Now that you have the topic created, and the data is updating, you can just re-paste this link as many times as you like. Right-click a cell and choose “Paste Special”.Īt last, we see the value is updating in real time.
Our goal is to paste the accumulated value into a cell, so it can update in real time (Or near real time). In this instance, I’m using Openoffice Calc. Click on Edit (from the menu bar), then Copy OPC/DDE topic.įinally, browse for the tag “MyTimer.ACC” as shown, then press OK.Īt last, I will open the spreadsheet program. Thirdly, we need to copy the link from RSLinx, so we can paste the topic into our spreadsheet. If you need this to update faster, go to the “Data Collection” tab, to change the update time. Be sure the name of the topic, and the processor are both highlighted at the same time. Then I created a topic named “MyTopic”, and pointed this shortcut to the processor. In order to access the topics, we will open RSLinx. The topic will act as a “shortcut” to our processor.
I’ve set up this timer simply to demonstrate how to display the data in a spreadsheet. When the accumulated value of the timer reaches, the preset, this timer will start all over. Our goal in this example is to display the accumulated value in an OpenOffice (Or LibreOffice) spreadsheet. Exampleįirst of all, let’s take a look at some code in the processor. This topic has a name, and this will be important to. To setup the communication you must configure a DDE/OPC Topic and point it to the PLC controller. You can also use this feature for reporting, trending, etc. What the RSLinx Classic does is in rough words connect to the PLC over Ethernet/IP (or other communication protocol) and bridge the data as OPC server, which can be reached from OPC Clients. The next time the equipment fails, you can simply open the spreadsheet to see what condition is not met. If your equipment fails to start, you can open a spreadsheet that has all of the conditions listed that must be met before the equipment will run. One reason is to create a troubleshooting tool. There are many reasons you would want to do this.