Connecting remote energy meters to Ignition Server

Hi All,

I've been trying to find the best solution and most cost-effective, has anyone had any experience in connecting remote routers over cellular to ignition? The set-up at the moment is a remote serial Modbus energy meter connected to a Cellular router. The router can read the registers and post-connect to a server or it has a MQTT function. I haven't tried to set this up, Can Ignition talk directly to the router or do i need to use the MQTT and an exchange? The other option is to use a Micro computer with Ignition edge sync services. I know you can get Edge-ready routers but they are very expensive. A Rasberry might work but they are hard to get at the moment.

Any learned lessons?
Thank you

Welcome, I do this with over 100 sites remotely dialing back in.

I use Moxa MB3170 to convert RTU to TCP. Then mainly Robustel R2000 router with OpenVPN.

Open VPN is free and the robustel routers are cheap yet fast and reliable.

MQTT has extra layers of complexity, additional cost, and some known drawbacks already discussed on this forum.

Hmmm. Will have to try one of these.

Mr Al the Pal has seen them and was impressed by the speed.

Being from their country of origin, they might not be widely adopted/accepted in the US.

Our others are M!dge and NetModule NB1600, and they are oh so much slower to do basic config.

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Thank you, are you using any edge services on the router? or did you configure ignition to connect to the Robustel router. The router im using is the RUT955 [RUT955 - 4G/LTE RS232/RS485 Router]

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The Ignition server can see the OpenVPN server (separate server, Linux). In Ignition, I enter the OpenVPN tunnel address for the device and port. In the router, I do a port forward from the tunnel to the end device. This way, you can have sites with identical IPs;

e.g. every MB3170 you deploy can be 10.10.10.1, and therefore if you have a failure (and assuming your RTU settings like baud rate, parity etc are identical), then you don't need someone with a laptop to swap out hardware.

If you go down the OpenVPN route:

  • Use UDP
  • Use a combination of CCD with ifconfig-push, don't rely on or use IPP.

I have Ignition Edge at some sites, but it is the exception and not the norm.

With OpenVPN, everything appears as if it were on a local LAN. I can sit in my office and fire up a client connection using OpenVPN connect, and reach any device on the distributed network as if I were directly sitting beside it.

I have no experience with your routers but looking at the model name they already have 485 built in, so you may not need an MB3170. The routers I use only have RJ45 ports.

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Thank you,

Ill have a go at the OpenVpn, seems like a cost-effective way of doing it. I also like your idea of sites with identical IPs

No worries, another thing to consider if someone higher up is pushing for MQTT;

MQTT by its nature publishes on change. For power and energy monitoring, you do not want that. It is important to know that the power has remained the same for a period of time, as it is to know of a change.

I use rut955 + OpenVPN

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Do you have any way of using store and forward, or do you accept the data is lost should the network lose connection?

S+F requires Edge Core + Edge Sync, to give you 7 days or 10 million rows, whichever may come first, or if using MQTT 7 days but the 10M rows restriction is removed.

I recommend the OnLogic CL210G-11, Quad-Core, 4GB RAM. Use Linux.

Up to you if you take the RS485 into the router, let it convert to TCP, then back into the OnLogic, or whether you get a NUC with serial, or whether you use an MB3170.

Thank you.
good solution, it seems like a lot of hardware and cost for one meter, on top of an Edge license. The Open Vpn and GSM router for this application may be the best.

Hi @gerardopignatiello96 do you use the setup in the link? ive been trying it but i can't seem to get VPN to connect, I keep getting errors in the TLS key negotiation, handshake failing

https://wiki.teltonika-networks.com/view/Connecting_to_the_office_network_remotely_from_your_home_via_VPN_(OpenVPN)_using_RUTX#TLS_Certificates

I just ordered a RTUX50, that will host Ovpn for my remote workshop. Should arrive middle of this week.

From my robustel experience, you should have:

site.crt
site.key
client.crt
ta.key

the ta.key is the TLS auth, did you generate one on your server setup?

Hi,
yes, i got OpenVpn to generate the keys and certs, I think I may be having issues with the public IP address.

Pub stat only needed at server end, ensure your firewall is allowing traffic for the OpenVPN port