Ladder Logic Module Interest?

[Robert_Hoffman]

All,

Signal.X has been working over the last years or so on a ladder logic emulator that is built into our STAX framework for control and automation.  As part of our research for the NIWeek presentation I mentioned in the other post, we have been digging into the similarities and differences between DCAF and our STAX framework.

They are surprisingly similar, with one big exception - DCAF does not contain built-in logic.  This makes sense in the context of the purpose of DCAF as a foundation that is meant to be open-source and extendable.  I have been asked a few times if we would ever create a ladder logic module for DCAF, and I want to ask the community here if there is interest.  

If folks here are interested, I would be happy to post excerpts from our manual that outline how users build and interact with the ladder logic, and discuss options for how this module could be integrated into DCAF. Looking forward to your response.

Thanks,

Rob

[Jacobson-ni]

Could you explain a scenario where you would use this module and what exactly it would do or look like?

In my mind this module is providing some way to create this logic in the configuration editor so you don't have to make some of these one-off static modules for tag comparison or summation or something like that. I kind of like the idea because you wouldn't have to worry about having to distribute all of these one-off modules for every project.

[Robert_Hoffman]

Matt,

I am still wrapping my head around exactly how this might work, so I may not have all the concepts quite right yet.  However, at its core, DCAF scans inputs, processes those inputs, and sets outputs.  Our ladder logic emulator would be a configurable (at run-time) processing module.  So, a control system built on DCAF that is using this could have a host application that could view and modify the ladder logic representation of the processing logic that is used to set outputs based on the scanned inputs.  The following is a screen shot of our logic editor:

We have used this successfully in many different applications, in everything from process control to durability testing to end-of-line test systems.  I am simply gauging interest in porting this logic module to work with DCAF at this point. Some case studies of where STAX is used are here:

http://sine.ni.com/cs/app/doc/p/id/cs-13823

http://sine.ni.com/cs/app/doc/p/id/cs-15671

Thoughts?

Rob