We have released a new Visual Basic program that can be used as the foundation for anyone interested in writing a Visual Basic program to connect to the PLC's built-in F-Server to communicate with the PLC using the Host Link command protocols.
Several useful functions with full source codes are provided to make it extremely simple to connect to the F-server using TCP/IP and to send/receive hostlink commands. A "ConnectToServer" function takes in the IP address, port number, username and password and login to the F-Server at the given IP address. After connection another function "appendFCS" can be used to convert the point-to-point hostlink command into a multipoint command (prefix with ID and post-fix with FCS) and finally, a "sendCommand" function would transmit the command string to the remote server and return a response string from the server.
To download the Visual Basic programs, please visit:
http://www.tri-plc.com/appnotes/AppnoteMain.htmand click on the topic "Visual Basic /GNU C++ Communication Sample Codes"
Note: A DLL is included in the program that provide the encryption class to encrypt the password to be transmitted to the F-Server.
