Are you planning to develop an energy monitoring module, similar to ICONICS’ ENERGY ANALYTIX OR B&R’s APROL ENMO?
I’m not familiar with those modules, what features do they provide?
Robert, take a look at the following links:
iconics.com/Home/Products/An … lytiX.aspx
Hi Jose,
There is nothing like this that I know of. Unless one of the integrators has started developing it. What is your interest in this? Are you looking for a system that does this or do you want to build and sell this?
Hi Robert,
I’m interested in Ignition to provide an easily configurable module capable of doing that, the main reason is that most of the major SCADA manufacturers on the market, Siemens, Scheneider, Intouch, etc don’t provide a reliable and consystent SCADA+ENERGY MONITORING software, in fact many of them, encouraged by the energy efficiency fever, Smart Grids, etc have rushed to acquire companies that had already developed any software tool of this type, in order to integrate it with their well known SCADA software, without achieving it.
To summarize, I think that it would be an important advantage for Inductive Automation to have an energy monitoring module.
Kind regards,
pm sent
This is one of the great aspects of Ignition. I have built a building automation suite with it.
I have struggled through many parts of it incorporating features and technology I had very little experience with.
I did not have the option to spec any hardware which has made my struggle even greater.
They key is to find the matching protocols. Examples:
For energy monitoring I use Eaton power expert current meters over mod us tcp
Hvac controls use Nova logic one controller and watt master controls. To support this I incorporate the active x controls to view a web server on the Novar and also use scripting to parse the data into tags.
To support watt master which is proprietary I incorporate a dependency to a pre installed application on the client
machine by externally launching an exe. Not the best but it was a solution.
For lighting controls I incorporated a soap/XML server from cutler hammer that uses a proprietary mod us map
I send XML formatted messages to turn breakers on and off. These are dedicated to lighting.
I can keep going more but I’m using a tablet I will update later with more of the architecture.
The moral is that with ignition and some creative connectivity all of these things are possible.
Wow - Tailfire - those are some creative applications you’ve come up with!
Nice work Tailfire. Out of curiosity, how much time have you spent on that project?
It is an evolving project but I am about 4 months in after the ‘go live’ with users.
I never did have to do the stress test. But that was a different thread.
To round out the list I also have 2 AB 1769 L32E’s out in the shop with an 8 channel analog card.
I use those to gather data from “process water” flowmeters from hoffer controls and shop air pressure sensors from Keyence to monitor shop air pressure points. both configured 4-20Ma current.
I also incorporate sql querys to display data from other systems internal to our plant that was already in place before ignition. The operators use a web interface that was already designed in php to enter the data. I use Ignition to combine the technologies into the one client.
One thing to mention is that I seem to always be defending the capabilities of Ignition against
the website that already runs on 100’s of thin clients throughout our factory. I also do not have corporate support. Which is another struggle.
Anyway that about rounds out the system so far for this post.
Wow, sounds like you’ll be busy for several more months. Hope you get corporate support soon. If you can do all that in 4 months image what the project will do after a year!