Last Thursday, October 1st, Ben Zeinz and I attended the afternoon session of an MSDN event entitled "Real World Azure". It introduced Windows Azure ahead of its upcoming release. The morning session was geared towards IT personnel while th...
While commissioning the automation controls for a manufacturing line, I acquired some tips and tricks for configuring a Profibus network on a Simatac 505 (formerly known as a TI 505). Using 505 Workshop version 4.32 development environment from Fastr...
I recently deployed a system where I needed a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 to automatically logon after a shutdown, blackout or any other power loss to the system. Here's what I did to solve this issue: Disable Event Tracker In W...
I was working with Vijeo Designer 5.0 on a recent project and, overall, found it rather enjoyable to work with. Vijeo Designer is the Schneider Electric / Telemecanique programming software for the Magelis XBT-GT HMI's along with several other SC...
DMC has entered an Integrator relationship with IFM Effector centered around their unique and exciting 3D Image Sensor. This is an industrial, cost-effective Time-of-Flight Camera that measures the distance to everything in its field of view based on...
A simple yet common problem when programming a Siemens Simatic S7-300 PLC is losing the data already stored in the PLC after downloading an updated data block. If you are simply adding items to the end of a flat data block (not adding items to a u...
One of the more fun, and sometimes challenging aspects of working at DMC are service calls to work on legacy systems, hardware, and software. I have recently been working on a Baldor motion control system with a Visual C++ 6.0 front end. When I fi...
In the past, DMC has used MS SQL Server Reporting Service (SSRS) on multiple projects as a web-based reporting engine. I personally liked using SSRS a lot because it allowed us to design quite complicated reports in very little time. At the same time...
DMC received a record number of visitors to our booth at yesterday's job fair at the University of Illinois. In our quest to hire the best of the best, Jon Carson and I met and spoke with some really promising candidates and managed to collect al...
If you have never heard about Genesis32 SCADA package from Iconics, this is the right time to learn more about it before we continue. I shall wait right here... Good, now you know what I am talking about. We'll talk about GraphWorX32, this ...