In this article we’re going to discuss data capture from historically challenging industrial assets and how Monico is helping customers further leverage the power of their AVEVA solutions (Formerly OSIsoft) by simplifying the collection and preparation of data from these assets for use in Remote Condition Monitoring.
Why AVEVA for remote condition monitoring?
Who is AVEVA and what are AVEVA Solutions? This entire article could be on that topic alone; however, in a nutshell Aveva is a data company. They provide solutions for data storage, analytics, visualisation of data and much more. Aveva recently acquired OSIsoft; which many be familiar with. The most commonly known solution is AVEVA (formerly OSIsoft) PI System and now AVEVA offers Aveva Data Hub and associated technologies for cloud-based solutions rather than on prem solutions.
So why use AVEVA? Well, there’s lots of great reasons; maintain control over your companies’ data, distribution and sharing, and be in charge of and manage the data processing and insights and perhaps you have a mixed fleet of machines/equipment and do not want to be locked into an OEM provided solution for the data storage, processing and visualisation of your valuable operational data.
Many industrial operators in mining, oil and gas, manufacturing, marine and power industries already use AVEVA solutions for historical data capture, however those uses have historically included process and refinement plants, control environments and more. One area that has been a challenge are remote industrial machines and engines. These types of assets present several challenges that make it difficult to collect reliable, robust and accurate data.
Examples of mining challenges
A haul truck at a mine is moving, changing states (e.g., under load vs empty) and there are multiple industrial networks on the machine with valuable information. Not to mention mining presents extreme conditions such as heat/cold, dirt/dust, vibration, water exposure and more. In addition to all the former, a piece of machinery like a haul truck has multiple Controller Area Networks (CAN) which makes data capture difficult and the process of capturing data time consuming. One way to capture this data is through the use of a ruggedised PC with special connector software running on it, to connect to a collector device (e.g., J1939 gateway) and collect the valuable information.
However, this in itself is difficult and time consuming. Imagine a fleet of 50-100 pieces of machines, possibly from multiple OEMs, constantly in operation, dispersed throughout a mine. Now add to that the need for that many rugged PCs and the software/technical skills to manage all those PCs and their connections onboard the mining machine. You can begin to quickly see the logistics nightmare to managing all of that. That is where Monico provides a solution to help; with Monico’s mCore®SDR gateway
mCoreSDR: All in one industrial data acquisition solution
mCore®SDR is Monico’s Flagship Next Generation platform for Data Acquisition for use in Remote Condition Monitoring, Industrial IoT and Analytics. mCore is an industrial protocol translator, secure industrial router, and an edge analytics platform.
Essentially, it’s a ruggedised computer built to withstand tough environments and replace the laptop mentioned above. The mCore enables the capture and collection of industrial data from industrial assets (i.e., machines and engines). Built into the mCoreSDR is a client application that speaks natively to AVEVA PI and AVEVA Data Hub. So, it doesn’t matter if you’re connecting the mCore to the proprietary CAT Data Link, a J1939 port or even collecting Modbus data or all of it at the same time, the mCoreSDR will convert the protocols into a native language for insertion into AVEVA solutions.
An added bonus is that mCore buffers data and uses exception reporting when transmitting data to the server. Why is that important? Data fidelity. When doing analytics on data for condition monitoring you do not want gaps, holes or losses in your data and with exception reporting there’s no need to send/transmit data if nothing has changed helping to keep bandwidth usage low.
Quality data
Monico mCore®SDR provides quality data from assets that in most cases have few options for data acquisition in a secure manner.
It provides time savings setting up new data streams because all mCore are sent out ‘preconfigured’ which reduces the amount of setup required for each machine. The mCore creates predefined Data Tags and creates Asset Framework Elements for you.
There is no need for Windows PC running Aveva interface software and no extra collector devices. With the included harness kit, the mCore provides Network Conversion and performs the protocol translation and is able to capture data from multiple simultaneous Input data streams including CDL, J1939, ModBus, CANopen.
Additionally, while this article is about integrating mobile industrial asset data into AVEVA solutions the mCore is capable of multiple simultaneous output streams with support for; OMF (AVEVA ingestion protocol), MQTT SparkPlug B, ModBus, MQTT (Azure, Google, AWS).
Whenever information/data is being transmitted from the field, security is imperative. The mCoreSDR was designed with cyber security in mind. With a powerful user interface that is protected from the rest of operating system, firewall capability, powerful data encryption and authenticated data transmission; it helps bridge the gap between OT/IT networks.
And last but not least, as mentioned previous, the mCoreSDR buffers data, meaning it stores data if a transmission output is not available and will ‘backfill’ the data archive when connection is reestablished. This ensures a whole data picture by minimizing data loss from the asset, which is highly important when using the data to perform analytics for condition monitoring.
If you’re company is looking at furthering leveraging the power of your AVEVA solution and want to incorporate mobile industrial asset data, we invite you to take a closer look at Monico’s mCoreSDR. If you do not have an AVEVA solution, Monico may be able to help with our own solution for Remote Condition Monitoring; referred to as MonicoLive.
Further details:
For more information on the mCoreSDR please visit this link: https://www.monicoinc.com/mcore-sdr
Want to know more? We invite you to view our webinar on Industrial Data Acquisition and Integration into AVEVA PI systems (formerly known as OSIsoft)
