A SCADA with LabVIEW

Via LabVIEW Linked I have found this interview with Darren Nattinger,the fastest LabVIEW Programmer, five-time undefeated LabVIEW Coding Challenge champion (WOW!).

I want to highlight that he talks about something that is new form me, Quick Drop, a better way to find VIs than navigating palettes.

-Getting Started with Custom Quick Drop Keyboard Shortcuts.

- List of Community Quick Drop Keyboard Shortcuts.

Last 23th of November I achieved to connect to the PLC network without using a OPC server.

I finally used EtherNet_IP_CIP,  a Library developed by Siva, an user from LAVA forums.

I had 2 main problems along the day.:

-Some errors from the TCP/IP sub VI.

-Splitting into bits the Double integer data.

And a well-know problem:

-for what is used each tag, and the meaning of the "1" and "0" states.

First of all I tried to connect with a Boolean data, because this data is  the easiest to read, but, as I said, we can't know if the value is correct because we don't know how are they used; so I tried to connect to a Double integer value vector.

I made a flat sequence structure with 3 parts: start connection, scanning registers, a terminating connection.

When I tried to connect to obtain the Dint value I obtained TCP/IP errors 63 and 66, I was debugging the VIs that I have be using to connect to the PLC when I noticed that the error appear only when I terminate the connection, so the error didn't affect to the connection to the PLC and i continued working.

After that, a Dint value appeared, but I didn't know the meaning, fortunately the meaning of the lights's tags were clear, so I only needed to split the Dint value in Boolean values, I hoped that there was a Sub VI that could do that, but I finally did it in the old way, dividing by 2^n the Dint.

Then, I only needed to check which boolean correspond with each light.

Everything worked except that when I turn off the station that the red light turns on.

I decided to purchase LabVIEW because i will use it in my final project and in a module in wich I am re-learning it, but, I had problems XD.

First of all, I am a Linux user for 6 years because I feel more comfortable in Linux than in Windows (Workspaces and Activities in my KDE Desktop mainly and some programs) but LabVIEW student edition is only available for Windows and OS X, fortunately I have a dual-boot Windows/Linux on my Laptop and maybe in the future I will run Windows in a VM.

After that I tried to purchase it in studica, but I orderer it into de US store and they are not allowed to sell in the UK and they did not notice me that until I sent them a message, finally I ordered in the UK store but I had more problems, in the web page was said that they have shipped the order but it is a downloadable item, and I had to send them another message to get my LabVIEW :) .

Hi again,

I worked in the project before setting-up this tumblr, so I have a lot of things to talk about,  although I will start with the basic information of the project, some other things related with the purchase of LabVIEW happened before I wrote this.

C&P from my State of Work

1.  Aim

This project will develop a scalable SCADA programmed in LabVIEW for o manufacturing Laboratory, implementing the basics I/O into the SCADA system and merge it with the previous existing systems.

2. Background

Nowadays there is an SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system that acquire the information from a PLC network which have two models of PLC, both from Rockwell:  L23Eand L32E and both based on CompactLogix [PDF Specifications] [PDF User Manual], but it is impossible to merge it with other projects of the laboratory to get a full SCADA system.

LabVIEW is a visual oriented programming language from National Instruments (NI),especially designed to be similar to circuit diagrams and to communicate with other devices such as sensors, PLC's or oscilloscopes, with specific libraries and toolkits to do that, all this makes LabVIEW one good option to merge different projects.

Hi everybody,

I have set-up this tumblr to talk about my final project (a SCADA with LabVIEW).