PrintFaqtory. The Reports to OPC, DDE, Modbus and Data Solution.

PrintFaqtory is a revolutionary new product that turns your printed reports into real data in a SQL Server, Oracle or MySQL database and accessible via OPC, DDE, Modbus and ODBC. No more hand data entry into Excel! Replace ALL your printers (and their expensive consumables) with PrintFaqtory and be up and running, with real data, in less then 30 mins. Try our fully functional, no time-outs or nag screens, 30 day demo and see how PrintFaqtory can solve just about any data gathering problem, often at a fraction of the cost and complexity of other solutions.

All PLCs, Lab Instruments, etc. will print (just try and stop them!) and they print ASCII to (usually) a RS232 serial port. It does not matter what make or protocol your device is, they all print in the same language, ASCII. It’s about the only thing they all have in common. PrintFaqtory can handle an unlimited number of ASCII reports from 256 comm ports, 2 parallel printer ports and unlimited RS232 over Ethernet (via RS232 to Ethernet converts) connections. PrintFaqtory is also a network printer for devices that can print to a Windows network. If you still require hard copy after PrintFaqtory is finished, each report can be individually directed to a local or network printer.

PrintFaqtory operates in two fundamentally different modes. The first mode, Continuous, is the simplest. In this mode, for example in a laboratory, the data in each report is a unique transaction and has no bearing on the data in the last version of the report (an invoice is a good example). In this mode, PrintFaqtory acts like an unending box of fanfold paper, saving all the data for each report. Once the data is in the database of choice it would then normally be integrated into a LIS (Laboratory Information System). More...

The second mode is Tag Mode. In this case the data in each report is updated values from the previous report. This is the type of data produced by PLCs and DCSs. Every installation of a PLC or (especially) a DCS has printers printing Tag or Alarm data. This is all valuable data, largely wasted on paper. The PLC/DCS can be easily programmed to print any Tag data, without anybody going on a training course! This is always THE easiest way to get at the data. In this mode, PrintFaqtory maintains a dynamic database of Tag names and updates the values on each printing of the relevant report. A variation on this mode, ‘Tag with History’ additionally saves a historical record for each value, every time the report prints. More...

PLC/DCS Alarm and Event logs can also be handled by PrintFaqtory. More...

As PrintFaqtory is not a real printer and can handle baudrates up to 480,000KB (with unlimited buffer capability), data transfer can be as fast as the PLC/DCS permits.

Data Access Features:

OPC. Printfaqtory is a full OPC 2 compliant server that is, without doubt, THE easiest to configure OPC Server available. A normal OPC configuration requires you to define each Tag individually, a lengthy and error prone task for several thousands of tags (or even 10). With PrintFaqtory, you just identify the column that contains the Tag names and the tags are created for you automatically, grouped under the name of the Report. And that’s not all. If you follow the OPC standard of the “.” notation in your Tag names then all your sub groups will be created automatically also. More...

DDE. Printfaqtory is a full DDE server with a separate Topic for each report. Available DDE Items are ‘TagName’, ‘TagValue’ and ‘TagUnits’, Fully compatible with Wonderware and virtually all other SCADA/HMI systems that use DDE. More...

Modbus. PrintFaqtory supports a subset of the industry standard protocol ModbusTCP. PrintFaqtory responds to FC3 (read holding registers) with the first defined report having a DeviceID of 2, the second report has an ID of 3, etc. More...

Database. PrintFaqtory can be configured to use Microsoft’s SQLServer V6.5 or better, Oracle 8/9i and MySQL (any version). Microsoft’s SQL Server2000 Desktop Edition and MySQL are included free with PrintFaqtory (CD only). More...