Communication from Labview(the OPC client) to citect(OPC server)

[Parny]

Dear members,

I want to access data(from the Labview 8.6) which is on a citect PC.  As I am not much aware of citect, can anyone explain me how to achieve this, if you had experience??

By using data socket mechanism, I believe we can execute, but what kind of arrangements need to be done on the citect side. Is it likely that a OPC server would be running on citect side, so that Labview can act as a OPC clien? how can I implement this?? I have gone through NI Demo OPC Client.vi,Browse To OPC Item.vi examples. 

Anybody with "Labview - Citect" experience here?? 

some thoughts please,

Thanking you.

[Andrew_E]

Hello,

I tried to search for a Citect PC (personal computer) , did you mean PLC? If it a PLC you will want some kid of OPC server client such as NI OPC servers (or possibly a citect OPC server? Once you have the tags on the OPC side of the equation you will be able to bind to them from another computer using datasockets. You can do this by going to the control on the front panel that you want to bind >> right click >> choose properties >> go to the the data binding tab >> choose datasockets under the data binding selection >>click  browse >> navigate to remote systems >> look under the OPC server that handles the citect tags that you configured. Setting up the OPC part of the citect I think depends. What I know if it so far is that there a few ways you can do opc, either through the citect opc  2.0 compliant server  or through the Citect SCADA. What kind of software do you have for this Citect device to publish to a tag? Is there an exact PLC that you are using from Citect? 

Regards

[Parny]

Hi Andrew, thanks for your time. Its a PC only, not PLC and has citect SCADA on it. I believe the data coming from the PLCs and written to the tags and want to access one of those data. Do you think OPC server must be running within Citect scada? What kind of arrangements need to be done on citect PC in order to gain that data on Labview side using datasocket(by opc url) or through databinding option?

What kind of software do you have for this Citect device to publish to a tag?

- its Citect SCADA, what need to be done here to access the tag from Labview?

And how we can control the NI OPC demos(the ones we see using "Browse To OPC Item.vi") or any other OPCs that are running ? do we have control on them to turn on/off??

[Andrew_E]

Hello,

I think the best thing to do in this case is to use the "browse to OPC Item.vi" to see if the OPC Scada is setup to host the tags of your PLC. When you run the vi on the PC with the Citect Scada, if you don't see the OPC server then it may not be configured correctly. This is something that you may want to talk to Citect about to help you configure it correctly if thats the case. Once you can see the OPC Server with the tags for your PLC, you want to then either use Shared Variables or Datasockets. You can use Datasocket Read Vi's to read the tags once you find them using the vi in "Browse to OPC ITem. vi" or you could bind to the PSP URL of the OPC tag by creating a project >> Library >> Shared Variable. Going into the variable properties and selecting "Enable Aliasing" >> Browse to PSP URL >> Hit the browse button and browse to one of the tags under your Citect OPC.

[Parny]

Thats the big puzzle which I need to understand on Citect's side that how to configure tags to broadcast through OPC server, will conatct Citect if needed, and reply after I come up with something.

Thanks.

Message Edited by Parny on 02-05-2009 09:24 PM

[mmesser]

I have a Citect/ThinknDo system that I need set up to read data from a Labview program on another computer. I would like to display - on the citect screen -  the "live" data as it is collected through Labview. How do I go about doing this??? Also, I would like to actuate a trigger on the Citect side that would trigger a data collection on the Labview VI.

[Andrew_E]

Hello,

The best thing to do when you have your Citect Scada Tags setup is to try to bind to them with shared variables on the computer that you have LabVIEW on. You may want to contact Citect about setting up the Scada Tags, but to bind to them you just create a library, create a variable, then go into the properties of that variable, select bind to alias, then browse for the Tags on either your computer or in this case a Network connected Computer.

To do the triggering you my want to continuously monitor the shared variable and then have a case structure that does a data aquistion if the shared varaible is past a certain value.

[mmesser]

thanks for your help.. .I will try your suggestion...

[Naqqash]

Dear all,

I am also trying to do the same but I don't know how to see the tags or import them in Citect. If anyone of you can help, its an old post but I am expecting that you guys must have solve the problem till now 🙂 so its worth asking here i guess.

I am exactly doing the same as Parney was doing.

[JD_war_eagle]

Hi Naqqash,

I don't have much experience with Citect OPC servers, but here is a the user manual which discusses some configuration and importing of tags.  Hopefully it will provide some valuable information.

http://vius.ru/files/CitectSCADAUserGuide.pdf