Title sounds weird but here is what I am trying to accomplish:
We build, operate and maintain facilities that tie into a cities water treatment plant. We send condensate from our facility to their water treatment plan. The city we are in now is looking to gain control of ONE of our valves to enable/disable flow into their treatment facility. We do not want them to have access to our entire network (or any other I/O), rather just be able to control the one valve. Hardwiring isn't exactly an option at this point, so I am looking for other ways to give them access to ONE valve. One thought that came to mind was trying to utilize the SMS messaging plus scripting (we have the module licensed and use the Sierra Wireless Airlink RV55 modem). I have it working with our operators sending out messages and emails, but curious if there is anyway to set up an incoming text/email that performs a tag value change.
If anyone has done this before, I'd love to hear how. Thanks in advance.
Consider creating a Perspective app for this purposes, and setting up a reverse proxy in public with this one app exposed. I doubt you will enjoy, or possibly not even succeed, with the SMS path.
I am not hopeful about the SMS path, that was just an idea. I was trying to avoid using perspective due to having to purchase the module, might be worth it though. Will look into it, thank you!
The Webdev module is substantially cheaper than Perspective (with an associated substantially different feature set) but could be used to create a 'bare bones' website capable of controlling a single valve that could then be reverse proxy hosted per Phil's suggestion. I would only consider this if you can guarantee:
- The number of things you need to control can always be counted on one hand
- You are comfortable trading off development time for initial software cost. Perspective is a general purpose HMI solution - Webdev is the barest skeleton of a webserver. If you could need any other kind of HMI solution, Perspective is the safer bet.
You cannot send/receive arbitrary SMS with the SMS module.
The Twilio module is capable of sending arbitrary SMS via scripting, but not receiving.
Oy! If the OP had the in-house expertise with Ignition and the Web to make this a practical path, the SMS question wouldn't have come up at all.
The learning curve for both WebDev and web tech in general will very likely far exceed the cost of a Perspective license. Only if it were to be deployed on hundreds of gateways would this make sense.
Shudder
Our company is switching over from iFix to Ignition and I am the only one developing ignition here, still a little green, so I appreciate the help! Still learning but I'll bring these solutions to my manager and have him decide which route to take. Thanks again!