I have a standard application (interfaced with Rockwell CLX) that's been rolled out to several facilities, so common development has occurred that's implemented at each facility. This application is standard Ignition 8.1, Vision visualization (no perspective).
I have one facility that doesn't have time to upgrade their architecture to support a plant wide ignition until later in the year, but they want to move ahead with my application and PLC control in the summer. They have an Edge license. I'm not familiar with Edge other than the documents I've read on Inductive. How portable, back and forth can any application development be re-used between the two? It would be nice to start with the baseline app I've developed in Ignition Gateway, port the vision screens, templates, UDT's etc. over to Edge, further tailor for the plant, and then port this back to gateway at the end of the year when they complete full plant implementation of gateway.
Thanks....This particular app is light on Scada/DB needs, and mostly just traditional visualization ala Wonderware or FactoryTalk SE of PLC data. In fact an alternative is to implement in June in FactoryTalk SE for which I already have a baseline app developed. So, maybe a better question, would I or the plant gain anything for later portability by doing June's implementation in Edge or stick with SE until I can install the full Gateway version.
Is the problem the license cost? Because you can put full Ignition on wimpy hardware temporarily and move the license to the proper server hardware later. That would chop out all of the doubled engineering. If you choose a reasonable DNS name for the server up front, it would be dead simple to redeploy.
You could even buy the 1-client Vision module for full Ignition, and upgrade it later.
Redo-ing in Edge when you are going to throw it away later seems odd. So too with a temporary deployment of FactoryTalk View (cringe).
Yes, thats a big part. They already have a spare edge license they bought and never used, and they already have FT SE locense and support in the rest of the plant. Another issue im fighting is perception. Another integrator installed ignition gateway last year on a crappy network and it failed and took the plant down for a day as they could not run the line. So now the plant is very risk averse in regards to ignition, until a redundant gateway/IO server install occurs with proper network hardware (read NOT unmanaged cheap switches daisy chained around the plant). This particular plant has little IT or tech support locally and is on the west coast, whereas im east.
I agree implementing edge isnt ideal. At least with SE, its already done and minimal engineering to install as an interim solution.
If perception is a problem, I'd be especially leery of deploying just Edge. It isn't intended to be used stand-alone. It needs to be paired with a full install of Ignition to store more than 35 days of history (and the extra has to be viewed through the full install), for example. Its limitations will be another perception problem for Ignition. (Though I'm sad that Ignition is blamed for a crappy network.)
Excellent advice, thanks. Yes, its a problem im sure weve all encountered with customers not understanding root causes. All i hear is "we do not want any clients that have to have a network to run our production". They dont understand that every FTSE is connected to their PLCs on the same crappy network. But then again, a fair portion of their plant is still on PB32 and DH+.