We have the ability to send one program to many machines with the WiBox. It costs around $279 per box.
If you view my post titled 'Inexpensive Wireless Intranet Based Program Transfer to Multiple Machines' you will get a good picture as to the cost and implementation.
Most of our programs were developed on the modularity concept. This means many small files that house specific parts and one file that contains the variables that change between models.
When a download command is initiated, I concatinate the files specific to the machine that it is being sent to. I then open a Winsock connection to each machine and send the program as a batch.
A good example is the IBH Macro8000. This controller requires a leading 'CRLF' and then a '%CRLF'. All I have to do is read each file and concatinate them as separate programs. It looks something like this.
%
P123456
N12(test program 123456)
N9999M30
%
P234567
N12(test2 program 234567)
N9999M30
%
P345678
N12(test3 program 345678)
N9999M30
This is then read as one program into the IBH. The IBH control is set to AUX,9600,8,E,1. Ensure that you click on the LOAD ALL button. When the machine is ready to accept the program, run the
VB application that is discussed in the post I talked about above.
These programs will be loaded as one batch. You will see the program names listed in the message area of the screen as each one is loaded.
I place an 18 second delay between programs because I haven't developed the
VB Application to talk based on COMPORT connection. The application was developed to talk with NO FLOW CONTROL for the early Fanuc controls.
If you are interested in discussing this in more depth, please email me at
jamesneal6927@msn.com. I will be more than happy to talk about this.
Also, I am not, by no means, an expert in this field. I have been programming software for the past 11 years. I started out my IT career building computers for my brother, so I can leverage that knowledge and my programming skills to make these things work. The more time I spend on them the easier it gets to make them talk.
