First time need to export data

[Garyhlucas]

I have always done standalone machines, never networked or sending data.  We use C-Mores and log data to USB stick, and I understand that the new CM5 displays we are using may have more capabilities in this area.  I am not at all an IT guy however we have just hired a young computer engineer who came to us because he wanted to get into automation.

The task at hand is to collect data from 18 identical machines each with a BRX PLC, and a C-more.  The product being handled has an alpha-numeric serial number etched on it. The customer wants to collet those serial numbers, initially by keyboard entries, and then possibly with an OCR reader.  They also will need manual data entry for things like a caliper measurement, which in the future might be a connected caliper.  All 18 machines will have an Ethernet switch, or maybe an Ethernet POM.

What direction should we be taking to do this?  I see MQTT mentioned all the time but don't know anything about it. I don't currently know what the customer would like to do with this data when it is received, SQL database, Excel file?

[RBPLC]

There are many ways to go about this and it just depends on how you want to store/archive the data, potentially display it, reliability etc. This is a use case for dedicated SCADA software like Ignition but may be out of the price range. I wouldn't necessarily use another BRX to aggregate the data. With about 20 lines of Python and libraries like XLWings and pymodbus or requests, you can poll all of the PLCs and write them to an excel file, for example.