stream data to PC

[AngrySparky]

Hoping I can get some guidance on the best option to accomplish something. I currently have a BRX plc doing data collection as part of a larger system at a water treatment plant. We have this set up so it logs data to an SD card then FTPs it once a day over to a computer running XLreporter software to create regulatory reports. This has worked awesome, we couldn't be happier with how this works.

Now I am wondering what the best way would be to send data to the PC more frequently. What I would like to be able to do would be to transfer data to the computer fairly quickly, say every 30 seconds, or once a minute, or even once every 5 minutes, in a way that I could access it with XLreporter, or excel or a similar program to create trends for what you might call a dashboard. I know there are several ways to do this with BRX, I just don't know much about any of them and could use a pointer on what to look at.

Thanks

[BobO]

Hoping I can get some guidance on the best option to accomplish something. I currently have a BRX plc doing data collection as part of a larger system at a water treatment plant. We have this set up so it logs data to an SD card then FTPs it once a day over to a computer running XLreporter software to create regulatory reports. This has worked awesome, we couldn't be happier with how this works.

Now I am wondering what the best way would be to send data to the PC more frequently. What I would like to be able to do would be to transfer data to the computer fairly quickly, say every 30 seconds, or once a minute, or even once every 5 minutes, in a way that I could access it with XLreporter, or excel or a similar program to create trends for what you might call a dashboard. I know there are several ways to do this with BRX, I just don't know much about any of them and could use a pointer on what to look at.

Thanks

DMLogger

There is a specific message format that directs DMLogger to store the records to a disk file. It can easily handle very fast data. Don't remember the details, but let me see if I find them and I'll post.

[BobO]

DMLogger

There is a specific message format that directs DMLogger to store the records to a disk file. It can easily handle very fast data. Don't remember the details, but let me see if I find them and I'll post.

Smart folks have informed me that topic DMD0283 documents the method.

[AngrySparky]

Thank you for the quick reply. I went and found the help topic and it certainly seems promising and simple enough. Any idea what sort of data rate limitations there might be? The way we have the data collection setup there is a 15min base sample rate but there are also deadband based sample triggers. That way if the values are stable it logs only every 15 minutes, if something spikes it logs as fast as it needs to. It almost seems this could build a string of the log data and stream it out every time it logs to the SD card.

[BobO]

Thank you for the quick reply. I went and found the help topic and it certainly seems promising and simple enough. Any idea what sort of data rate limitations there might be? The way we have the data collection setup there is a 15min base sample rate but there are also deadband based sample triggers. That way if the values are stable it logs only every 15 minutes, if something spikes it logs as fast as it needs to. It almost seems this could build a string of the log data and stream it out every time it logs to the SD card.

Easily sub-second.

[Kristjan]

If the reporting software can receive UDP data, you could use instruction PACKETOUT to push data to the PC.

For testing purposes, you can use a software utility called UDP Sender/Receiver to see what you are getting from the PLC.