Mark, what’s the story behind IP Explorer? Who designed them, who makes them, where do you get them, who writes the firmware? It seem seems like just you and Tim sell them, just curious if you know the origins. I’m not asking for any trade secrets, just curious about it.
Dustin
He’s a PLCTalk member and has been working on PLCs since the 90s, I dont think he wants his name out in the world… he use to make PLC cables on ebay way back, I think he got tired of dealing with the consumer (dont blame him) but liked the development and manufacturing side so he lets Tim and myself represent his products.
He also makes the volt/current generator that I sell and a bunch of simulators and he does all his firmware and development… he is also a one man show, he’s way smarter than me but I sell the shit out of his products so its a great match. We also have several other things in common, I will send him a link and see if he wants to talk technical about his products
Here is some of his products
Oh dang, that’s even cooler than I thought.
Someone posted a link to the IPExplorer in my discord and before I checked where the link was pointing to, I posted your link as a recommendation. Then I realized that the first link posted was Tim’s store.
Does he make your comm cables too? NET-ENI?
The funny thing is… you know each other very well 
lol, I thought so but I wanted him to clarify before saying so.
He is going to email you
He use to make some complicated boards for me for some of my cables and I have tried to talk him into expanding but I think he is happy with his work load.
You and I should team up on a project, I have a few tools I can bring to the table, we should be able to make a few dollars.
He sent me an email, awesome stuff lol.
I’m not sure I’m smart enough to contribute, but DM me your idea, I’ll see if I can help.
No ideas yet… we need to brainstorm and anyone reading this is welcome to join in.
First we need a problem or something that someone makes we can make better or a lot cheaper. What is a pain to deal with or something that someone asks about?
I built a RFID reader that would read a chip in a glove that the employee wore and if the chip was not read than the machine would shut off, it was a meat slicer… I have done a few projects like that for Amazon, they own a bunch of business that I never knew, these were some sort of meat suppliers, I think deli meat and after they had a few employees slicing off parts of their had because they would not wear the gloves they asked me to come up with something.
Thoughts…
Idea 1) I thought about a downtime tracking device for equipment, a simple HMI with a couple inputs that would be easy for a tech or engineering to wire up to a machine that could report to them (daily, weekly) the machine uptime and downtime, there are a lot of management in the manufacturing world that want to know what their production is doing, I could build turn key little box that we could sell?
Idea 2) Something to do with simulation and teaching people how to program, I already have a site to sell these on and my customers are always looking for new tools
Idea 3) …..
I’m not against joining in and trying to help out, but as with all of my side projects time is the main issue.
Most of my main ideas recently have been software based, with no real hardware involved. Although one if I ever got off the ground could have been turned into some sort of embedded device you could easily wire up into a OT network.
Just before you fall asleep, think about what would be a good project…
I can handle most of the manufacturing side so software maybe just what we need and absolutely our other projects need to come first and this one will be on the back burner as we need to pay bills now, this project can pay bills later 
I’ll go ahead and give you the idea that I’ve been thinking about, and you guys can give your thoughts, although perhaps we would want to try and start with something smaller?
Essentially we had a couple of small projects that involved reading something in the PLC and initiating a response, like generating a certificate, logging some data to a CSV (new site only half built, wanted some data, had no SCADA or DB, or Historian, yet).
Then we had another site where they had a few power outages that lasted longer than the UPS for the server rack could last. When the power came back on someone had to go manually power up the server, but while it was doing useful things it wasn’t production critical and the customer would often not think of it, then message us a week later saying hey this stuff isn’t working (isolated network, no internet, nothing to monitor or notify when the server was down). Tied to the same power source as the server was a PLC that was just used for data collection from parts of the plant. When the power came back the PLC would too, and I thought hmm could this send a Wake On Lan packet to the server, and that’s what spawned the whole idea for this Call and Respond Software.
My initial thoughts for me was I could run it on whatever, a Windows Server, ESXi Host, a Raspberry pi, etc. Initially I was going to have it configured through config files, but this could be made into a package that you could purchase, a small device that is DIN rail mounted, boots into Linux, has a web interface to do config, and upload plugins.
I brainstormed a lot of how I could make this work, but it wasn’t a small task, and I never got out of the planning stages.
Idea4: Smaller, simpler. A small battery (usb rechargeable) powered analog data monitor. For those times, an analog signal history is needed, but no hmi or scada handy. Open up a cabinet, series in the data logger, come back in 24hrs and download the data as a csv file.
Not sure of the demand, but I have been to some older, smaller plants, that this would have been useful. Maybe a discrete input also.
May any one help me to fine ladder diagram for this circuit please
thank you
Is this homework? we dont help with homework….
I believe @mikeyN is referring to the original post in the infamous “Smoke and Mirrors” thread on PLCTalk.
Clearly a much simpler concept that mine, and I could see the utility of it in some places.
I bought a USB relay card. 4 SPDT relays controlled by a PC over USB. Wired each N.O. to a PLC input.
Using their software I can control the relays, but could never get any other software control I tried. Plus their software is only manual controls, not external commands to it.
If my DVR program detects motion it can be set to open a program specific to the camera that motion was detected on, but couldn’t get it to open and toggle a relay to my PLC running my custom-built alarm system. Node-Red won’t control it, plus the DVR program won’t write to Node-Red. AdvancedHMI neither.
Playing with MIDI & DMX it would be possible with a DMX relay card that is available but not cheap. The software for both can get a variety of external signals to trigger events.
Another idea, since there’s millions of SLC’s out there still
A remote IO module, discrete and analog combo’s, directly messagable by the MSG instruction of a SLC5/05 or ML1400 over Ethernet and other SLC’s & ML’s with a NET-ENI. Emulate a SLC data file with the I/O.
Message read the inputs (3 words, Word0=discretes & Word1 & Word2= analogs) and message write the Discrete output word.
Analog outputs might be nice too for an option.
Yah I figured as much, I had a little to do with that going sideways
Terry Woods always wanted all of us to join together and do something, I know we are smart enough… @vadoola is correct its about time management, there is never enough