opc and web enabling

R

Thread Starter

rich aten

Hi

I made the mistake of showing my engineers that I could connect to all or any of the PLCs in our plant with an opc server or fix 32 io driver and be able to see the information from anywhere in the plant with VB or fix 32. We currently have several AB PLCs, siemens, and a few others which in my opinion are not worth mentioning. They now want to see this data on an internet explorer web page.

My question is how do i bring the data, which I will have on say kepware's opc client to IE?

This much I know: example: slc500, through dh+, to pc with ktx card with rslinx and opc server to cisco switch and then to client pc. Client pc will read data and visual on vb or ?IE. How do i bring this data into explorer? Any help will be helpful.

Thank you
just a technician not an engineer
rich aten
 
D

Donald Pittendrigh

Before you go too far down the line, you should have a look at OPC DX, I suspect it may have something to offer you. details should be available on the OPC foundation website. I downloaded some demo stuff from technosoftware
the other day but as per usual have not had time to play yet, and I have heard rumblings in the Siemens jungle about it and a search on their website may pay some dividends as well.

If I was to do what you have proposed I would used Intouch and web navigator as I already have access to that software, but if you are proposing a new installation this could cost you more than you want to spend, and it may be
better to go with the OPC DX which is a brand new specification for intercommunication between OPC clients and offers a web option.

By the way, I disapprove of your reference to 'just a technician', I am a qualified technician and rather proud of it, I can confirm that whatever you are by qualification does not reference your ability to deal with industrial IT, engineers that studied industrial IT and especially OPC at university, left there so recently, they probably don’t qualify for professional registration yet, so whatever you are, it is the will to succeed which cuts
it, not the words someone else wrote on a piece of paper.

Regards
Donald P
 
F

Frank Iwanitz

Hello,

first thing to consider - should the IE run in the same domain as the opc server, or should it be a connection over the internet?

If it should run in the intranet, you can use an ActiveX Control that implements opc client.

We, Softing, provide such a Control. You can download a demo version and will find sample code showing how to use IE with the control.

If you have an internet application in mind, than there is no solution available today, since dcom does not run over the internet.

You can use again the ActiveX Control solution running the control in a IIS ASP, generate plain html and provide this to clients.

In the near future opc xml da products will be available, than you can run opc over the internet since xml da is based on web services.

If you have any questions about technology and/or products, please feel free to contact me directly at [email protected] .

Regards,

Frank
 
E

Enrico Guasco

Hi,

To avoid communication overload on PLCs network, I'd suggest to use data concentrators, PLCs dedicated to act as a gateway. One of such PLC is SoftPLC, a product that can talk via a KTX card to the A-B network and via Hilscher board to a ProfiBus network and to your plant network via Ethernet 10/100Mb. As an option you can have embedded JVM and Web-server capabilities. In this way all data coming from the different PLC networks arrive to SoftPLC that can display data in web pages or send data in XML or, using the JDBC talk directly to sour server, and the result is a clean system easy to maintain and without modifications to the existing PLC programs...

See SoftPLC at www.SoftPLC.com

Enrico Guasco
Tex-El di Guasco Enrico
Borgata Ricca, 6
- 13822 - Mosso (BI)
ITALY
Tel. +39015702972
Fax. +390157011935
email. [email protected]
[email protected]
Http://www.tex-el.com
 
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Mark Hensley (Kepware)

Hi Rich,

Thats what OPC XML allows you to do. Give us a call if you would like to find out more. Or come see us at the OPC Foundation booth #1623 at this years ISA show in Houston only a few weeks away.

Mark Hensley
 
That's a little more than an oops - more like "how'd that rattlesnake get into my boot?" That is a very current and really big topic. Many SCADA providers offer packaged solutions (Iconics is my 1st choice with WebHMI), or it can be done by using tables in cascaded style sheets (CSS), in an XML web page with embedded SOAP and OPC XML-DA. This gives you more direct control, but is harder to configure and maintain. Or it can be done with web reports using InSql, for example. You will need to map out the process of data gathering, and data presentation, data security and access. First identify WHAT you want to include and why, then identify WHO should view it and why, that should lead to HOW to present it. Good luck!
 
I've done this several times, and although each instance is different, it does get easier each time...

I use ASP pages and VBscript. The ASP page resides on your web server and communicates to any OPC server on your network.

If you’re not comfortable with ASP or VBscript, I would recommend checking out OPC Labs and their EasyOPC product at http://www.opclabs.com/EasyOPC/. You might still need to use ASP and VBscript, but it makes it much, much simpler.

Hope this helps.. Good luck.

-CH
 
J
Donald: Looks to me like you mixed up OPC-DX with OPC-XML-DA. It is the OPC-XML-DA that is suitable for the web.

However, there are also neat solutions for tunneling traditional DCOM based OPC across the Internet. See e.g. Iconics' GenBroker. The GenBroker puts OPC into an HTML packet and ships it out through port 80 of your firewall. On the other end you can either use Iconics' applications like Genesis GraphWorX directly to display the data, or you can use their DataWorX application to turn the HTML back into DCOM based OPC that can then be accepted by any OPC client.

Using this scheme all issues of domain, firewalls, ports, and NAT etc. that would normally prevent DCOM are gone...

Another way is to put a web server on your HMI. I recall Fix has this. If not, Iconics has an application called WebHMI that will do it.

Jonas Berge
SMAR
==================
[email protected]
www.smar.com
 
N

Nathan Boeger

These are all good answers. The common denominator is to get the data into an SQL database then it becomes trivial to present the data from there. From the database you can present it with: dynamic web pages, web based HMI packages such as FactoryPMI, reporting packages such as Crystal Reports or Microsoft reporting package, etc.

Most OPC solutions work well. FactorySQL - http://www.inductiveautomation.com/products/factorysql is our answer to getting the data from the PLC to the SQL database, but many options exits. Avoid the old DCOM dependent solutions whenever possible.

----
Nathan Boeger
Integrator, MCSE
Inductive Automation
"Design Simplity Cures Engineered Complexity"
 
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