Digital Dashboard

[svarney 0]

I am looking for a software that will allow me to display some data from my ABR driver. I am want it display it in a web page. This info would be mainly power monitoring info for the big bosses to see when they want. Has any one done this or have any ideas. I am using an HMI package but to get additional keys for one screen would cost too much. thanks scott

[J. B. Jennings 4]

You could extract the data through a topic in RSLinx. I have done this in the past with information to Excel. I am sure you could use similar code and display it in a webpage.

[kaiser_will 65]

If you can host an application on a PC with continuous connection to your application, you can create an OPC topic in RSLinx; then you can create an Excel macro that communicates with this OPC topic, and now any datapoint in the PLC is fair game to be pulled into the Excel spreadsheet. This will require a premium RSLinx license, though (LinxLite will not suffice), that supports OPC and DDE. If you know your way around VB coding, you can build a poor-man's HMI in Excel to view data directly from the PLC. If you wish to archive data from the PLC, WebDock has a free datalogging package that will trend somewhere like 150 datapoints. The downside with the free download is that you are limited to the Delta-T (time duration between data records...1sec, 1min, 1hour if I remember correctly).

[paulengr 44]

Usually the system for doing this is a data historian and the attendant information viewing package. For instance with GE Cimplicity, it's called Proficy Portal. With RS-View SE, it's RS-Historian and the new thingie that I can't remember the name of. With Wonderware, it's InSQL and the Wonderware Information Server. Many (Proficy Portal and Wonderware Information Server) charge "reasonable" (as in about 30-50% of HMI price tags) license fees for the "high level" version of this. FactoryPMI+FactorySQL is different. It is more or less entirely built from the ground up to operate in a web-based system. A full blown system including the historian, HMI, reporting system, and redundancy options runs around $12K. Now here's the really nice part...this is for unlimited clients. There is no upper end on the number of users on the system, and you don't have to do one development for management and another for operators. The software cost seems relatively high, but the really nasty expensive stuff is when you go for the various metric systems such as RS-Metrics. These things are exhorbitantly priced and quickly get out of hand as far as software fees go. HOWEVER, there is a silver lining. After having successfully put together a couple dashboard/reporting type systems, I can confidently say that the ROI is so huge that in spite of the costs, it is well worth it if executed well. The Excel and similar DDE options by the way turn into a nightmare. They tend to quickly overload your PLC system once you get over 10 or so users on them, as the local plant where I work now found out.