Plant Floor Messaging System

[JMBacker]

I am looking into making a messaging system for the plant floor where I work.  Basically, there would be buttons, displays, lights etc. at several different locations within the plant that would notify each other of different conditions.  The program would also send out emails for certain conditions, which I think I already have figured out.  I would like to communicate through our existing LAN.

I know very little about communicating across networks, and I know nothing of systems that may already do what I'm asking.  I would appreciate links to helpful information to get me started on this journey.  I'm looking for info on how to program LabVIEW for ethernet communication, info on indicators and interfaces that would plug directly into the ethernet, etc.

Thank You,

Jeremy

[Cory_K]

Try doing a search on the forums for "shared variables".

You can access these shared variables from more than one machine.
You can control the read/write access (to prevent race conditions) with semaphores.

I'm not too experienced with them, but I think that could get you started in the right direction.