Recently I was working on an S7-300 PLC project that required a fairly advanced HMI, so we chose the Comfort Panel to use Faceplates for the many pop-ups and identical controls required. Creating these Faceplates was a great way to increase our produ...
DMC has expertise in both industrial and PC-based software development. In other words, we do a great deal of projects involving PLCs; but we also write plenty of complex PC-based apps. But my personal favorites are projects that combine the two. ...
A recent DMC project for an OEM machine builder involved automatically generating log files for each machine. The twist? Each log file needed to be unique and easily traceable to the machine that generated it. This can be achieved using the PLC seria...
Have you ever received a tweet from a machine on the factory floor? These days, modern PLCs interact with the typical PC and Information Technology world (Ethernet, SMTP/emails, SMS/text messaging, cloud technologies), but there often are caveats....
The creation and maintenance of data records for machines is a very important part of keeping machines running efficiently. For example, tracking downtime and uptime is crucial to provide proper maintenance on the machine, while logging stoppages and...
After spending some time working with multiplexed tags in Siemens Portal, I found that I was unable to set boolean values through a multiplexed tag. Instead of using a multiplexed tag, a simple script can help achieve the same function. The function ...
Within the Configuration view, ArConfig contains the Runtime Configuration. The Runtime configuration includes all sorts of useful information, including the unit's assigned IP address, host name, subnet mask, and much more. These functions serve...
Earlier this year (January 2015), Siemens released their latest service pack for the TIA Portal V13. This included updates to Step7 V13 SP1 and WinCC Comfort/Advanced V13 SP1, along with several others. Along with the WinCC V13 SP1 pack came the addi...
Beckhoff TwinCAT 2 and 3 PLCs have the ability to execute SQL stored procedures to read or write data without the need for an HMI. This is achieved by setting up TwinCAT Database Server on the PLC to manage the database connections, and using functio...
Sometimes the scariest part of working with legacy hardware is connecting to it with your laptop. This blog will lead you through an easy way to connect one such legacy PLC built by Allen Bradley, the PLC-5 series. Look here if trying to connect...