How can I get numbers which are recorded on the HMI eg Panelview into a excel spreadsheet?

 

Must panel read the HMI information from a PLC the only thing what you need is a OPC server which be capable to connect to your PLC and use the OPC to connect to EXCEL ODBC way.

regards,
Jairo

 

The typical way to do this is to export the file as a .CSV (comma separated values), which Excel can easily open. Most HMIs have scripting functions to do this, allowing you to dump the data at the push of a button. My guess is that the older panelviews probably don't support this functionality, but the newer panelview pluses should. Exporting to .CSV should be simple to do with any computer based HMI.

Another option is to use a data logging program. FactorySQL (linked below) is a program that runs as a Windows service and periodically logs data from PLCs (any OPC source) to any SQL database (including MS Access). It's then trivial to get the data from a database into a spreadsheet. This option is a more solid way to log data, but may be massively overkill for your application.
http://www.inductiveautomation.com/products/factorysql

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Nathan Boeger
Inductive Automation
"Design Simplicity Cures Engineered Complexity"

 

Connecting via Excel is certainly a cheap way of doing it. I admit, I did it years ago (as an Integrator) for a customer using DDE references within Excel cells - I didn't know any better. Is there a (MUCH) better way using more modern OPC calls (or DCOM or whatever)? Doing it via DDE was ridiculously clunky. Think: making windows auto-logon, ensuring OPC server starts early enough (connection delay was necessary), Excel spreadsheet opens on its own, Macros start automatically without user intervention, then USERS DON'T TOUCH THE COMPUTER.

Further, the RIDICULOUS US patent: #5,038,318 makes it illegal to do this.

Jairo makes a good point that you can get data from a process without using the HMI/Panelview, but be warned about the frailty of doing it through MS Excel! There's gotta be a good, cheap, hardware datalogger if you don't want to do it in software. Logging data just fundamentally isn't that tough a task.

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Nathan Boeger
http://www.inductiveautomation.com
"Design Simplicity Cures Engineered Complexity"

 

In case you have a couple of Panels a clean solution may be to use an centralized automated reporting tool where the handling of DDE-poke requests or CSV parsing can be eliminated. In ReportWorX for instance you create Excel Templates and directly point at relevant data sources (OPC, databases, SNMP...) The product will take it from there and run reports based on time or process conditions and redirects the resulting reports to file/web servers, printers, emails.

http://www.iconics.com/products/reportworx.asp

Raymond van der Tas