Received most of the kit parts - really all of the parts that I need for my project.
I need to order the following cables to communicate to peripherals:
USB to RS232 (9 pin Din connector)
USB to RS422 with wire end exposed.
So to recap my project:
Today’s manufacturers are looking to continuously improve their processes to be able to increase quality and reduce waste and cost. Part of the continuous improvement initiatives includes Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) programs. Many manufactures look to process data to help with these continuous improvement efforts. While many new machines now have data collection capabilities, many older machines do not.
One of the biggest issues limiting manufacturers from analyzing data from machines is the limitation of communication channels on older PLC’s. These older PLC’s typically have limited number of slow serial communication channels that were originally meant for programmers to connect to the PLC to troubleshoot or make modification to the code. As more digital components started being introduced into the manufacturing area (digital drives, encoders, some transducers, etc) the need for analogue operator input decreased. Dedicated HMI applications have replaced these analogue controls in favor of more precise digital signals. These HMI’s communicate with the PLC through these limited number of serial channels. This does not leave any available communication channels for the transmission of data that would be helpful in continuous improvement efforts.
For this project I will use the raspberry pi to act as a communication hub. It will:
send and receive data to/from the PLC via a RS-232 communication channel with the DF-1 protocol
send data to the Fenner M-Trim via a RS-422 communication channel with straight ASCII commands/responses
send data (received from the PLC) to an OEE server via an Ethernet connection with FTP
receive data from a recipe database via an Ethernet connection via FTP
send email/text alerts when vibration data from PLC reaches a certain threshold
The Piface Control and Display will be used to setup the raspberry pi communication channels
