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newbie here.

I work in a factory that produce electric cables. I'm trying to build a web application that will handle production processes. For this i need some real time data. There are multiple types of machines , some of them are older and uses a lot of digital counters like this on: https://mirror2.mixtronica.com/42248-superlarge_default/h7cx-aud1-n-contador-omron.jpg . Some of them are newer and have plc's ( siemens s7-1200 , s7-1500 and others ).

I have 0 experience with plc and plc programming. From what I saw from my research is that newer plc like s7 have a option "WEB SERVER", if that's enables i may be able to send data from counters and other stuff to a web page that is automated generated from that option. Folks on the internet uses software like Tia Portal to connect to them. My question is : if i try to connected at them with TIA-PORTAL and ethernet cable is there any possibility that i will corrupt something ? Tia-portal will recognize the program that's running (it was not uplouded by me ) ?

Is there any way that i can make that digital counters transmit data on a raspberry pi or similar device. If not , what are my options there , is there any product intergrated with iot that i can use ?

I also have some industrial scales but those have rs 232 interface and that was prrety smooth to make them talk with my pi.

BadabingBB
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  • Please provide enough code so others can better understand or reproduce the problem. – Community Nov 16 '22 at 10:54
  • The best is to start from the user manual of the devices... Maybe they have some interface to connect to... Usually those old devices has a serial modbus communication – Marco Beninca Nov 23 '22 at 15:18

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From what I understand you want to read and send data to the machines, correct? Because there are some simpler approaches than having to build an IoT application from scratch.

Recently I've been studying solutions like this and the best alternative I've looked at is using Thingsboard (which can be installed locally or using the remote platform) or other platforms like Losant... This avoids creating a lot from scratch (storing data, create charts...), however, in a way, is limited in a few things and a gateway may be needed to handle the conversion of data from devices to platform. I'm still learning how to use it, but I think it's worth leaving it as a tip if your case is more about collecting and dislay data or creating simple actions or logic.

About connecting the devices:

  • For machines with PLC I recommend that you research OPC-UA or MQTT, they are protocols that will facilitate communication and it seems that these versions of the Siemens S7 have OPC-UA.
  • For machines without PLC and without any communication port you may be forced to install a "gateway", an Arduino, ESP32 or another Raspberry PI may facilitate things, or even a small PLC, to collect the discrete data and convert them to Modbus, MQTT, OPC-UA, or another way that you can send it to your server... The concern here would be with electromagnetic interference, but that will depend on your equipment (with industrial equipment validated as a PLC you won't have these problems).

This is not a complete answer, but I believe it will help you to develop the solution :)

dwpessoa
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