Its been a good month. I recently did some ClearSCADA training and apparently I might be one of a select few who has used the DNP3 features on SCADAPack in Western Canada. If you have also used DNP3 for your SCADA project, feel free to drop me a line, correct any non-sense, or otherwise comment […]
Category: RTU Development
Being Cloud Ready
I just spent the last two days participating in an IoT and Data Analytics Hand-on-Lab at Microsoft Canada in Calgary. It was awesome to see what they are doing with their cloud product offering and how it can be used to enable business intelligence and possibility for new applications. Here is a screenshot of a […]
Setup Floboss Standard History
Data is driving a lot of business decisions these days. In Oil and Gas communication technology has caught up to the point where high resolution data is available. This enables a host of remote analysis and troubleshooting opportunities for engineers and operators. However, high resolution data is not available unless it is configured in the […]
Using git for Industrial Automation – Part 3 – Remote Basics
This is continuation of the series of articles I have written about git and using it for industrial automation projects. Every automation shop eventually gets to a point where they need some sort of central library of code or central project file store. Eventually you need a way to share files, share projects, or archive […]
MQTT – Is This the Protocol We’re Looking For?
The industrial automation world is just buzzing with internet of things (IoT) news and industrial internet of things (IIoT). SCADA software, polling drivers, field Ethernet to serial gateways and just about everyone else is taking advantage of the new buzzwords. One of the new primary protocols for IIoT devices is MQTT. Last month I attended the Well […]
Using git for Industrial Automation – Part 2 – Branches
In an earlier article I explained the basics of git and how to use GitKraken, one of the various graphical interfaces of git. Now we are going to take this a couple steps further and show you how to use branches in git with RTU/PLC programming. Branches are an important function of any version control […]
Software Library Recommendations
Any developer’s toolkit is going to involve a decent amount of software. An automation programmer’s toolkit is full of odd-ball, proprietary, weird dependency driven configuration software. Here are some quick tips my mentor shared with me regarding software installers when I started doing automation programming. When I first got my laptop, she sat me down […]
Its About Time
Time. It flies. It stands still. It is valuable. But time is awful. I dislike time. In particular time zones and the complexity surrounding how to handle time on SCADA systems. SCADA systems run on time. Daily records are recorded at contract hour. Alarms and Events are logged with time stamps. Should be easy right? Nope. Time […]
Using git for Industrial Automation
Almost all industrial programmers will use some sort of basic version control at the file system level. This generally consists of keeping copies of dated files and folders in a central file folder structure. Until recently I kept a project database listing clients at the first level, site surface locations at the second level and […]