What Is Dde

[Jezz 0]

Right this may be daft but how do I get an slc 5/03 to talk to my excel prog on my pc?? And what is DDE and how do I use it? Jezz

[Guest]

DDE stands for “dynamic data exchange” - basically it means “one Windows program talking to another Windows program” - in the following example, Excel will talk with RSLinx. First - you can NOT do this with RSLinx Lite - you must have something above the LITE version which comes free with RSLogix - in other words, you will have to spend some money to use DDE - buy any version of RSLinx ABOVE Lite - your distributor can help you decide which version you need. If you have a valid copy of RSLinx (above the Lite version) then the menu at the top of RSLinx should have a selection for DDE/OPC - click there and set up a new topic - for example: name it MY_TOPIC - notice that we’re using an underscore instead of a space - highlight your SLC processor before you set up the new topic - this is so that the topic will be "aimed" at your SLC. Now open Excel and choose an empty cell - carefully type in the following: =RSLINX|MY_TOPIC!’S:42’ Punctuation is EXTREMELY important - if it’s not PERFECT then it won’t work - notice that the character between RSLINX and MY_TOPIC is the “pipe” character - on most keyboards it’s the character you get when you hold the shift key and press the backslash key - notice that the character after MY_TOPIC is an exclamation point - notice that the marks around S:42 are both “single-quote” marks - also known as “apostrophe” marks. Once you get this all set up, the cell should fill with a number from 0 through 59 which changes every second - this is the seconds reading from your SLC processor - this should get you started - by changing the address within the single-quotes, you can display other values from within your SLC. Good luck, Ron Edited 5 Nov 2002 by Ron Beaufort

[Chris Elston 78]

Also try downloading the Excel application I created called: Allen Bradley SLC500 DDE Link to Excel Logger 1.4 Click here to download that spreadsheet from Mrplc.com http://www.mrplc.com/cgi-bin/code/filedisp...?category=excel You can view the source code in the "macros" section once you get it open in Excel.