Dear Sirs,

I am 3rd year electrical engineering student. I am currently involved in gathering ideas for my senior project. I have knowledge in Allen Bradley PLC's and SLC's. The following are what I have in my mind for my senior project:

1) I am thinking doing a fault (message) annunciation from a PLC (preferably Allen Bradley) any dial-up device such as a pager, a
cellular phone, or a fax machine.

Can you tell me what do I need to do to accomplish this?

What I am thinking is to connect the channel 0 (serial) in AB PLC to a PC internal or external dial-up modem. Then using a programming language (I am assuming Visual Basic is a good one for this application) write a program to do the dialing and message displaying. Am I right on this? If I am wrong, please correct me. Right now I have no knowledge in visual basic but I am willing to learn it for this project. Does anyone have any sample code or anyone know any good web site that provide me with a sample
code?

2) Another application I have in mind is to interface the PLC (AB) with the internet. What I mean by that is to able to send inputs to the PLC through the internet and receive outputs from PLC to the internet. Is this doable with Allen Bradley PLC's?

If it is, then please help me on it. I am assuming that I probably have use the ethernet as the connection?!?! is that right? Or is there a way to do this using a serial communication and a dial-up modem? Let me hear your comment on this as well.

These are the two applications I planned to do for my senior project. If you have any better suggestion please let me know.

Thank you for your help in advance.

-Ravi Shan.com Inc.

 

Ravi have a look at http://www.smartmachinesuite.com , PLC fault
annunciation has been done already.

Rob

 

-> 2) Another application I have in mind is to interface the
-> PLC (AB) with the internet. What I mean by that is to able
-> to send inputs to the PLC through the internet and receive outputs
-> from PLC to the internet. Is this doable with Allen Bradley PLC's?
-> If it is, then please help me on it. I am assuming that I probably
-> have use the ethernet as the connection?!?! is that right? Or is
-> there a way to do this using a serial communication and a dial-up
-> modem? Let me hear your comment on this as well.

If you do try this, make sure that you address the security/safety issues that come up from being able to change data from a remote location. Perhaps address ways to lock out access to certain data (such as the output table),
as well as hacker attacks. Remote access seems cool until someone gains access to you boiler controls and literally blows up half of the facility by changing the state of the wrong valve.

This is something that we considered at our facility, and in the end, rejected the idea of internet write access to anything on the production floor. To much opportunity for accidental or malicious damage.

How about addressing issues such as protocol conversion, or getting remote access to legacy systems (old PLC-2 equipment for example) and publishing that to Inter/intranet data?

just my $.02

--Joe

 

> 1) I am thinking doing a fault (message) annunciation from a PLC (preferably Allen Bradley) any dial-up device such as a pager, a

Ram Raj,
I Have a couple ideas that could enhance your fist project with just a little programming.
I don't think pager dial up will be that difficult, but the different reason someone could be paged, using PLC data might enhance your project. First stay with your idea of fault (message), but add a daily page that might help out certain 24 hour facilities. For example have the plc review all security areas; motion detectors, limits, windows, gates, etc., of a high security compound. and give the head of security a daily page to say everything is secure.
If this was done at several different locations a supervisor of security could better monitor his employees without ever being at that location. In the event there was a problem the supervisor would be warned before his people ever got to a phone.
Another suggestion might be used on a manufacturing floor counting the number of units produced during a shift. In the event this was not satisfied a production manager might be paged. He could better monitor production around the clock. This may help the manger of several plants.

 

Siemens has a WebServer module that works with any of the S7-300 and S7-400 PLCs.

The module allows for PLC data to be displayed on a Web page that resides in the module.

This module also can send email messages.

 

A cheap-and-dirty pager call can be done by using discrete outputs of a PLC to control relays with their contacts wired to the buttons of a telephone that has quick-dial functions.