how to extract Red Lion Data and send it to an External DB

[Mark41 0]

Hello.

I'm an IT person (not an engineer), and not very familiar with PLC's or Red Lion units.  Our company runs production lines, and I want to get a counter value from 4 spots on each production line every 30 seconds or so.  We have a Red Lion PTV00000 on each production line, and our engineer tells me he can get the counter values from the PLC's on each line into the Red Lion.  So now I need to get the data from the Red Lion to an external DB.  I thought I'd write a C# program that would somehow pull the data from the Red Lion, and then push it to next place it needs to be.  I looked at the Red Lion capability of synchronizing data to a SQL Server database, however it only sync's every hour or so, and I need the value every 30 seconds.

Has anyone ever done anything like this?  Can I write a program in C# to reach into the Red Lion?   Or, can I write a program in Crimson to push data out to a place it can be accessed by C#?

The end destination for the data is an IBM i (AS/400), which can be accessed via ODBC.

Thanks.

Mark.

[BobLfoot 302]

Mark , there are tons of ways to do what you describe.  The field is referred to as OT {Operational Technology}.  Were I in your shoes I'd take the data straight from the PLC to a SCADA package like Ignition, OSISoft PI, Archestra Wonderware, Rockwell RSHistorian.  A quick look at the PTV00000 Manual says it can write data to a Microsoft SQL DB.  The ODBC Connector from SQLServerDB to AS/400 should be doable as well.

https://www.redlion.net/product/productvity-station-plant-floor-communications-solution

[jazzplayermark 2]

I do this using Crimson 3.1. You just create a data log in crimson that contain the data that you want. Then just enable the Sql Sync service and set the DB parameters. The data table will be created automatically also.

Edited 30 Aug 2020 by jazzplayermark