Watch our live demo–recorded from the ProveIt! Conference–to see how brownfield and greenfield assets integrate into a Unified Namespace (UNS) to give you a competitive edge.

We attended the first annual ProveIt! Conference on February 18-20th in Dallas, Texas. This brand new conference was unique—because instead of just setting up a booth and talking about our solutions, we were required to prove it live on stage! 

To meet this challenge, we developed and performed a live demonstration in front of a crowd of 650 attendees to answer 4 key questions:

• What problem are you solving?
• How did you solve the problem?
• How long did it take?
• How much did it cost?

Our approach was to address two key issues facing manufacturers embarking on their Industry 4.0 or digital transformation journeys: 

1. How to light up dark plant power and compressed air utility assets to reveal real-time operations data as it impacts production machines relying on their services (brownfield)
2. How to simplify, streamline, and secure the addition of new machines or automation projects by flattening the control system tech stack (greenfield)

Before demonstrating our solution, we submitted a Technical Specification Document for approval. Check it out for a detailed breakdown of our demo objectives.

To perform this integration, we accessed an MQTT-based digital infrastructure named the “Virtual Factory,” developed by the conference organizers with a heavy lift by Walker Reynolds, founder of I4.0 Solutions. The Virtual Factory represented the real-time status of various production assets like presses, laminators, slit machines, and bag machines.

We connected to the Virtual Factory using MQTT to subscribe to this real-time operational data. We also published operational data back into the Virtual Factory that we generated directly from groov EPIC and groov RIO. 

The infrastructure ran an MQTT cluster provided by HiveMQ (see more about our Technology Partner, HiveMQ) and also included an OPC UA Server and a Microsoft SQL database. 

On to the show

Opto 22 was selected to be the very first vendor presentation of the conference (no pressure!). At show time, Garrick Reichert and I took the stage with our new ProveIt! demo station in tow.

The ProveIt! demo station, built by our engineers Ben Orchard and Terry Orchard, had two sides. On the right, two groov RIOs were used. One emulated an air dryer, and the other represented a monitoring RIO. On the left, a groov EPIC (Learning Center 2) represented a new greenfield press machine.

First, our live presentation was to instrument an air dryer that didn’t have a control system. Because we couldn’t bring an actual air dryer up on stage with us, Terry developed a Node-RED application on a surrogate RIO to emulate its operation, driving various analog and digital outputs we’d read into the second RIO for monitoring. We also placed a small Modbus serial energy monitor on the surrogate unit to demo getting data from this serial device using a USB-to-serial adapter.

We showed how we configured the I/O, set up public access, connected to the serial device, used Node-RED to gather the Modbus registers, and finally configured the monitoring RIO’s Data Service with MQTT Strings, MQTT Sparkplug, and OPC UA Server to democratize the data to the UNS.

 

We got the air dryer’s operational data directly into the UNS and showed that data through MQTT Explorer in just a few minutes. We even demonstrated a quick and straightforward web-based UI of the RIO’s data with the Node-RED dashboard.

Real plant-floor operational data into the UNS?

While we love showing off the RIO and its capabilities live on-stage, we also thought it’d be fun to show an actual manufacturing plant publishing data into the UNS. 

Because Opto 22 is a USA-based manufacturer, and our production lines rely on reliable, clean power and dry compressed air, we set up an EPIC in our plant to gather all our utility and compressor data from various RIOs and RIO EMUs in the utility room. 

Then, we started up the pre-installed Inductive Automation Ignition software on this EPIC, modeled the data to the UNS name structure, and used Cirrus Link’s MQTT Transmission module to publish live, actual operational data into the UNS via MQTT JSON and Sparkplug B! Thankfully, the conference organizers provided a cloud infrastructure so this was possible. 

Curious what this data looks like? We built specific groov View screens on our public demo server to show the audience how our plant engineers visualize this data. What’s more, we also subscribed to the Virtual Factory’s press, lam, slit, and bag machine data so the plant engineers could see the status of the machines they support.

You can see it live at https://demo.groov.com. Log in using the credentials “trial” and “opto22.” Then, click the ProveIt! logo at the top to see the screens we developed and demonstrated on stage.

What about greenfield applications?

Next, Garrick took the stage and demonstrated how to build a new press machine using the all-inclusive groov EPIC. He showed segmented networking, VPN remote connectivity, the built-in firewall, real-time control with CODESYS, and a web-based, mobile-ready HMI viewable from the EPIC’s front panel or a connected HDMI monitor.

Then he fired up Ignition Edge on the EPIC to configure Ignition’s OPC UA client, connected to the public CODESYS press machine tags, modeled those tags into a structured namespace using Ignition Designer, and published them directly from the EPIC to the Virtual Factory UNS infrastructure. 

Talk about flattening the tech stack!

Finally, he showed the new press tags updating on change in the UNS using MQTT Explorer.

Wrapping it up

After completing the live demo, we announced a new product feature (watch the video to learn more!). Then, we broke down the cost of the solutions and the time it took to put them together. 

We wrapped up our presentation by sharing various customer success stories of those who’ve begun implementing their digital transformation projects. Some we could talk about, but most we couldn’t because our customers expressly requested we not mention their names. 

Why? Because they believe their project efforts have given them a distinct competitive advantage in their markets. 

We hope you enjoy the video. And if you’re considering your own Industry 4.0 digital transformation initiative, drop us a chat or reply to this blog post. We’re here to help.