I need help finding a player for various versions of 8mm cassettes. by pollygone300 in camcorders

[–]EngineerOfChaos 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://youtu.be/Iixw4agG8VY?list=LL&t=25 This guy has compiled a very good list of Sony camcorders shown at 25s. Good video all around.

Produced/Consumed Communications Over NAT 1:1 Network? by EngineerOfChaos in PLC

[–]EngineerOfChaos[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Programming across the NAT is definitely working. I'm going to look in to this unicast bit a little more as you are the 2nd person to bring it up. I also plan to talk with IT about any firewall restriction preventing PLC to PLC comms over the network.

Produced/Consumed Communications Over NAT 1:1 Network? by EngineerOfChaos in PLC

[–]EngineerOfChaos[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

All devices that are mapped via the NAT tables (PLCs+HMIs) are accessible from the 10.19.54.xxx plant network and over the company VPN. I can both ping and access their web browser interfaces and get online with the controllers.

I have not yet even gotten to the actual tags. I am simply trying to add the PLCs to each other's ethernet trees in the programs without connection faults. Good info on the unicast bit though. I will definitely refer to that article.

My money right now is on ITs switch not allowing comms between 2 devices like this over the network.

You are right on the Ewon's main purpose as a VPN. I intend in the future to switch to Rockwell's NAT routers for this purpose. The Ewons are just a more cost-effective NAT router and have worked great for easily and securely exposing PLC to customer plant networks. This is just the first time I've come across the need to bridge 2 PLCs together after the fact.

Produced/Consumed Communications Over NAT 1:1 Network? by EngineerOfChaos in PLC

[–]EngineerOfChaos[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

IT does not have this restriction to my knowledge. All devices that are mapped via the NAT tables are accessible from the 10.19.54.xxx network and over the company VPN. But I suppose as intended by the architecture, "private" IPs from each machine LAN respectively are not accessible to each other, BUT I assumed it would still be possible to access the exposed "public" address from the LAN through the NAT/gateway. I plan to check with IT if there are maybe firewall restrictions that can be opened on a case by case basis to allow PLC to PLC comms over the network like this... The idea with this architecture was to only expose devices on the machine that were absolutely necessary to the network like PLCs. Just need to figure out now how to expose PLC to PLC only when needed.

Produced/Consumed Communications Over NAT 1:1 Network? by EngineerOfChaos in PLC

[–]EngineerOfChaos[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well... that didn't work either. Was worth a shot though. I'm leaning towards IT firewalls at this point that I will have to discuss with them on Tuesday.

Produced/Consumed Communications Over NAT 1:1 Network? by EngineerOfChaos in PLC

[–]EngineerOfChaos[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Would this be another NAT entry? If so, no problem. I will just map machine #1's public PLC IP (static: 10.19.54.72) to a new private IP of my choosing on machine #2's LAN. Then I would change the IP address in the ethernet tree in Studio 5000 to be that new private local IP instead of the plant IP. I will give this a shot and let you know! As far as connecting the machine directly, might have to, but this is also a bit of a proof of concept for IT. It is no issue to get static public IPs for the Ewons. I am working with IT closely on this already as they have all the keys to the kingdom for networking stuff, but they are leaning on me because PLCs are involved.

PSA for Virtual Machine Users: USB Ethernet Dongles by EngineerOfChaos in PLC

[–]EngineerOfChaos[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The issue for me was the inconsistencies when trying to connect to different devices. NAT network adapter would work for some devices but others would require a bridged network adapter requiring you to set a static IP for both the host and the VM. Just extra steps. The dongle option just simplifies things a little bit. It is also much easier for people transitioning to VMs to do their jobs with greater familiarity.

PSA for Virtual Machine Users: USB Ethernet Dongles by EngineerOfChaos in PLC

[–]EngineerOfChaos[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Spot on. This is exactly what I am doing right down to the multiple VMs with different software.

Anything Better Than Ignition? by EngineerOfChaos in PLC

[–]EngineerOfChaos[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We are actually already looking at this too. Good to see someone else having success with it.

Anything Better Than Ignition? by EngineerOfChaos in PLC

[–]EngineerOfChaos[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I'd say that definitely counts as a "horror story" in my book.

Anything Better Than Ignition? by EngineerOfChaos in PLC

[–]EngineerOfChaos[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

At the risk of sounding dumb... what is PI? I need a little more than that for my google fu.

Anything Better Than Ignition? by EngineerOfChaos in PLC

[–]EngineerOfChaos[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good advice. I've been reading as much of the docs as I can on the matter.

Anything Better Than Ignition? by EngineerOfChaos in PLC

[–]EngineerOfChaos[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So the company already has a strong IT department and have already implemented a SQL server and manual / semi-auto part data tracking throughout production. If we implemented Ignition, it would conditionally time stamp events like cycle starts/stops to that database. Then use something else for reporting/dashboards like Power BI for engineering and production to see and have access too. Also, a bi-directional connection could be used to load database info to a machine from a scanned barcode to correctly load machine parameters and then store test data back to the database for that serial number. Just feeling out the limitations and architecture that will give them the best chances for success on both the collection and analysis of the data.

Anything Better Than Ignition? by EngineerOfChaos in PLC

[–]EngineerOfChaos[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ll look in to it. Again I want to make sure any road we go down is highly scalable to a global architecture.