[Recipe and DTI]

Good answers, Thanks Guys!

 

I've alreadycreated an SQL DB,  set up SQL  permissions etc, I was just struggling with how the user would interface with that DB.  FTP seems like a viable alternate route.  I'll explore that.

Modbus for interaction.  Got it.

I think the only outstanding question is group assignment.  Is there a way, from one screen or webserver screen, that a user could see 10 active machines and group them something like 5 machines to "Assembly Line 1", 4 to "Assembly line 2" and 1 unassigned?  The idea here is that once assigned to a group they could all act together on the common recipe call.  Perhaps this is more about the method of going about it and Modbus could work for this too?

 

Thanks

 

[Recipe and DTI]

Hello,

I have an application in mind where there are multiple portable machines on an assembly line that each perform the same basic function (lets say they are volumetric dosing machines).  Each has its own PLC.  There are about 100 different products and each unit has 3-5 different doses of said product as the unit moves through the assembly process.  Of course each machine could have its own recipe table but then keeping all the individual machines in sync becomes very challenging.  I want to have a central remote database/table (preferably a user friendly excel file).  From each machine I would like to be able to "pull" the latest recipe list.  One user (production manager) would control the master excel file and then all machines can update from that.

Within Unistream it seems i can load a DTI from a remote file however that file must reside on the SD card.  I can also import or create a DTI from an excel file however that tool is only available from within unistream.  I want the end user to be able to do that from the (virtual) HMI but there does not seem to be a related ladder function.  I can see a way to do this through SQL however that is a little more cumbersome because the user would need to manage the SQL database somehow and that interface would likely be excel so why not skip the SQL part.

Further to this concept, is there a way to group PLC's and communicate with said group from one HMI/webserver?  From the above example, once the recipe file is loaded i would like the user to be able to choose 5 machines out of a group of 10 to assign to a job and then enter the Product ID# to call up a recipe and then have all the machines assigned to that group call the same recipe from that product.  Basically i'm wanting to avoid having to go to each of the 5 machines and enter the product ID# independently.  Similarly, it would be cool to command all machines in a set group to "pull" the master recipe list at the same time, just to avoid have to repeat the same command for each machine.

Machines are portable so not hardwired to a network but would each have a wifi adaptor.  The mater "excel" file would reside in a folder on the network.

I hope that makes sense.  Please feel free to ask me to clarify anything.

Thank you.