IFIX, RSLINX Gateway and polling

[DefelRadar 0]

I have an Intellution IFIX application that I am wanting to manually start and stop the polling of some control logix PLCS through RSLinx Gateway. Basically the set up is to have a Start and Stop button in the Ifix application that when the START button is pressed RSLinx Gateway begins polling and collecting data from the control logix PLCs. THen when the STOP button is pressed in the Ifix app RSLinx stops polling the control logix PLCs. Does any one have any thoughts or ideas on how to do this? Thanks in advance!

[Ken Roach 194]

Does IFIX have a way to switch between OPC topics ? I've done this with RSView32 by using VBA to switch from my operational OPC topic to a "dummy" topic that points at just the driver itself (it ends up acting like a loopback and the last value is returned). Once RSView32 is not using the OPC topic, RSLinx stops polling that controller. This is particularly useful when you want to trigger a DF1 Full Duplex driver to dial a phone number again.

[stoneherst 0]

In iFIX there are two things that you can manipulate. First there is Mission Control. This allows you to manually to start and stop your communication driver altogether. Your driver is almost certainly the ABR driver which interfaces to RSLinx via OPC. If you stop the driver you don't talk to anything via RSLinx, so I don't know if this is what you want. Second, inside the ABR driver proper you are allowed to enable/disable channels, devices, and blocks. So you could disable just the data block that you use to signal, say, alarm conditions from a certain controller. Or you could disable comms to that controller altogether while communicating with other controllers on that channel. Further, you could inhibit the DH+ channel coming from a control logix gateway while the data you gather from an ethernet channel is in tact. iFIX seems limitless in what you can do in this regard. That is the nice thing about Intellution, its commincations are rock solid and very configurable--too configurable for some and not very intuitive, but that's a different subject. As much as iFIX relies upon the SCADA programmer's VBA skills, I have to believe that these items are available to us. No doubt, you will need to talk to iFIX's tech support to get some specifics on how to bring that into a password protected screen on your SCADA interface.