We have a PLC currently sending data to a IoT cloud system (Siemens Mindsphere).
We wish to install several sensors in our office to demonstrate linking sensor data to the cloud through the PLC:
PR52-3D or PR52-18_DI
PR52-7
This is as a sales demo system, and I think it will generate a lot of interest.
As the PLC supports TCP socket services, we were thinking of using the Enterprise wireless sensors + PR55-17B.
In the future, we also wish to also demonstrate linking to Mindsphere via Node Red (a Mindsphere connector for NR exists).
Questions:
-for automotive applications (warehouse forklift), can we connect sensors directly to the 12VDC bus? If yes, should we connect to the always-on side to avoid powering the device on and off frequently?
-is it possible to connect the PR55-17B to Node Red without requiring coding / node development?
For the demo I think you’re going to have a faster integration with just using Node-Red to connect to Mindsphere if there’s already a node to support it.
Reason being is that the sensors send their data as raw bytes to save on battery and it needs to be parsed. Our Node-Red library will parse and pack the data for you so you just need to repackage it if necessary and send it to your cloud service of preference.
You can connect some of the sensors to the 12V bus, all of our Non-IP65 (black enclosures) have a jumper to switch between battery power and external power supply. If you use an external power supply I would suggest a 12VDC to 12VDC converter to isolate the 12Vs as I imagine that a forklift power supply will be rough due to all the motors powered by it.
The PR55-17B can connect to Node-Red and send its data using our Node-Red library. Currently it will only work as Node-Red acting as the client connecting to the PR55-17B as the server. This means if you want to connect to the PR55-17B over the internet you’d need to set up port forwarding.
Thankyou very much for the information. It’s not clear to me whether the PR52-7 comes with the current sensor OPCTL16AL as there is no “$XXXXX - Included!” beside it - could you please clarify that?