Has anyone used servicelab with Labview?

[Offshore]

I see many questions on how to communicate with Seimens S7 PLC's and to me (an extreme beginner) it looks pretty complicated. We run a package called Servicelab from Servicelab ltd. which makes it very easy to pick out tags and display and graph them. Does anyone have any experience with  using Labview to pull this data and drive Crio modules?

[Steven_C]

Hi Offshore,

I have personnally not heard of anybody using Servicelab with LabVIEW. Would you consider other options for getting data from your Siemens product? Or perhaps you would want to consider using Fieldpoint. Please see following post for some details on the differences:

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=110&message.id=3610&requireLogin=False

I hope this helps. Have a nice day.

Best regards,

Steven

[Offshore]

Steven,

   Thank you for your help on this. I am not sure I have everything I need to do this, I was told by a N.I. rep the following was what I would need to talk to Siemens s7 equipment as well as control the Crio unit (with a digital in and out modules and also analog in and out modules). I bought the Developers suite with industrial control module as well as getting the RIO software with the hardware purchase. I have now been told I need to buy the FPGA module as well. This seems a bit odd that they would sell me hardware that I cannot talk to. Right now I have an 11 thousand dollar paperweight sitting on my desk but I am working with them to resolve this.

   The link you gave me was very helpfull, it looks like that is exactly what I need to do, can you tell me if I have what I need to do this?

Thank you

[Steven_C]

Hi Offshore,

It sounds as though you do in fact need LVFPGA considering you are using cRIO units. The link that I sent you primarily discusses fieldpoint units compared to the Siemens product. From what you have mentioned in your post, it appears that you do not have any fieldpoint modules or controllers. I guess I am not quite sure what is meant by "that is what I need to do". I am assuming that it is referring to automation and monitoring systems for a factory monitored in a control room with touch screen monitors.

Please note that I am not familiar with all of your needs for your project and the cRIO PAC may very well be a better fit for your particular application. Please note that the cRIO platform is extremely flexible and has a great deal of advantages in terms of performance over Fieldpoint modules.

In order to do a complete comparison of the differences, here is some information on each of the products for your convenience:

FieldPoint -- Modular Distributed I/O

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/1206

Compact FieldPoint

http://www.ni.com/compactfieldpoint/

CompactRIO Reconfigurable Embedded System

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/14145

If you are working with your NI rep on this, I guess my advice would be to ask him or her why cRIO would be a better fit for your application based on your discussion with them. Please let me know if you have any questions on what I mentioned. Thanks Offshore and have a great day!

Best regards,

Steven

[speaking hedge]

Hello Offshore,

I  hear the last of somebody that ServiceLab Ltd. is selling at april this year a new module who can write data directly in the PLC.

At a longer time, so I know, the big paper mills in norway are using ServiceLab and write data to the PLC with a module named "SOFTNET S7".

For a digital output of signals you can use measuring cards from all developers who has driver for DASYLab.