Nathan

MrPLC Member
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Everything posted by Nathan

  1. I hate you Chako - such a time sink . Actually, thanks. It's a lot of fun!
  2. lol - I don't know what to say! First computers in your shopping cart with the groceries - now Chinese cars.
  3. Wow - where'd you pull that from? I'm impressed. Anyone up on what's going on with the 700 Mhz spectrum these days?
  4. New Laptop

    Search is your friend. This topic comes up all the time...And a lot more similar posts on PLCTalk. The discussion about "Real serial ports", "USB serial adapters", "Vista", and "Virtualization/VMWare" is pretty much the same every time around. http://forums.mrplc.com/index.php?showtopi...0&hl=laptop http://forums.mrplc.com/index.php?showtopi...7&hl=laptop http://forums.mrplc.com/index.php?showtopi...4&hl=laptop http://forums.mrplc.com/index.php?showtopic=11642&hl= http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.ph...t=laptop+serial Older, but still say basically the same thing... http://forums.mrplc.com/index.php?showtopic=5444&hl= http://forums.mrplc.com/index.php?showtopic=2505&hl=
  5. C++

    No problem - JFreeChart is incredible. What you don't see from the screenshots is its flexibility to support an arbitrary number of axis, powerful autoranging capabilities, fast rendering even with large dataSets, etc. Also, the capabilites are built in for a user to zoom, scroll, and mark values. You can launch a Java Web Start demo to play with that with the following link: http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/jfreechart-1.0.10-demo.jnlp
  6. Thanks for that. Interesting stuff - looks like the old NTVDM on crack!
  7. C++

    Oh, thanks. It's really simple to learn - if you've programmed in any other language you can pick up everything you need for this sort of application in under an hour. There are Python graphing APIs, but I haven't used them. For that particular problem I just made a graph with Excel. I am going to try out Py Google Chart, though. http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonGraphApi http://pygooglechart.slowchop.com/ Honestly, the graphing that I use the most is in FactoryPMI. It's based on JFreeChart, which is probably the most flexible and powerful open source graphing project (Java). You could use it through Jython, but unless you're a Java programmer, it's probably overkill for quick graphing applications. If you're writing an application that needs to generate graphs, that's the way to go! http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/ Another cool one that I used to use more is JPGraph - a free PHP graphing library that's more applicable for dynamically generating graphs on web pages. You can create applications that spit out graphs from start to finish pretty quickly. PHP is about as intuitive as QBasic. Python isn't much more difficult for simple applications. (Java and C++ on the other other hand make everything into a tough project). http://www.aditus.nu/jpgraph/ Pressure Friday Night Math Problem
  8. Comments in Excel

    I don't understand your full question. According to the following site, there's no built in way to limit character input in Excel, but they show you a few ways of accomplishing that with input validation. http://excel.tips.net/Pages/T003150_Settin...t_on_Cells.html
  9. Revision Tracking

    Look into a revision control package like Subversion (free). It allows you to check out/in versions of files at any save point. I use Tortoise as a Windows frontend. As far as file comparing, I'd use a package like UltraCompare. Apparently they even have a product that has integrated SVN support (it may be more tailored for software/source code). I've never used it though.
  10. Where's this coming from? Curious, not skeptical.
  11. Good advice. Also, look at running sysprep to take care of unique identifiers that you don't want ghosted. In particular don't join the computer to the domain prior to imaging. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457067.aspx The other cool option is to create fully configured virtual machines. They're even simpler to move and run.
  12. Oh gosh - it took them a year and a half to support Vista. Rockwell tends to be far from the cutting edge in terms of new platform support. In my experience XP x64 is significantly "more different" a beast - remember how long it took them to support (port) spell checking in Outlook? While this is especially true of hardware support, it also applies to application compilation. I'd install the software and give it a whirl, but don't spend to much time "troubleshooting" applications that crash/don't run. Perhaps a virtualized approach on those laptops is your solution...?
  13. C++

    I agree with that statement, but what difference does it make? Nobody on these forums are writing the newest version of MS Office or the latest video game. Python is more of a scripting language, you surely wouldn't use it for serious application development. Java is powerful in the webapps arena, especially server side. Think ebay or Google Mobile maps. On the application side it works well for embedded multimedia and applications - mobile phones, car systems, etc. One of Java's greatest features is the ability to launch on nearly every platform without installation headache - this also insulates you from patch/upgrade compatibility problems. You can also create nice modern looking applications - the old days of being limited crappy looking AWT interfaces are long past. I would say that it doesn't hold up to "Flash" in snazziness factor, but is a much more powerful language. BTW - most of my Java points are also true of .NET - and you'll never see MS write Office or Operating Systems entirely in it.
  14. Keep in mind that one of the worst design features of COM/DCOM is dynamic port allocation. I'm not sure what it's really called, but it chooses random ports to communicate over a wide range. They can't work with a reasonably configured firewall. This is why such calls across the network are a big security no-no. OPC tunnellers solve the problem in such applications.
  15. Psh - typical. That livened up my day
  16. C++

    I personally do not, but I have seen it used for GUI programming (list of links here). I really have 2 separate uses for Python, neither is probably applicable for you. 1. General purpose scripting language. I also like PHP for this, even when I'm not doing web apps. Ruby sounds cool, but I haven't gotten around to tinkering with it. Screw Perl, Prologue, Lisp, and all those other languages I've had to fight my way through. This is what I do for small simulations and such where C/C++/VB feels like overkill. 2. FactoryPMI uses Python as the scripting language. Like you said, on the GUI side of things it's really just hooks into the Java Bean objects or simple custom API calls - much simpler than I'm probably making it sound. I have been tinkering with native Java2D code through Jython - it's really cool but painful. Makes me wish I'd taken the computer graphics courses in school. Affine transforms? What?
  17. C++

    Sure - and you can also statically compile C Python. It sounds like you're more on my side of the static vs. JIT compilation where Pete was so adamant about the superiority of C's static compilation. I'm a fan of dynamic compilation, garbage collection, etc. Also, I'm not sure that most people realize that very similar dynamic optimization is being done on the fly within your Intel/AMD CPU. Complex instructions that get broken down and resequenced to basic ones. I imagine similar cache optimization is occurring as well.
  18. C++

    Lots going on in the Python world - they're concurrently working on, and have a release candidate available for, version 3.0. It really is a great language as far as being best of breed between high level simplicity and power (object oriented, great APIs). It is especially useful and surprisingly fast in Jython form when teamed up with Java. I agree, they don't have a real good IDE/debugger lined up. From a geek perspective C# and VB.NET are equivalent. That is, with a little know how, you can translate any code from one to the other and it will compile to the exact same CIL instructions (same idea as Java Bytecode). You can feel more nerdy with the more concise C style syntax. The verbose VB instructions better match what the majority of the casual programmers are used to. Staying away from OS specific languages (portability) is good. Between the increasing popularity of Macs and Linux and the stupid decisions coming from Redmond, Java and C become increasingly compelling - again. In the ubiquity (web) department, Java's the only game in town. Getting off topic now - I really like Microsoft's new suites. If you use new versions of Office, Outlook with Exchange and Sharepoint 2007, you get a phenomenal package! It's like a Hippo in terms of support, but exceptional for productivity. If only they didn't go so far backwards with Vista!
  19. C++

    Paul - I agree with you for the most part. A few points to clarify: 1. Jython does dynamic compilation to Java Bytecode - this is much faster than an interpreter. I remember debating with Pete on advantages over runtime (JIT) versus static compilation. I wouldn't say that it is faster in every case, but it does offer compelling advantages. Also Jython can access pretty much everything you can in Java. 2. I'll assume that you're joking and exaggerating about Java - since I agree with you in sentiment, that Java is a cool platform that sucked at first, but would argue that some of your details are jacked up ("decades", "clean up C++ to make Java") and all the rest are so dead on. 3. Check out the details for Java 6 release 10. It is recognized that the last major weaknesses of the Java platform is initial load time - the team has taken action to significantly mitigate that (Kernel, Dev toolkit, new browser plugins). They also include a cool new Look and Feel and are finally taking advantage of Windows graphics APIs. The argument had been "it has to run on everything" - fine, but why not optimize to use hardware acceleration for your biggest customer - and Linux support could follow. 4. I agree with you on the future of VBA and .NET. With the notable exception of Powershell for automating Windows Server system administration, I hope the two totally disappear as scripting/programming languages for non-software developers.
  20. factory talk view

    There are many versions of both Machine and Site listed here. I couldn't find a place to download a trial on their site. Contact your local distributer or integrator.
  21. Ethernet coms

    Should work fine. You're still planning on having the wired connection between PLC and switch (which may be part of the Access Point), right? What does the current IP address scheme look like between the PLC and PC? Are there other nodes on your network that they communicate with? What about Internet access?
  22. Low cost scada!

    If you have VB experience and you're dealing with DF1 (not Ethernet), this (Free) Sourceforge project might help out. The author, Archie is a good guy who is willing to answer questions and help. http://sourceforge.net/projects/abdf1/
  23. Low cost scada!

    Cheap - PVBrowser - it's free Good - FactoryPMI, Wonderware, Citect, RSView - they each have strengths and weaknesses. Depends on your needs.
  24. C++

    No problem. I prefer Java as well for applications that you want others to run because Java Web Start and Applets are so much more ubiquitious than Python scripts (like you said, everyone already has a JRE installed or a web browser, and non-programmers aren't going to want to install a Python interpreter/IDE). Yes they are "both tools" and the techniques a professional programmer would use are similar, but the complexity levels to begin are quite different. Compare getting a typewriter set up to crayons. I'm not knocking either - I like both tools.