Access PAC Display HMI connection & user info in strategy?

[jakerjaker]

Is there a way to access/ingest the PAC Display HMI connection and user information into the PAC Control strategy? I would like to do a number of things with it such as setup email/SMS alerts on HMI/user connection. Also it would be nice to be able to cease certain charts or functions whenever there is an intended or unintended remote HMI disconnect.

[Beno]

This thread here is about as close as you are going to get I think:

Security on Display runtime

Hello everyone, I use a SNAP PAC R2 with a PacDisplay HMI and I would like: View the name and group of the logger user permanently on a view. Retrieve this information at the level of my strategy. Add users and change passwords in runtime. Is there a solution?

[jakerjaker]

Thanks Beno. I did read that thread and I basically have the same problems as D-Man. This seems like a fairly convoluted way with lots of overhead coding to simply extract connection information and get it into PAC Control. I would think the controller must at least be aware of remote connection info (such as IP address) to negotiate TCP exchange whenever a connection is made from PAC Display. It’s just not made accessible? Seems like it would be a good feature add.

[Beno]

The PAC Controller has no idea who or what application is asking for its tag data.
We would have to make extensive code changes to both PAC Display and the controller firmware so that PAC Display could let the controller know not only that its PAC Display asking for the tag data, but which user in PAC Display is asking for the info.
Since any given PAC Controller could have more than one instance of PAC Display connected to it (I had around 8 to 10 PCs running PAC Display at the hospital I used to work at for example) you would need a table in the controller to keep track of which tags which PAC Display users are accessing.

Really non trivial feature to add, but we can keep it in mind.

[jakerjaker]

I understand why it would be hard to catalog all that information (each user/tag interaction) and get it into the controller. But I’m really just looking for connection up/down information by IP. User login info would be nice to have but not critical since it’s available in PAC Display logs. I’m using a single PC (with static IP) as the remote HMI machine. PAC Display is normally opened for an operation and then closed. On closed connections (especially unintended ones) it would be nice to cease some charts/logic to avoid erroneous operations. I’m sure there are other ways to do this logically, but the first thing that came to mind was checking for an up/down connection from the PAC Display PC.

[Beno]

If I am following what you are needing to do with PAC Display, I think this will work for you:

Best way to detect if communications is lost between Controller and Brains

Hey Watchdog Fans, For those of you wanting to keep track of PAC Display (if it’s still running) from within your PAC strategy, I tried out PilotMan’s suggestion of using the Alarm features in PAC Display. It was nice and simple and worked great! Here’s how I implemented his idea: I have some looping OptoScript with two int32 variables used with PAC Display, and a string to show the current status. // Initialize the value that PAC Display should set to 1 nPAC_Display_to_Increment = 0; …

[jakerjaker]

Yes, that looks like I can at least keep an eye on PAC Display being connected. Thanks for your help!