Industrial automation project in Colombia [#887492]

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joseCol
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Joined: 03 May 2018, 07:33
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Industrial automation project in Colombia [#887492]

Post by joseCol »

Greetings from Colombia,
My name is Jose Valencia, I just discovered your devices and I am very interested to check if RevPi devices are able to meet the following requirements, and I would also really appreciate which devices you suggest we could use for this project:

20 inductive sensors connected through a modbus cable(*we are open to know what other protocol you would suggest),that sense the hit of 20 die cutter,the 20 machines are max 5 mts one each other
The information needs to be processed for a PLC system (*I think 1 RevPi Core 3 and 2 DIO, but also open to hear your recommendations) in order to have inventory, and production information for 3 PC stations, (management, production and manteinance (local connection 1rst stage, have on mind we have experience with other PLC, not with an open software based)).
Related to the software, as Im a System engineer on the last semester, I know about Raspberry & Linux, but Is my first time with this kind of PLC I have the following questions:
1.I want to know what SCADA software we could use among your REV PI devices
2. What data base handler we could use
3. What software/hardware you would recommend for those 3 PC stations(actually running windows)
4. How could we be able to connect the entire system to the cloud.

Thank you very much for your attention
We will be waiting for a response, to make an offer to the client.

Jose Mario Valencia
Estudiante Ingenieria de Sistemas
Universidad Tecnologica de Pereira,
Risaralda,Colombia
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volker
Posts: 1046
Joined: 09 Nov 2016, 15:41
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Re: Industrial automation project in Colombia [#887492]

Post by volker »

Hi Jose,
great to hear from your interest in using a RevPi for your project!
There are some open questions but I will nevertheless try to answer from what I have understood so far:
1) Sensors
if you are talking about inductive SWITCHES (on/off, no analog distance value) I would recommend using non-bus driven ordinary reasonable priced 24 V sensors (PNP type). You simply connect them to +24 V and a DI or DIO input. This means more cabling (20 wires to your RevPi Core's IOs instead of 1 bus) but with 5 meters distance from sensor to sensor you could still save money and software efforts. This solution would also be more reliable as discrete parallel wiring means direct sensor access in parallel and not sequential polling of 20 sensors which takes time and might miss the correct switching time because of sequential Io access (100 ms seconds would be the fastest polling interval our Modbus master software can realize).
2) PLC
I've not really understood the purpose of a PLC in your setup. What kind of control software will you run on this PLC? Which actuators are you going to control by this PLC?
3) PC
Is the only purpose of the PCs to run Visualization of Data (over a browser)? If this is the case you could replace them by RevPi Core 3 Units.
4) SCADA
This is highly dependent on your demands for a SCADA: What kind of output and Input, how many data points, history visualization, management of machine mode / precipices, how many display pages, etc...
You could possibly life with Node-red (for free) for Visualization and Cloud connectivity or you might need a potential tool like ProconWeb.

Please tell us a little more of the complete requirements to give you more precise recommendations.

Volker.
Unser RevPi Motto: Don't just claim it - make it!
joseCol
Posts: 2
Joined: 03 May 2018, 07:33
Answers: 0

Re: Industrial automation project in Colombia [#887492]

Post by joseCol »

Hello Volker,
Thank you so much for your quick response, let me clarify some points, as we really want to use RevPi devices for this project that is on planning stage., and also make some additional questions.

1. Yes, we are talking about 20 inductive PNP SWITCHES 24 V, and we will take ownership of your advice, 20 wires to a(1,2?) RevPi Core's IOs instead of 1 bus, however, we will only need Inputs, since we dont need to make control over any device, SWITCH or machine, we will only sense the hit of those 20 die cutter, this is the most important data, as the primary objective is to count the amount of hits on a period of time, in that way, knowing real time production information per machine.
*¿Are you recommending PNP type due that the RevPi are only able to connect with PNP? ¿Is there any technical reason that make us use that type, could we use NPN type?

2. Just to clarify, we DONT need any PLC, (That was before knowing about your interesting Rev PI devices), now, we want to know which type of RevPi Core we can use to manage the control system, as we are thinking we may use 2 RevPi DI (Since we need 20 stations, and each DI has 16 inputs)to get the data.
*¿Are we clear on that? Im very sorry if there was any misunderstanding about another enterprise PLC.

So,this is what we have on mindfor the control system:
1 RevPi Core (1 or 3?)
2 RevPi DI
20 inductive SWITCHES parallel wired

3.PC stations
We highly think that you are correct, we may need only data visualization, because the main objective is to check real time production information on each machine, as the factory has different models, some are more expensive than the other, and also, In some machines the kilowatt hour consumption is higher than others, this is why besides knowing production per machine, one of the secondary objectives is showing information that helps optimize production.
*¿RevPi Core 3 has any screen visualization method?
*¿Is it necessary to acquire LCD or HDMI screen for data visualization if choosing that way?
*¿In case the sponsors reject that option, are we still able to see data on a PC, would we need Linux OS for those PC? ( Have on mind here in Colombia Windows OS is mostly used )

4.SCADA
What we demand of the SCADA according to our requirements:
Posibility of create alarm panels, with incidences counter
Take the 20 SWITCH digital input data points, and generate a counter per each data point(Machine station). We think a 64 data point base is more than enough
Machine History visualization , per hour, per days,per weeks, per month, ie.
Not sure if necessary one visualization page per machine, if that's the case, at least 30 pages (Checking with sponsor if is possible at least 2 machines per page)This point is to confirm
On management on machine mode, we only need to set a "preparation mode", as the machine could make some hits while configuring and that data is trash and may corrupt the integrity.

We need to be sure all tasks, incidences and counters could be handled by the SCADA, that is why we would really appreciate if you suggest the more complete SCADA software we could have access, no matter if it costs, even we are not going to make control.

We hope that these descriptions gave you a better idea, we are really grateful for your willingness to provide us with useful recommendations.

Jose & Mario Valencia.
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volker
Posts: 1046
Joined: 09 Nov 2016, 15:41
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Re: Industrial automation project in Colombia [#887492]

Post by volker »

Hi Jose and Mario,
sorry for my late reply but this "My Project" forum has been the only one I had not subscribed to - so I missed to read your reply. But I changed that so from now on I get an email whenever someone is posting here...
However, here are some comments:
Yes, I now can clearly understand what your demands are. If you run SCADA on our RevPi this would always be a webserver based software. That means you will edit your pictures (i.a. "engineer your visual output") using a windows software and any ordinary PC. Then you tranfer the runtime data to the RevPi using Ethernet. From this point on your RevPi will publish SCADA pictures which can be seen by any browser which connects to the system (using LAN or if you like to use TeamViewer for RevPi also using WAN - an Internet connection would then be mandatory).
For any software using the build in web server I strongly recommend to use RevPi Core 3 because of a much higher compute power.
You would use 2 RevPi DI for 32 digital inputs. These are 24 = high, GND = low. So if you need to use NPN sensors you could use a pull up resistor to 24 V and simply inverse the signal during computation. But I do not recommend going this way as tehre are many PNP sensors out on the market which do not cost more than NPN. Using NPN with pullup means you get lots of additional power dissipation over the pullups. Let's assume your sensor would have an OFF resiteance which is high enough to use a 1 kOhm pullup this would result in I = U/R = 24 mA. 24 mA * 24 V results in over 1/2 Watt power loss over teh resitor whch needs to be a high power resistor then and which would result in 10 Watt heat for all 20 inputs together. If the sensors are off most of the time and only will have short input pulses then you will end up in a mean power dissipation of 10 Watt heat. Not a good idea if you could do the same with PNP sensors and ending up with a view mW power dissipatioin...
You have not said anythng about timing: Please let me know how long the on pulses of the sensors will be and how often per minute or second they will fire. I do ask this because the resolution of our DI modules is limited. If you use them as counters they will be able to count up to 2 kHz. But if you use them as ordinary on/off digital inputs you will not be able to securely detect pulses which are shorter than a PiBridge cycle. You piBridge cycle will be arround 5 ms (could be also less) with a system using only 2 DI and running all inputs as pure digital 1 bit input. So your PNP on pulses of teh sensors should be longer than 5, better 10 ms to be securely detected and registered in the central process image.
Once this is no problem and your pulses are long enough you will get the date into teh central process image without any stress.
The next point is visualisation. If the SCADA pictures are all you need then You do not need an HDMI monitor and mouse/keyboard. You would run the system "headless" and simply use the Ethernet connecor to get it into a LAN (i.e. get it connected to any switch). Use any system with a browser connected to this LAN (Linux, Wndows, Mac, Android) so use the SCADA GUI.
Id you additionally would like to have a direct GUI then things become a little more complicated. You could use a browser on the RevPi and booting the system into GUI mode (X-window) to see the browser's window on an HDMI connected to the RevPi. If you use a touch monitor for this (e.g. Faytech monitors) you could use USB for touch input.
A different way to use HDMi would be to programm your own output using Python and one of the excellent GUI libraries avialable for free.

Bulding a SCADA with all the possibilities you need could be well done with Procon Web IoT. This software does use the RevPi's central process image and can show every thig you mentioned. You may need some time to get ackquainted to this software as it is a very powerfull engineering tool which can be used for huge fatories. But if you are familiar with object orientated programming languages and the concept of classes you will soon get the point. IT's not that you would need to programm anything but is is just the fact that Procon Web uses the same kind of "thinking" by working with classes (object types) and instances (objects).
If you fear to get into this kind of tool then I would recommend you better go for a software called X-vision which is also soon available for RevPi. It is much easier to be handled and teh enineering tool is more intuitive. On the other side it is more limited compared to proCon Web - but it should also be able to display all what you want to do.

It may be that you will need to make some calculations which cannot be done with teh SCADA (e.g. like having counters to be used for the time line diagramms) but I*m not deep enough in these 3rd party software tools to definitely tell you what is possible and what not. If you have very precise demands you could post them on our 3rd party forums and GTI (the manufacturer of Procon) might be able to tell you if your ideas can be done without programming.
If you do need to programm these counters it would be no big deal: You could simply use a littel Python or C programm which would work like a deamon in the background and calculate your numbers. If you use the "virtual module" in PiCtory (the configuration tool) you get space in teh process image where you can write your calculation results into to be avialable for the SCADA software...
Any slow mode suversision and control of data could be additionally done with Node-Red. This is a wonderful tool to easily trigger emails or http-requests whenever a certain situation is detected. It uses simple drag and drop and configuration of properties to result in these high level functionalities. Please have a look in the Internet for examples in Node-Red. You could e.g. easily generate a message when a certain limit of a counter is reached etc...

Hope these ideas do help you for deciding the way you will go.
Good luck,
Volker.
Unser RevPi Motto: Don't just claim it - make it!
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