View your Process Data anywhere: Use Case: Secure Access to GE iFIX Data

What is rIoT Technology: rIoT Technology is an advanced cloud interface technology that allows you to collect your real-time process data securely and makes it available anywhere and any time. For more information, please visit www.avistarts.com

What is AT&T M2X: At its core, M2X is a cloud-based time-series data storage service that facilitates data transfer and analysis of data from connected devices, applications and services (what we call "Devices" in M2X). For more information, please visit https://m2x.att.com/developer/documentation/v2/overview

What is iFIX SCADA: iFIX from GE Digital is the industrial automation system of choice for many applications, ranging from common HMI, as simple as manual data entry and validation, to complex SCADA, such as batch, filtration, and distributed alarm management. For more information, please visit https://www.ge.com/digital/products/ifix.

rIoT Technology provides Open Data Adaptors to acquire process data from a variety of the data sources. Data sources can range from a single sensor to a large SCADA or BMS system. The data acquired from the process is duplicated on the cloud services via rIoT Open REST Interface or Open Time Series Servers. rIoT engine uses a secure key to communicate to the cloud services and all the communications are encrypted on the fly.

One of the available data adaptors in the rIoT Engine is OPC Client. Using rIoT OPC Client, users can interface with any OPC Server. One of the popular control packages in the industry is GE iFIX. iFIX exposes an OPC Server interface that can be used to fetch process data. Once data is in the rIoT Engine real-time database, it can be routed to the deisred cloaud service. We will be using AT&T M2X in this example. However, using rIoT Open REST Interface, users can push data to other services alternatively or simultanously. After data is collected by the cloud service, it can be used for viewing anywhere and further analytics such as detecting patterns or prediction.

To connect your process data to your cloud service via rIoT, you need to take the following steps:

Step 1: Choose the OPC inteface in rIoT configuration, insert the iFIX OPC Server name and add the points (streams) you intend to publish to the cloud service

Step 2: Choose the cloud service (AT&T M2X in this example) and insert the secure key in the configuration. Once connection is made to the cloud service, you can either define a device locally and upload to the service or download the devices already defined in the service

Step 3: Choose an event criteria to send the messages to the cloud. To preserve bandwidth and save cost, you may want to define a dead-band for the analog values

Step 4: Map the source streams from the process to the destination streams on the cloud

Step 5: Save the configuration, download to the rIoT Engine and enjoy watching the values populating in the cloud service!

The picture below is a screen capture of the values in iFIX (the top part) and in the cloud service (the bottom part)