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School me on OPC/SCADA/MQTT/etc.

rbmgf7

Aluminum
Joined
Oct 18, 2017
I'm picking up a project that was abandoned by a former employee to monitor natural gas usage at various machines. They had inline digital flow sensors installed but never wired them. With rising gas prices, I wanted to monitor and throttle usage when production idles.

At my former employer, I was installing 2D barcode lot traceability cameras that was sending the information through [I believe] Kepware which then could be accessed in an Excel file. However, I never set it up. It was all set up and in progress. It interested me enough to take over the project and finish it. All I was shown was what I needed to send to IT to collect the info from the PLC and what I needed to do in the Excel file to display the information.

Now I'm starting from complete scratch at a new company that barely gives me the resources to do the basic of jobs. I decided to go with the Click PLCs since it's cost effective and the software is free. We have some A-B but I'm trying to avoid them. Can't justify the price. Plus I'm in limbo with the software. Local IT can't help with much so I'm on my own to figure everything out.

SO, my question: what is the best approach to collect data and log/display it on a PC that can be accessed easily? I was thinking like displaying/graphing the info on a web browser. However, just collecting the info in an Excel file is fine too. I've been watching videos and reading about the different protocols and systems but I'm not sure which would work best for my application.

In the future I probably would like some ability to control but in the meantime, just monitor.
 
After hours on YT and Google and just hammering it out, I figured out how to get info from the PLC via the Kepware and MODBUS ethernet/RTU.

It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Next step is figuring out how to log this data into Excel/Access.
 
If anyone else was scratching their heads on this subject, I found this channel after hours of watching various videos and channels. By far the best explanation for the beginner.

4.0 Solutions - YouTube
 
I hate the Click PLC. Inexpensive, but the instruction set is so limited you spend more money in labor than you save on hardware. I much prefer the Do-More PLCs.
 








 
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