Software Toolbox Technical Blog

Welcome back to our Summer of IoT blog series! We hope that last week’s introduction to the series created excitement as we continue to explore how our IoT solutions can help you achieve even greater success with your Industry 4.0 and Digital Transformation initiatives.

In today's video blog, we will be integrating REST with MQTT by using OPC Router to connect to a RESTful API service and publish data to HiveMQ's MQTT Broker. Although we will use a public webservice to illustrate the concept, the steps we take would be the same for any OT or IT data source that can serve data via a RESTful web service/API.

Originally developed by the American Heating Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers, BACnet (short for Building Automation and Control Network) is a communications protocol primarily used in building automation systems to control the data exchange between different devices and components. If you're reading this, you’re likely familiar with the building automation and control industry and might have a BACnet controller being used in your industrial process.

DNP3 (Distributed Network Protocol) is a communications protocol primarily used for communications between a client application such as HMI, SCADA, or Historian and Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) or Intelligent Electrical Devices (IEDs). Originally designed for power distribution and transmission, the DNP3 protocol has also found a home in water/wastewater, oil & gas, and transportation thanks to its robust error checking and if applied properly, efficient bandwidth usage.

If you're reading this, you may be a part of one of these industries and might have a DNP3 RTU being used and need to integrate data from that process. If so, we can certainly help with that. A newer application of DNP3 is in the Emerson FB-3000 RTU's used in oil & gas. Our FB-3000 EFM Exporter leverages the TOP Server DNP3 driver to generate FlowCal CFX export files.

The TOP Server DNP3 Client Suite supports data access from any device supporting the DNP3 protocol that acts as a server, over serial or Ethernet connections, wired or wireless/radio.

Our DNP3 drivers also boast deep functionality advantages including things like:

• Automatic Tag Generation support for Channel and Device Configuration, Authentication Statistics, Data Set, Device Attribute, and File Control
• Support for Integrity & Event polls across multiple classes that users define in the RTU to provide different frequency of retrieval for different points
• Unsolicited messaging from the devices on conditions defined in the RTU
• Analog deadband configuration
• Secure DNP3 Support (Configurable User Authentication, Aggressive Mode support, User Key Management, Auto-generated internal Authentication Statistics tags)
• Preservation of timestamps set in the device
• WITS Phase 1, 2, and 3 support for the water industry
• File transfer support (critical for Emerson FB-3000 devices, and used by some devices for remote configuration file upload and activation)

In this video blog, we'll show you how to get started using our TOP Server DNP3 Client Ethernet driver to connect and gather process data from a DNP3 device for HMI, SCADA, Historian, MES, and other client applications. For a deep dive into how DNP3 polling works and is different, for good reasons, than many protocols, read our DNP3 Polling Behavior technical blog.

The GE Ethernet family of PLCs and PACs is one of the most popular controllers across many automated industries. If you're reading this, you likely have at least one GE Ethernet controller being used in your industrial process and need to integrate data from that process.

The TOP Server GE Ethernet driver supports data access from devices using the GE SRTP Ethernet Protocol, including Series 90-30, Series 90-70, Horner OCS (Horner's Operator Control Stations), PACSystems RX3i and RX7i, and the VersaMax Family, as well as an expanded range of GE PLCs through the open device model selection within the driver.

In this video blog, I'll show you how to get started using our GE Ethernet driver to connect and gather real-time process data from GE controllers for HMI, SCADA, MES and other client applications.

LGH File Inspector for AVEVA InTouch (formerly Wonderware) enables easy, scalable, fast access to local daily historical data files (*.lgh files) logged by AVEVA InTouch applications without the limitations imposed by other solutions. There are many advanced features in the product and options for automating queries to run without user interaction to generate reports, exports, and more.  

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a file format that has become fairly common in the industrial automation industry for storing data or information (including such things as configuration files). But also as one of the most common data formats used by RESTful APIs and web services, which are commonly used for providing a range of useful information including energy prices and weather data.

Sometimes, of course, depending on the application, some or all components of JSON packet might be variable or dynamic in nature, which can make it difficult for off-the-shelf industrial software solutions to properly parse the information from those packets.

In this post, I will cover step-by-step how to leverage the scripting capabilities of the OPC Router to access and parse JSON packets either from a JSON file saved to a specific file directory or from a RESTful web service after which that data can be used with any of the other connectors that OPC Router supports. For this example, we log the data to a SQL database.

If you're reading this, you likely have at least one Siemens S7 PLC on your network being used in your industrial process and need to integrate data from that process. And if you're still using traditional Siemens variable-type addressing to access your S7 controllers, you need traditional S7 TCP/IP protocol connectivity.

In this video blog, I'll show you how to get started using our Siemens TCP/IP Ethernet driver to connect and gather real-time process data from Siemens S7 PLCs for AVEVA software applications and other clients.

Modbus is one of the most widely used protocols around the world, implemented as the communications protocol by many different vendors for integration with other systems. If you're reading this, you likely have at least one Modbus device (whether it's a PLC, RTU or other device) being used in your industrial process and need to integrate data from that process.

In this video blog, I'll show you how to get started using our Modbus TCP Ethernet driver and it's flexible settings to connect and gather real-time process data from pretty much any Modbus Ethernet capable device for HMI, SCADA, MES and other client applications.