Author Topic: DDE or Excel Driver for read/write to Windows application or Excel  (Read 3697 times)

rms

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I know DDE is ancient and there are a lot of reasons NOT to use it, but I need to AHMI to communicate
(send data and receive data) via DDE to a specific application or non DDE communication (read/write) to Excel.

More info
There are multiple Bronkhorst liquid flow meters that are networked together via proprietary protocol called FlowBus. 

A device sits on that network and provides two way (read / write communication) to each flow meter
though a window application.
That windows application (FlowDDE or FlowDDE2)  is used to share data between the device and any windows app that can communicate via DDE
I'd like to use DDE to link AHMI with that FLowDEE to communicate with each flow meter as needed
DDE format is as follows (standard DDE format)
Server "FlowDDE" or "FlowDDE2" application running on Windows
Topic: Node # of specific to each flow meter
Item: paramater your requesting or writing for a specific topic 9(ie Flow, Temperature, Density, Set-point,
Process Variable ,etc)

I'd like a component or driver that can
1) read values from a DDE server (from Server,Topic,Item)  and display them on an AHMI screen via Analog Display,  Panel Meter, etc
2) wrtie values to a DDE server (to Server,Topic,Item) to be written to the corresponding  flow meter fields - mostly set-point
changes, but could be PID parameters, alarm values, resets, etc.

If that's not possible
Can I have the above that can do the same with an excel spreadsheet as I have the DDE data (from flow meters) reading
perfectly into excel cells at an acceptable refresh rate of a few times/sec. I just need to get the data from excel cells
to the AHMI screen.

So either a DDE "driver' or Excel "driver" or link to facilitate two way data exchange

Thanks
Rich