Hi,

Has anyone tried using a Pocket PC for automation? If a Compaq IPAQ could drive a PCMCIA card with perpheral IO, would that be useful? Has anyone already worked with a similar setup?

At the moment we are considering Linux, but if a similar product already exists with windows, please enlighten me.

Thanks,

Marc

 

wonderware v.8.0 available for XDA, like 02, i havent tried which comm that they are using, WEB HMI is quite reasonable i guess.

 

FWIW:

I have been working on porting my CELL library and gCL ControlLogix monitor program to my Ipaq running the Familiar Linux for Ipaq distribution. The results are quite promising.

It would be nice to have a small handheld device that can attach to the ControlLogix and do full data monitoring in (pseudo) real time. Then again, it would be nice to have a job where I could utilize this too... Details Details...

Relevent URL's:
www.lns-saginaw.net/cell.php
www.lns-saginaw.net/gcl.php
www.handhelds.org/familiar

--
Ron Gage - Saginaw, Michigan
I am looking for work - Electrical Engineer, Computer Programmer & Admin
Resume at http://www.rongage.org/resume.doc

 

I would like to better understand your approach. How large and what is the cost of ControlLogix? Does the Cell library fully control the PLC or does it monitor results?

I was thinking of using the IPAQ to directly control the hardware as a PC PLC solution. I am also curious if there would be a demand for that type of device. The IPAQ solution would be fully open source. Just the interface hardware PCMCIA card would need to be purchased, but then the system would need to be programmed using PERL or Python, etc, not ladder logic.

Marc

 

Marc:

> I would like to better understand your approach. How large and what is the
> cost of ControlLogix? Does the Cell library fully control the PLC or does
> it monitor results?

ControlLogix is a line of PLCs and related accessories from Allen Bradley. They are roughly the physical size of the SLCs, yet are much more powerful than the PLC-5s The CELL library is a read/write library that talks to a
ControlLogix. With CELL, you can read and write any data tag within a ControlLogix. What you can not do with CELL is manipulate the ladder (or the function blocks) directly.

> I was thinking of using the IPAQ to directly control the hardware as a PC
> PLC solution. I am also curious if there would be a demand for that type
> of device. The IPAQ solution would be fully open source. Just the
> interface hardware PCMCIA card would need to be purchased, but then the
> system would need to be programmed using PERL or Python, etc, not ladder
> logic.

Perhaps you should look into the MAT project. Contact either Jiri Baum or Curt Wuollet on here for more information about this.

--
Ron Gage - Owner
Linux Network Services
Saginaw, Michigan

 

If you have ever used LabVIEW before, you may be interested to know that LabVIEW is now available for PDA, and there are a couple of different options for hardware if you are doing simple control operations. You can use a National Instruments PCMCIA DAQCard (either the DAQCard-6062E or DAQCard-6024E), which both have 16 analog inputs, 8 DIO, 2 analog outputs, and 2 counter/timers. These work with some functions that are provided with the LabVIEW PDA software. (More infor on ni.com) You could also use a CompactFlash card (DATAQ CF2) available from ADPI (adpi.com). They have LabVIEW drivers available for their hardware as well.

 

We are using pocket pc for a "mini" HMI using the built in wireless 802.11b standard. With this setup using OPC we can monitor the operating conditions of our turbine wirelessly from about 1200 feet away! We currently are using a Toshiba e740 since it has the wireless built in. I am "talking" to (3) Allen Bradley ControlLogix processors. The OPC server is by ingear.cimquest.com (which is free for trial) and then writing the program using embedded VB (which is free from Microsoft).

Good luck....(update rate I use is 50ms)