a fault in Windows), but actually very applicable to your problem (if it works).

Don't know if this helps, but I really like Hope Industrial displays. They make good NEMA 4X rated touchscreen LCDs for really cheap with a 3 year warranty. The problem becomes the PC and enclosure. We use Dell PCs (also with 3 year warranty) in enclosures, which works well for most applications. May not be applicable since we use web based HMI terminals that are totally disposable. If the Dell box crashes, just put another computer in the enclose and launch the HMI from a web page without losing any data. If the client computers had either important data or needed installation/configuration, I might be a bit more worried about better protecting them. That said, client computer crashes aren't a common occurance. I did see some awesome integrated Industrial PCs at ISA 2006. I don't remember any of the vendors off the top of my head, but I do have their promo around somewhere.

I'm working on our new website that went up on the first of this year for Inductive Automation. I'd appreciate your feedback on the new site. Are there any resources that we could provide that would help you in the area of: SQL Databases, networking, SCADA info, etc? Thanks,

Funny you should mention that. I added the "all US integrators" because it annoyed me how many clicks it took to get to US integrators by state. Click 'Americas'->'US' then you get a listing of all the states where we have integrators. I will also look into doing a zip code search that returns integrators sorted by distance.

TW, Thanks for covering me on the link. That's a good idea about actual customer projects. I'm meaning to contact customers directly (we typically sell to integrators and they work with the customers) for project "case studies", etc. That's certainly on my to do list. As far as the "terms of use" goes, we sell software and allow free downloads. Its basically the EULA. Not really applicable for an integrator site. It's just saying that users can distribute the code but not sell it, etc. I'll look into where the "privacy policy" came from. It's supposed to be reassuring, although I am rarely reassured by legal documents like that . I'll get the cart page updated when I get a better estimate on when the CC processing is finished. I need to get rolling on finishing up the "Enterprise Integration" section also. Thanks for the input!

A few options depending on what you're doing: 1. If the range is reasonably close to the envelope just put a switch in between. It'll amplify the signal. This is considered to be tacky and certainly can't scale, but could do the trick for you. 2. The "standard" thing to do is usually put in switches at both locations with fibre uplinks between them (or a single switch on one end and a fibre ethernet bridge on the other). Not cheap, but very reliable, scalable, and fast. 3. This is a really cool option. Black Box sells VDSL devices (modems or something like it) that will get you a 1.4 megabit connection at least a mile over a single twisted pair. We ran these things with crappy cable under rail tracks, spliced them all over the place, and they still worked like a champ over a mile (temporary setup, of course). 4. High gain directional antennas and wireless setups are relatively cheap and simple these days. Depends on line of sight and interference. 5. I don't really know the difference between Ethernet "extenders" and "repeaters". I know that fancy ones (layer 3 or 4) will be TCP/IP aware, incrementing the TTL as it extends the signal. If you have an IT department there, they should be able to help you.

Probably would be a service, but doesn't have to be. The next logical troubleshooting step would be to kill processes and testing to see if you can communicate over that port (similar to Kens idea of stopping services). You can use a port scanner to detect processes listening over ports. You were looking for more of a "reverse scan" of some sort. I can think of how it would be implemented running on your computer and another on the network, but I've never heard of a utility designed to do that. It could exist as some kind of "firewall tester" or "port scanner" variant.

I'm so confused. Would someone be willing to break down the issue from a few large steps back?

That sounds accurate. Any version with an SQL Server license is going to cost you. MS gets a nice cut... I'm curious how powerful the embedded version of RSSQL is that comes with Historian and/or Plantmetrics versus when you would want to buy the full copy. Historian appears to come with 1 Plantmetrics workcell and probably some version of RSSQL. Are the packages actually getting more intertwined or just the licensing. It would certainly simplify things if the actual applications are getting rolled together to some extent. Historically, going to your HTML web reporting plugin to display tables or pie charts, going to your historian to log or view graphs of historical data, going to your HMI to see realtime statuses, going to your downtime tracker for analysis, going to your SQL engine to define SQL transactions to get data between databases, etc, etc, has driven me crazy. This doesn't even address specialty modules (power, batch, etc) or custom programming (better keep that VBA reference handy because your custom programming environment used to necessarily be within the HMI package). Consolidation of these functions makes a lot of sense.

I stand corrected. I thought that RSSQL was exclusively the transaction engine in dealing with SQL databases (MS SQL Server and Oracle). It would make sense to combine that with Plantmetrics and Historian since they are functionally so similar. My experience is a bit dated :(. Is there somebody that can verify this for sure. They appear to be separate packages on the website RSSQL historian Both are under the RSBizware umbrella, which is what's confusing, but neither one mentions the other. I also have a (slightly older) pricing information that has them separate. I'd really like to find out how this works.

English would be "Happy New Year" (Trying to be worldly like Panic Mode and TERdON...)

Sigh...this is getting tough to keep up with :(

RSSQL is a separate package from Plantmetrics and Historian that transfers data between SQL databases and PLCs in the form of defined transactions. It may or may not be necessary depending on your requirements. Plantmetrics defines work cells that helps you optimize your process by analyzing downtime. Historian, of course, logs historical data and provides views of it. You might also consider RSBizWare: Batch, MaterialTracker, or Scheduler based on your needs. They probably didn't get into OPC servers and tags because the HMI end of things (with FactoryTalk) runs on RSView SE. I'm surprised that your 4 day training course didn't cover the different Rockwell packages. I'll gladly answer OPC questions and anything that I can with this setup. The first step would probably to determine your needs and the scope of the project. You have a lot of Rockwell expertise in this forum to get you through it and your local distributer would be glad to help. I would encourage you to check out FactorySQL and FactoryPMI. They can accomplish the same tasks in a simpler manner. This is done by each piece working together through the SQL database instead of distributing complexity. The best way to quickly determine if it is right for you would be to sign up for a one hour web demo to see the products and get your questions answered. Good luck with the project.

Are you an integrator? Rockwell has the software pack with additional development licenses for most integrators. Also, there's always the VPN/Remote Desktop approach.

An evaluation would be awesome. I don't mind providing advice on SQL database layout, etc. It's been awhile since I've used RSSQL, and honestly, I was pretty far from getting it to do everything that I needed. I'll be happy to help out where I can.

Merry Christmas All!

It's Christmas eve here on the east coast and I wanted to wish everyone happy holidays!

TW, It's been about 5 years since I've used RSSQL. I've been promoting FactorySQL, which is functionally similar in concept to RSSQL, but works a bit differently. I'm very interested in showing you FactorySQL and seeing how we compare. Our positioning focuses on a more affordable pricing model and ease of development, but I'd like to see how the technical features stack up. I'm also interested in what you have to say about RSSQL and specifics about the coding that you're currently doing. Thanks for the info.

The OPC foundation has good example VB.NET source code if you're a member. I remember seeing similar free code elsewhere - I'm thinking on Kepware's site. I'll check around for you and update this post. Gateway allows one RSLinx to talk through the other. I think it works over DCOM. You can definately connect with an RSLinx (OEM, possibly single PLC, or better) application over the network via DCOM and OPC client code.

Anyone have HMI/SCADA, industrial software price lists? I'm looking for anyone relevant (WW, Rockwell, GE, Ifix, Citect, WinCC, Iconics, Labview, FactoryLink, Wizcon, Adroit, etc). I'd like to organize this data for the benefit of all! I'm seeking current industrial software pricing including typical promos. I have been asked by integrators who are members of the Inductive Automation Integrator Program for accurate price comparisons between vendor products. I'd really like to do something like Progressive where I can provide one place where integrators can check out pricing for applications where their customers want multiple options quoted. I'm willing to do the legwork to gather, sort, and update all of this info. I'd really like to get the straight scoop from vendors and distributers - if you typically or are currently giving discounts, that's fine too! Any help getting me pointed in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Ken's advice is good. I wanted to expand on a few points: On the cable type: Go with shielded cable, Cat5e should be sufficient for the foreseeable future, but you might run Cat6 or 7 if the price is similar enough - depends if you ever plan on running gigabit. "plenum" cable is rated for airspace (plenum) in commercial buildings so that its flammability and smoke producing characteristics are acceptable. Your cable should be enclosed in conduit, so this isn't necessary (but something that I would recommend if the price is similar enough - there aren't any downsides). As far as using 10.10.10.x, this advice is better than has been justified. 9.9.9.x, for example, would be a poor choice. Ken has chosen a non-routable address range, meaning that internet routers will ignore these addresses as "invalid", providing another security factor for your application. This why home routers always default to 192.168.x.x/24. The unconventional thing is that he seems to have chosen to only use 255 addresses (depends on the mask). The textbook example would be to use 192.168.x.x in this case, but you can divide up network addresses however you want (subnetting). edit - I didn't read down to BobLFoot's response - Read about RFC 1918 non-routable ranges have been defined as "illegal" and are thus ignored by internet routers. 1. You won't run the risk of having a conflict with a "real" address on the internet 2. It will be significantly more difficult for an attacker across the internet to communicate with your computer directly - it won't be possible via a routed connection to that address. 3. Most importantly now days because of all the NAT devices - it's simply a matter of convention that indicates that you have some idea what you're doing with networking. Traditionally, using these addresses meant that you didn't want to have communication with the Internet. However, with the shortage of real addresses in IPv4, NAT, enabled devices have become commonplace. In a nutshell, all traffic is directed toward the router, which keeps track of which node on the network it should go to. Technically speaking, you could set up a NAT enabled subnet with addresses in other ranges with a router that's connected to the Internet via a real address on the WAN side, that same router could have an address on the LAN side that should be valid, but doesn't belong to it, and everything would work fine. With NAT it's more a matter of convention. All that said, if you expand to work with IT and they see that you're using 9.9.9.x, they probably won't give you the time of day. I posted a bit more on non-routable addresses here on the IA forum

There are lots of online web sites that will sell you really affordable cable including ebay. LMK if you need help finding specific ones. A quick Google or Froogle search should hit them.

Congrats! You're the man!

FactoryPMI and Adroit were also requested earlier , but I already cast my vote to "other"

The enterprise family is based on the FactoryTalk architecture (read a very different program from the others listed) and is used with SE (distributed) versions of RSView and their newer package families (I think this includes the new Panelviews as BobLFoot pointed out). I'd like to hear posts on peoples experience with this lineup.