Software Toolbox Technical Blog

While the recent winter storm in Texas and its rolling energy shortages has brought the subject of the availability of affordable energy and deregulation of power markets to the forefront of the conversation, this has been a problem in many areas of the world for a long time. This is mainly because of the large fluctuations in the price of energy that both residents and businesses have to endure.

It's ultimately the law of supply and demand driving such issues - when energy supply is eclipsed by extraordinary demand for it, an inconvenience during the best of times becomes a crisis in the case of extreme situations such as unexpected winter weather, devastating storms, hotter than normal summers and other unpredictable situations.

In the case of manufacturing and other industries that rely on energy as an input for operations, the cost of energy can literally determine whether a production run is profitable or not. This post discusses methods for monitoring energy costs in real-time from your HMI, SCADA or MES system using OPC UA or OPC DA, for decision support to prevent avoidable losses. 

As you may already be aware, the Cogent DataHub has a wide range of flexible connectivity options between different data sources such as MQTT, OPC UA, OPC DA, ODBC, DDE and so much more.  MQTT client and broker functionality in particular allow DataHub to integrate MQTT data sources with HMI, SCADA, MES, historian and other systems that don't natively support MQTT.

In this next installment of our Cogent DataHub Virtual Training series, we will cover step-by-step how to easily connect 3rd party MQTT clients to the DataHub MQTT broker and convert their data for access by your own systems with OPC UA or OPC DA client capabilities.

Cogent DataHub is always expanding its wide range of flexible connectivity options between different data sources such as MQTT, OPC UA, OPC DA, ODBC, DDE and so much more.  With the advent of IIoT and its increasing adoption across industries, connectivity to various traditionally non-IIOT data sources via MQTT is key.

If you're not familiar with the concept of a virtual or digital twin, it's the idea of virtual modeling a physical asset or system.  Ultimately, the key motivators for creating digital twins is having the ability to accurately model and predict what will happen with the real-world physical equivalent of that digital twin.  Digital twins are extremely beneficial towards predictive analytics used for pro-active maintenance and process optimization across industries.

In this next installment of our Cogent DataHub Virtual Training series, we will cover step-by-step how to easily connect and push data from OPC data sources to digital twins in the Azure IoT Hub including how to optionally do so through a network DMZ (DeMilitarized Zone) using an additional DataHub as a proxy server for even greater security.

Cogent DataHub enables a wide range of flexible connectivity options between interfaces for different data sources such as OPC UA, MQTT, OPC DA, ODBC, DDE and so much more.  This is why we commonly refer to DataHub as a "gateway", as it is frequently utilized for data integration by external software such as HMI, SCADA, MES, historians and other client applications, including for IIoT integration.

In Part 1 of our Cogent DataHub Virtual Training series, we will cover step-by-step how to easily connect OPC UA (Data Access Profile) client applications to your OPC DA Classic server data sources.

Cogent DataHub supports a wide range of connectivity interfaces for different data sources such as OPC UA, OPC DA, ODBC, DDE and so much more.  With those interfaces, DataHub is a flexible gateway commonly used for data integration by external software such as HMI, SCADA, MES, historians and other client applications.

In this video blog, I'll show you how to access data from AVEVA InTouch (formerly Wonderware) or AVEVA System Platform (formerly Wonderware) from OPC UA clients supporting the Data Access profile using the DataHub OPC Gateway.

Cogent DataHub enables a wide range of connectivity interfaces for different data sources such as OPC UA, OPC DA, ODBC, DDE and so much more.  As such, DataHub is a flexible gateway commonly used for data integration by external software such as HMI, SCADA, MES, historians and other client applications.

In this video blog, I'll show you how to make a secure OPC UA connection from OPC UA clients supporting the Data Access profile to DataHub for integrating process data from a myriad of data sources.

You've likely already heard about Cogent DataHub and it's MQTT integration capabilities.  The DataHub MQTT Client goes beyond just generically connecting to MQTT Brokers by providing smart connectors for Azure IoT Hub, Google IoT and Amazon IoT Core MQTT Broker services.

The following short video blog demonstrates step-by-step how to easily configure the DataHub MQTT Client for publishing OPC UA and OPC DA data from DataHub to the Azure IoT Hub, as well as, pushing data from the many other data sources supported by Cogent DataHub (such as ODBC, DDE, Modbus and more).

As you are likely already aware, Cogent DataHub Version 9 expands the assortment of data sources you can integrate to include IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) with MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) support.  As with its many other supported data sources (such as OPC), DataHub V9 can act as both a "client" and a "server" for MQTT - with a "server" being an MQTT broker.

The following short video blog demonstrates how truly easy it is to configure the DataHub MQTT Broker for acting as a "gateway" between MQTT Clients in your IIoT cloud and other supported interfaces including OPC, DDE, ODBC and many other data sources.