The NEW Next Driver Poll

What should the next driver be?
[poll]

  • DNP3
  • Omron
  • BACnet
  • SNMP
    [/poll]
    If you’ve got any more suggestions for me to add to the poll I’ll do so, assuming you can’t already connect to them via one of our existing drivers, such as using Modbus to talk to GE Fanuc / AD stuff.

Bonus points if the protocol is actually documented and available somewhere.

IEC61850 - it’s for more then just electrical utilities

:smiling_imp:

6 Likes

Automationdirect can use modbus driver but it would be much better if we could use a k-sequence driver

Just as an FYI in case DNP is implemented in Ignition.

There is a google code project located here:

code.google.com/p/dnp3/

I would hope this code would save alot of development time.

[quote=“RRNut”]Just as an FYI in case DNP is implemented in Ignition.

There is a google code project located here:

code.google.com/p/dnp3/

I would hope this code would save alot of development time.[/quote]

I’ve looked at that, and the only Java support it has is for auto-generating bindings that use JNI to talk to the natively compiled binaries…

Not sure if that’s the route I’d want to go, but we’ll see.

What?!? Am I the only Omron user out there? :open_mouth:

There were more of us on the last poll! :laughing:

1 Like

SNMP would allow us to get status from the obvious network devices like network switches, routers and UPS’s, but some of the microwave radios used in water & wastewater also expose RSSI and other pertinent values via SNMP.

This driver might also be used with bidirectional bindings to push Ignition Gateway diagnostic tags out to IT, which would be especially helpful in a hosted environment.

Here’s a big vote for SNMP!

5 Likes

I think dnp3 and IEC 61850 are very important in SCADA market and more industrial, I think big vote for SNMP come from our IT expert friends.

Regards,
Mohammad Javad

[quote=“daneshy”]I think dnp3 and IEC 61850 are very important in SCADA market and more industrial, I think big vote for SNMP come from our IT expert friends.

Regards,
Mohammad Javad[/quote]

I’m going to second this. DNP3 is what the SCADA guys want/need. SNMP is something that can be leveraged to a somewhat small extent in an industrial setting. I’d be more interested in getting support for the electric industry than adding support for getting the loading of my router and the levels of my toner cartridges in my printer.

Your description did put a smile on my face, however, I think monitoring IT infrastructure is a critical requirement for many folks' Ignition implementations. In many cases the: Ignition Gateway, PLCs, databases, and clients are all connected via various IP segments. This makes monitoring those services important. Many users have robust capabilities to do so outside of Ignition. Many others have asked for the capability to be natively supported.

DNP3 is a popular feature request as well :slight_smile:.

1 Like

Yup, but good facilities will already have planned installs of Nagios, MRTG, or some other “monitoring” solution either planned or installed for these needs. I’d rather see a whole new market segment opened up with DNP3. Plus if you can suck the electric utility guys into the Ignition world I’m sure there would be a handful of engineers added to the module developers corps who would be willing to build a SNMP driver on their own. :wink:

There is a big market in electrical utilities that don’t have any SCADA at all. I just installed a system in one and their first question was “Can you monitor the radios as well?”

I’m willing to bet if a place doesn’t have a SCADA system, they don’t have the ability to monitor SNMP either.

Real integrator voting for SNMP for one simple reason: “Dear customer, your server has a failed hard drive. Call me NOW!” from the SCADA system will be seen, and in places that don’t have an IT department, that is the only place it will be seen. Redundant fiber link outages are a similar critical SNMP-reported thing that I’d like for the operators to see.

One idea - Software Toolbox includes an ultra-simple ping driver with its SNMP driver - literally pinging a device at a specified rate and seeing if it is alive (for non-SNMP devices that still need to be monitored). Seems like a simple and useful addition to an Ignition SNMP driver.

1 Like

Someone should drop the S from SNMP.

SNMP has become a critical portion of the control sandbox, Ethernet networks, UPS, Servers are now part of most control systems.
Knowing in advance that the problem is in the network could help prevent alarm storms and detect potential shutdowns before they occur.

DNP3 is relevant in the electrical market, but has competing protocols that do the same, hopefully DNP will prevail.

What I’ve seen so far is a mixture of OPC servers to accomodate for both.
Makes installation and maintenence a bit more sophisticated and also a lot of testing is required.

1 Like

How about back to the basics.
Two way standart TCP or UDP driver.
Realy usefull for creating stuff like tellnet commands to cameras, and a host of other devices.
I am aware that there is the Passive TCP / UDP driver, sure it wouldn’t take much to convert it to two way.
This would also allow us to use ethernet to rs232 devices to send commands to things like weighing scales, weigh feeders and even a host of more devices.

Regards
Sascha

[quote=“info@focus-eng.com”]How about back to the basics.
Two way standart TCP or UDP driver.
Realy usefull for creating stuff like tellnet commands to cameras, and a host of other devices.
I am aware that there is the Passive TCP / UDP driver, sure it wouldn’t take much to convert it to two way.
This would also allow us to use ethernet to rs232 devices to send commands to things like weighing scales, weigh feeders and even a host of more devices.

Regards
Sascha[/quote]

This kind of stuff can already be done from a gateway script module or even a very simple “real” module built with the SDK.

Personally I think trying to do two-way comms through the OPC server/tag abstraction is awkward at best and script or SDK module is the way to go.

Guys is the SNMP driver far off from release?

thanks

hazey

[quote=“hazey”]Guys is the SNMP driver far off from release?

thanks

hazey[/quote]

Yes, considering it hasn’t been started and isn’t on any of our schedules right now :smiling_imp:

[quote=“Kevin.Herron”]
Yes, considering it hasn’t been started and isn’t on any of our schedules right now :smiling_imp:[/quote]

So, we’d be looking at, what, next Tuesday, then? :mrgreen:

Hi,

So SNMP from IA is not on it’s way… :cry: is there any solution for linux ? We’ve made a prof of concept with KEPSERVER but we need to go for a full linux solution.

If someone as started the development ? I’ve looked in the Module section,hop.

Thank you for any links or direction to go.