I’m struggling to understand exactly how the edge plugins work. I’ve watched the video several times as well as reading the product sheet, but it just isn’t coming together for me.
I have an ignition server and several clients. I want to add a panel pc, but since the network connection might be lost at that location intermittently, I want to be able to do the store and forward.
Do I just need an edge panel? Do I need edge enterprise to get the S&F? Page 5 of the ignition edge product sheet (http://pages.inductiveautomation.com/rs/966-TUX-261/images/Ignition-EDGE-Product-Sheet.pdf at the bottom implies that I need both, but the 7.9 edge architecture video at 0:48 seems to indicate differently.
Can someone tell me what I need if I just want a panel PC as a client that can do S&F if the network connection is lost.
Thanks
I assume that by store and forward you mean “send historical data to a main gateway”. If so, then that capability requires Edge Enterprise. Edge comes with local storage, but the ability to send that data to another gateway is part of Edge Enterprise.
If you also want visualization on the Edge gateway (whether as fallback or standalone) then you need a Panel license as well. The Vision module has had a notion of ‘local client fallback’ for a long time - it’s not new to Edge, it just works particularly well there. Any Vision client has the ability to look locally for a running Ignition gateway and switch to it - so as long as you’ve got the Edge gateway directly running on the machine that will act as your “panel” PC, a Vision client running on that machine (connected directly to your main gateway) will automatically switch over to running the project from your Edge gateway if the network connection fails.
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Awesome, thanks.
So if I get the edge gateway running on the panel PC and run the vision client from the central gateway, the edge gateway will pick up the connection if it fails? Do I need EAM for the edge gateway to sync everything back up to the central gateway, or will it just work via magic?
So, client fallback is “dumb” - it just switches to a predefined project (in Edge’s case, the only project) on the Edge gateway. No project synchronization happens automatically. The two commonly recommended options are:
- Maintain a small, simple project on the Edge gateway that only gives local operators the information they need right then and there. Don’t worry about keeping things synchronized if you make changes on the “main” project - keep this fallback project as stripped down as possible to still keep things functional if the network fails.
- Use EAM and send a project/resources from your “main” gateway to your Edge gateway(s); either periodically or manually after you’ve made changes. This is obviously a “better” user experience, in that the screen operators are looking at doesn’t have to change significantly if the network drops out, but means a bit more engineering effort from you/whoever is developing these projects. In particular, the main thing to be aware of is tag providers. If you’re only using one “main” system and one “edge” system, that’s fairly easy; but if you’re going to connect multiple Edge systems (each with its own corresponding remote tag provider on the main system) then getting the tag providers (and all relative tag lookups inside the Vision project(s)) correct becomes more difficult. It’s not insurmountable, it’s just something you should be aware of (and ideally, plan for) from the start.
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