PlantWide PLC/module health

[TheWaterboy]

Management has decided they want a monitoring screen for every PLC and IO module in the plant. Also looking for a way to monitor when a PLC fails that can report in a second or two without consuming huge bandwidth. Normal random number test using MSG can either be network intensive for fast response or slow to report when trying to lessen network load. Yes, I'm looking for a unicorn here.

This also will be a really tedious task so I'm also looking for an efficient way to do this.

I can get the info with GSV's, gather the important bits into a User Datatype and MSG that to a concentrator, but is there a more effective technique or even a package to monitor PLC's like this?

Would SNMP be viable for monitoring at this level of detail? Never tried that in a PLC, dont even know if they support it.

 

[jkerekes]

The Plant PAx library has AOI for this as well as Faceplates.

 

[mk42]

I've seen people use SNMP to get data out of the network devices, and also the Ethernet cards in a Logix rack.

Not sure what data is available there, if something like an EWEB would know the PLC status. It is very likely just packet/error counters, that sort of stuff available over SNMP.

 

[TheWaterboy]

I figured SNMP would be too easy - didn't know that PlantPax had that kind of thing. Looking into that now.