March 2012
Send/Receive SMS (text messages) with a SoftPLC PAC
M2M (machine to machine) communications or managing
remote systems is easy and lower cost with SMS messaging. Via
ladder instructions, SoftPLC's can both send and receive SMS messages
that contain data or text.
Example
uses for SMS instructions:
-
Alarms/Alerts - receive, acknowledge
-
Asset Monitoring/Tracking
-
Remote data acquistion - receive production
totals, average daily status process data, etc.
-
Send setpoint adjustments
-
M2M - diagnostics, material/service call
systems, smart devices
-
many, many others

These
instructions give you full
programatic control over the
conditions to send messages. FIFO queueing is implemented, which
supports multiple messages that are triggered in a very small window of
time, such as in an alarm annunciation application.
We currently provide support for an external GSM
modem (Cat No ICOMDM-GSM - see
below) and some
SoftPLC models have an embedded GSM modem. We also offer SIMs and
very low cost SMS and data plans.
Contact us to learn more!
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Rugged, Low Cost Cell Modems
Need an industrial cell modem? We offer GSM
and CDMA serial modems that are compact, low power, flexible mount, and
industrially rated. Modem, antenna, power supply and
serial cable are all included in the low cost package, which supports
externally accessible SIMs.
The GSM modem, Cat No ICOMDM-GSMA,
is a quad-band design that allows for world-wide deployment, having
FCC, PTCRB, CE, and carrier approvals from AT&T, T-Mobile and
Rogers.
Click here for a
product data sheet.
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Application Story - PLC-5
Migration
At
the
Bonlac Foods plant in Tasmania, Australia they
process milk and
produce a range of powdered milk products.
The wet process area was
originally controlled by a PLC-5/80E that was out of memory and I/O
capacity. The ladder program consisted of 12,665 rungs of ladder code
- primarily drives, valves, 17 PID control loops and 200 control
sequences. All these were controlling routing and cleaning of milk
lines and silos, where each line must be rinsed, caustic washed,
rinsed, acid washed and rinsed again before use.
A plant upgrade involved the
addition of 30
Profibus valves and other associated equipment in the wet
process area. Since the system already used the largest PLC-5 possible,
and it was completely full, an alternate solution was required.
After reviewing the possible upgrade/replacement
options, a
SoftPLC PAC was chosen as the best option for the reasons of
cost effectiveness,
reliability and long term maintainability. The SoftPLC offered Bonlac
the ability to use a drop-in PLC CPU replacement that would
easily interface with all the existing I/O, equipment, networks, PLC
controllers and Citect SCADA system.
Another huge advantage was that
the programming and configuration of all the other equipment and SCADA
did not
need to be changed in any way.
The PLC-5 ladder logic
was imported to SoftPLC with no logic changes required! Then the
programming for the new equipment was added to the system.
The
SoftPLC connected to the existing 7 racks of SLC-500
I/O, with no wiring changes.
The
SoftPLC services communications
networks which include an ethernet connection to (2) Citect I/O
servers and (6) Citect Display Clients and a DH+ connection to (9) A-B
PLC-5's, (8) A-B Panelviews and (1) A-B SLC-5/04. The Citect System
uses a total of 28,000 tags.
The
SoftPLC has been running the Wet Process Section of the Bonlac
Foods milk powder production facililty since 1999. The
PLC-5/80E replacement was a complete success! The system was
upgraded with minimum disruption to the process - in fact, the plant
continued production throughout the upgrade. The SoftPLC has proven
to be all that was claimed, with no recorded downtime due to the
SoftPLC.
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