Using NCD Products with Ignition Scada

We just finished the Amazon AWS gateway, we have started the MQTT gateway as a active project, I expect it will be ready in the next week or two.

Nice, so I should expect a gateway that parses the data packet from the wireless sensors and posts the result to a topic in a MQTT broker? Just making sure we are on the same page, so I can start looking at the things I need to do on my end for it to work. Appreciate it Ryan,
Daniel

Yes, that is exactly how it will work. No problem, please let me know if you have more questions.
Ryan

Hi Daniel,
It looks like the MQTT gateway is expected to complete final validations by late next week. I think we are clear to release around April 15th.
Ryan

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Great news. I plan on using the MQTT software modules from Cirrus Link. They can be operated as stand-alone modules, but also integrate with Ignition software seamlessly. The Cirrus Link company has Arlen Nipper in a leadership role who is also the co-inventor of MQTT.

Once I get the gateway and a couple of sensors, I will be sure to post a write up for both this forum and the Ignition forum for anyone else who would like to do this. Hopefully this will help payoff for the efforts you are putting into this for me. :slight_smile:

Hi Daniel,
If you do some write-ups and posts, I will make sure you get credit for free hardware.
Ryan

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I just submitted the purchase order to our IT department for a couple of sensors and the new MQTT gateway. I’m looking forward to getting them installed. If all goes well, we should be looking at getting some more. Appreciate the efforts @Bhaskar, @ryan, @ryan1, @Talha, @Travis. :slight_smile:

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Thanks Daniel, let us know if we can help.
Take Care,
Ryan

@dkhayes117 I would like to know how this is going. I too am using Ignition and wondering if you were able to get things going?

Thanks

@tbackus I have the hardware in my office now, but I have not been able to hook it up yet. I’ve been assigned temporarily to a higher priority project and installation of the sensor network has been pushed back by a week or two. I plan on hooking it up very soon, and as soon as I do I will post all documentation and results. Stay tuned!

@ryan I’m trying to get my sensors to talk with the mqtt gateway, but I configured the gateway settings and saved it before I did. How do I get the gateway back into setup mode so I can get to the configure webpage? Do I press the red button inside the gateway case? thanks,
Daniel

Remove the cover from the Gateway by first removing the 4 Phillips head screws. Locate the red CFG button on the Gateway PCB. Press and hold the CFG button until the LED begins flashing blue, then release the button. That will force the gateway into setup mode. It should now appear as a WiFi Access Point you can connect to for configuration via the built in web interface.

Great that worked. I switched the pin jumper labeled ps in the sensor case and it popped right up in the gateway device page, neat! Now I want to configure the transmission rate for the sensor from the gateway. I assume I enter configuration mode on the devices page, select the sensor to configure, but I don’t know what the delay is, is that minutes between transmissions or something different?

It is in seconds.

You will need to click the button on the gateway web page to put it into configuration mode, then you’ll need to press the buttons on the sensor to put it into configuration mode.

Honestly configuring sensors through the Gateway is in Beta and not the most reliable thing in the world so give it a shot and let me know how it goes. You may however need to use the LabView utilities to configure the sensor instead of trying to do it through the Gateway.

I will give that a go once I get hooked up to the mqtt broker, which is where I’m now stuck. According to the broker software I’m using, I have to create a custom namespace to be able to handle a straight JSON payload. From your gateway setup I have my client ID as “Millroom.” Therefore I’m assuming that the topic published to would be “gateway/Millroom” Is this correct? In the namespace, Cirrus Link gives an example of test/# as a subscribed topic, so I tried gateway/Millroom/# as the topic to no avail. I’ve emailed Cirrus Link Support and am waiting to hear back, in the mean time do you have any input?

@Travis Cirrus Link Support told me to down load MQTT.fx software and subscribe using only a ‘#’ and see what topic the gateway is posting to, making sure I configured the namespace correctly. I set the connection settings (IP, port, username, and password) in mqtt.fx to match what I put in the gateway. It connected successfully, but when I subscribe to ‘#’ there are no topics being posted to. I’m afraid that the gateway isn’t posting to any topics. How can I test to see if the gateway is posting anything?

So the tricky thing about this generic MQTT Gateway is almost every MQTT Broker has it’s own set of rules everyone has to live by. I don’t know anything about Cirrus Link personally.

Is the LED on the Gateway Green? If so that indicates it is connected to the broker.

You can fully customize what topic the gateway will publish messages to. This is covered in the MQTT Gateway user guide. What do you have configured for Sensor Topic Format currently?

Some MQTT brokers require that topics be created. That is the case for BeeBotte which is a good free MQTT Broker to experiment with.

Long story short is we simply cannot provide support for every MQTT service out there. I do however have a very straight forward tutorial here for using the MQTT Gateway with BeeBotte:


For initial testing purposes just to make sure everything is working I would go through this tutorial. I used the Android MQTT Dash app in this tutorial but you can absolutely use MQTT.fx instead.

I absolutely understand the support issue with the plethora of software out there. Let me start with the broker connectivity. The mqtt gateway doesn’t have any leds on, but will flash red for about a minute, then it turns off for a couple minutes or so and repeats. Does this mean it is trying to connect to the broker and is unable to?

EDIT: Also note I used the message settings shown in the setup guide for topic format etc.

A red flashing LED indicates there is a problem. It should flash a code though.
3 flashes indicates inability to connect to the server. Although since this is a single threaded processor and connecting to the MQTT Broker is a Long running task it may not be able to flash that code so you might see it turn off and then turn off for long durations like you mentioned. I would speculate it is not able to connect to the broker.

For sanity sake I highly recommend testing all of your hardware with BeeBotte using the guide. This will ensure you that nothing is wrong with the hardware and that the system does work. From there you have a solid base to begin your attempts to connect it to the MQTT Broker of your choice.

I’m going to verify that port 1883 isn’t blocked by a firewall, and the IP address is available from the network I’m connected to. If that doesn’t turn out to be the problem, I will go through the tutorial you posted. thanks