Has anyone connected to a GE Fanuc 90-30? if so how? and where you able to access the tags? how can i do the address ?
There’s no driver in Ignition at this time (on my to-do list eventually). You’ll have to use Kepware or GE’s own OPC server.
Thanks . Any interest on doing the this part of the to do list faster ? We would be happy to buy a driver like that. We currently have 19 GE 90-30 Ethernet CPUs.
Well, it’s cheaper to buy a copy of Kepware than to pay me to write a driver (several copies of Kepware, really). These things happen when I have dead time or a paying customer.
Sometimes customers are able to use the Modbus driver with these, but I think you need to have some kind of Modbus comms module.
Thank you, got working with Kepware. I’m still interested to still get someone to build this driver. my goal is to offer ignition in my home country back in argentina, which has around 1500 Tetra pak machines, all with 90 30’s so building one would make sense for future anyway.
for now since this is for my own plant and I needed a solution, I bought Kepware so far so good. very easy to use.
After doing a little searching it appears this driver has been on the to do list for a while. I know kepserver will work but its still one more software that our IT would have to manage, along with an addition failure point to worry about.
I am little confused as to why if its a just a matter of writing the driver that Ignition hasnt offered to take this on. Either way I would certainly be interested to know what kind of motivation would be required for you to write this driver?
The protocol used to communicate with these PLCs is not open or documented, and at the moment we are not interested in implementing drivers that require reverse engineering.
I get that you would not want to support something not officially supported. But I am curious then, how are Wonderware and Kepware able to offer and support this driver? Is this something they reverse engineered, or something that was cooperatively developed with GE/Fanuc.
AFAIK they have reverse engineered most of the drivers they have for undocumented/proprietary protocols (from discussions I had with Kepware engineers in the past), but I guess if there were some kind of agreement with the relevant companies I would not necessarily know about it.
I'm under the impression that GE 30/90 is no longer supported anyway. These systems can be upgraded to Proficy and still use the original 30/90 cards for I/O. From there, CIMPLICITY can be used to message any information that is needed for HMI control.
Looks like most of the reverse engineering for this protocal has already been publically documented.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1742287617301925
This may be true for GE plc's, but even now in 2022 we are still buying Fanuc robots with the snpx option, as this is still one of the only ways to directly read/write to register values. You can use Ethernet/IP EDA but this is still indirectly controlling registers though digital I/O.
Heh, somebody else’s reverse engineering work is not exactly the public documentation I’m looking for.
Market demand to justify bumping off the bottom of my queue. Or a sponsor willing to front the $$ for a large percentage of the time it takes to develop this (and offer access to test hardware).
It is on my list because I reverse engineered it long ago (2003-ish) to write a custom C solution to work with systems based on CPU 364 and 374. Porting C to java and adding the layers to integrate with Ignition is time-consuming. (I have a CPU 364 in my office lab, fwiw.)
I haven't seen the demand to justify it. Yet. Or had the free time to do it anyway. (Heh. Free time. I can vaguely remember such a thing.)