- Address: 148 Jellicoe Street, Te Puke
- Phone: (07) 573 9826
- Fax: 07 573 6755
- Email: office@concar.co.nz
- Website: www.concar.co.nz
MONO Compatible Unitronics .Net Communication DLL
First Beta Release
Welcome to the first beta release of the Mono Unitronics Communication DLL.
Initially Unitronics created the .Net Communication DLL for Windows that allows for Binary and ASCII communication
to any Unitronics PLC via Serial, Ethernet or Modems. While this DLL was sufficient
enough for any Windows user, we at Conway & Carpenter Electrical needed this type of communication
on a Linux Server.
As you may or may not know, Mono is a project that has been running for a few years now that allows for running
.Net code on a Linux operating system. Just recently the Mono project has supported C# .Net 3.0, which makes
the whole idea of running .Net code under Mono on Linux just that bit more appealing. We decided to team up with
Unitronics and create a fully Mono compatible DLL based off their .Net communication DLL for Windows called
UniComm.
This Mono communication DLL (UniComm) has been under development here at Conway & Carpenter Electrical for the past
few months, and is now being released as a beta. This first beta release has been under 24/7 constant testing
on our UniVision Server for about a month now, but there is sure to be a few bugs in there still. We will be putting
up a tutorial page on how to install Mono, how to use the UniComm DLL and how to use MonoDevelop.
Feel free to contact us using the details above if you are interested in finding out more about Mono and the UniComm DLL
or if you get stuck and need help.
UniComm 1.0 Beta 1
Free Download
The UniComm Binary Library is free for download by the public. The ZIP
and Tar versions both contain two files; UniComm.dll and PLCModels.xml.
Please make sure these two files are always in the same directory when
using the DLL.
UniComm 1.0 Beta 1: Download TAR (10/11/2008)
UniComm 1.0 Beta 1: Download ZIP (10/11/2008)
Note: The UniComm DLL currently only logs to a txt file where the DLL
is located, we do have plans to make a more advanced logging system for
the DLL in the future. The PLCModels.xml file will become obsolete into
the future.
UniVision Server - Remote PLC Access
Future Release
Over the past few months we have been developing a PLC Server called UniVision that has the ability
to listen on a port for a PLC, and once connected via a Modem or via Ethernet, UniVision can log certain
points to MySQL, send SMS Messages out to customers and write data back to the PLC.
We currently have 10 PLC's connected to UniVision 24/7 with data update rates of around 5 seconds. Once
logged in to this website, a customer can monitor the status of their remote system, change set points,
see graphs of changing values and much more. Using AJAX we can update the values on a website page without
having to reload the entire page! Historical values are also logged into MySQL every 1 minute, giving the customer
a lot of historical data for use into the future.
We are looking at opening our website out world wide in the future, allowing any PLC in any country
that has either a local broadband connection or a GPRS enabled modem to connect to one of our servers
and have particular values displayed, trended, logged and graphed. SMS Messaging from our servers can also
be setup to go to any mobile phone in the world if a value was to change state or change dramatically. We will
also have multiple API's setup for those groups that would like access to their PLC's raw data for displaying
on their own website or their own software.