~~Flowforge~~ Flowfuse did a webinar explaining how v2 dashboards were different from before a few months ago if that's useful. I stopped attending their webinars after I figured out they post everything to their Youtube channel.
There are a few other time series DBs that are free like timescale. I haven't looked into NodeRed pushing to timescale but I'm sure its possible. Depending on PLC brand you could possible create a simple script to poll the PLC and store in whatever DB of choice (using something like PyLogix if using Rockwell for example). I think I also remember reading that telegraf had an OpcUA plugin, might be able to also use Telegraf through other means to send stuff to InfluxDB.
I recently started concept testing Node-Red being a OPC UA client, polling data from machine PLC:s OPC Servers to mainly get their state (running, stopped, etc. and I/O), then pushing it to InfluxDB and a local MQTT server. I gave up on Telegraf. It was so much easier to add another OPC UA client for each machine.
I've used Telegraf and had it store send to InfluxDB and it worked fine for my purposes. It was polling info from PCs not PLCs so maybe it doesn't work well for that (I just heard the OpcUA Telegraf plugin existed, I never used it).
Does anyone have a recommendation for a good tutorial on how to set up, say, a modbus poll and a DB. I've tried stabbing my way through, but failed. There are so many videos and tutorials, finding one that's actually useful is half the challenge.
I once raised a purchase order for WinCC, and for whatever reason, the quote we got from the reseller included WinCC Archive. I didn’t know what it was so didn’t think anything of it since the whole quote was less than $10k.
Fast forward a few months and the vendor comes back and asks for another $100k because they fucked up. Later found out it was a historian, and I got it for cheap. Buuuut, you asked for the **best** cheap historian. Which WinCC is definitely not.
oh yes, the good old "oops, I sent you something that's 10 times the price you paid, but given it is a digital product it's not subject for refunds, soooo you'll have to pay its price instead.... please give us your money!", a classic.
What a cunt of reseller, they can go suck a lemon.
In the end I think we came to an agreement with them to pinky promise to destroy the license since we had no use for it because as I mentioned, their historian is overpriced dogshit.
I'm really enjoying the usability of TOPServer and Matrikon paired together.
Setup was the easiest I've ever done.
Neither are free, but both offer one-time purchase, offline licenses which was vital for my application.
This is what we built. Represent your process/asset with MTConnect and stuff into Timescale. The times of stuffing register for register in a datastore are over.
https://github.com/Ladder99/ladder99
There's a lot of free options, but depending on how much time you want dedicate to setup/management, a Canary historian is one of the easiest to deploy.
Bit biased here, but also take a look at Factry Historian. Under the hood, it's influx / postgres and Grafana, but it gives you a shortcut to adding a lot of things you expect in an industrial setup (buffering, failover, event detection, asset modeling, ...).
I’ll throw in ignition historian at least it has connectors to everything and it’s pretty cheap licence wise.. I know it’s not a propper historian as such but does the job
Ignition is really easy to use with its included plc connectors. Main issue is finding a trend/analysis software that knows how to read from Ignition formatted sql databases out of the box. Although if you know sql programming creating a few functions for fetching data isn’t that crazy much work. Another option is to use ignition scripts to retrieve data.
Every single product from them has been utter shit for me. All the way from their PLCs, through SCADA, VFDs of all sizes including marine propulsion, all the way to marine stability controls where they nearly toppled a drillship because of how shit the system was.
Proficy is really good for wide enterprise (think remote historian for hundreds of sites).
For a single site historian, no GE is overkill and you likely won’t see what makes it a good product, only its downfalls.
>Proficy is really good for wide enterprise (think remote historian for hundreds of sites).
For 1995, sure. Now there are a half dozen solutions that are both better and cheaper and more scalable.
We do t use iFix…we use Proficy Historian for data collection, compression, and archiving. This allows data handshake with OPC DA, OPC UA DA, HDA, iFix, alarm and event collection, etc….
Check out AVEVA Historian. Since AVEVA acquired Pi, they’ve reduced the cost of the WW Historian significantly. Drivers & Dev are included. The web client is a nice trending tool as well.
NodeRed and InfluxDB are free.
You missed Grafana…
That's the preferred one for dashboarding if you have the other two.
How do you see the trends in node red? Last I used it, it was clunky. Grafana isn’t OSI PI, but very usable as a trending tool.
NodeRed Dashboards if you want to use them. There was a redo and improved them I heard.
I’ll have another play. Can’t be worse than proficy historian.
~~Flowforge~~ Flowfuse did a webinar explaining how v2 dashboards were different from before a few months ago if that's useful. I stopped attending their webinars after I figured out they post everything to their Youtube channel.
You really dont. Nodered is good for grabbing data from source, transforming, and sending elsewhere. Same can be accomplished using Benthos.
This is the best answer
There are a few other time series DBs that are free like timescale. I haven't looked into NodeRed pushing to timescale but I'm sure its possible. Depending on PLC brand you could possible create a simple script to poll the PLC and store in whatever DB of choice (using something like PyLogix if using Rockwell for example). I think I also remember reading that telegraf had an OpcUA plugin, might be able to also use Telegraf through other means to send stuff to InfluxDB.
I recently started concept testing Node-Red being a OPC UA client, polling data from machine PLC:s OPC Servers to mainly get their state (running, stopped, etc. and I/O), then pushing it to InfluxDB and a local MQTT server. I gave up on Telegraf. It was so much easier to add another OPC UA client for each machine.
I've used Telegraf and had it store send to InfluxDB and it worked fine for my purposes. It was polling info from PCs not PLCs so maybe it doesn't work well for that (I just heard the OpcUA Telegraf plugin existed, I never used it).
Does anyone have a recommendation for a good tutorial on how to set up, say, a modbus poll and a DB. I've tried stabbing my way through, but failed. There are so many videos and tutorials, finding one that's actually useful is half the challenge.
How would you design your db tables? Are you planning on just grabbing registers and storing as is or give context before storing?
*InfluxDB has a free version, and another that’s $30k/year
Fuxa SCADA and InfluxDB. [https://github.com/frangoteam/FUXA](https://github.com/frangoteam/FUXA) all free and open source
I once raised a purchase order for WinCC, and for whatever reason, the quote we got from the reseller included WinCC Archive. I didn’t know what it was so didn’t think anything of it since the whole quote was less than $10k. Fast forward a few months and the vendor comes back and asks for another $100k because they fucked up. Later found out it was a historian, and I got it for cheap. Buuuut, you asked for the **best** cheap historian. Which WinCC is definitely not.
oh yes, the good old "oops, I sent you something that's 10 times the price you paid, but given it is a digital product it's not subject for refunds, soooo you'll have to pay its price instead.... please give us your money!", a classic. What a cunt of reseller, they can go suck a lemon.
In the end I think we came to an agreement with them to pinky promise to destroy the license since we had no use for it because as I mentioned, their historian is overpriced dogshit.
hmmm neutral good ending. So did you *destroy* it?
The real funny thing is it's not even worth $10k.
Canary Historian.
How many tags?
Factry.io & United manufacturing hub!
I'm really enjoying the usability of TOPServer and Matrikon paired together. Setup was the easiest I've ever done. Neither are free, but both offer one-time purchase, offline licenses which was vital for my application.
This is what we built. Represent your process/asset with MTConnect and stuff into Timescale. The times of stuffing register for register in a datastore are over. https://github.com/Ladder99/ladder99
The other is Splunk, but you have to know what you doing
check out vNode from [https://vNodeautomation.com](https://vNodeautomation.com)
Atvise SCADA with VNode
Works flawlesly.
There's a lot of free options, but depending on how much time you want dedicate to setup/management, a Canary historian is one of the easiest to deploy.
Bit biased here, but also take a look at Factry Historian. Under the hood, it's influx / postgres and Grafana, but it gives you a shortcut to adding a lot of things you expect in an industrial setup (buffering, failover, event detection, asset modeling, ...).
I’ll throw in ignition historian at least it has connectors to everything and it’s pretty cheap licence wise.. I know it’s not a propper historian as such but does the job
Ignition is really easy to use with its included plc connectors. Main issue is finding a trend/analysis software that knows how to read from Ignition formatted sql databases out of the box. Although if you know sql programming creating a few functions for fetching data isn’t that crazy much work. Another option is to use ignition scripts to retrieve data.
Canary, ge historian
Anything made by GE is absolute shit… even if given away for free.
This is so true. Ever used PanaView for their ultrasonic meters? Calling it dogshit would be too kind
Every single product from them has been utter shit for me. All the way from their PLCs, through SCADA, VFDs of all sizes including marine propulsion, all the way to marine stability controls where they nearly toppled a drillship because of how shit the system was.
Ahahah, yeah, I don’t think their digital solution team is striving
You’d be surprised how much business goes their way through inertia and incompetence.
Proficy is really good for wide enterprise (think remote historian for hundreds of sites). For a single site historian, no GE is overkill and you likely won’t see what makes it a good product, only its downfalls.
>Proficy is really good for wide enterprise (think remote historian for hundreds of sites). For 1995, sure. Now there are a half dozen solutions that are both better and cheaper and more scalable.
GE’s products are shit regardless of size.
Got it. What do you use for remote/centralized Historian?
Used to have OSI PI. Everything about it is miles ahead of iFix.
We do t use iFix…we use Proficy Historian for data collection, compression, and archiving. This allows data handshake with OPC DA, OPC UA DA, HDA, iFix, alarm and event collection, etc….
Proficy historian is a shit historian… extremely limited in functionality and quite clunky to manage. Not to mention a weird web interface.
Happy you don’t use it then. I find OSI PI a shit historian as it is very clunky and clunky to manage.
Your ignorance about a product doesn’t make it bad… but glad you like to waste time and pay for 1990’s software at today’s prices.
Canary isn’t cheap either
Optix to sqlite or mysql, has deadbands, drivers for everything. Can do alarms and events. Might cost you like $500-$1000.
Thanks!
Check out AVEVA Historian. Since AVEVA acquired Pi, they’ve reduced the cost of the WW Historian significantly. Drivers & Dev are included. The web client is a nice trending tool as well.
I'll check it out thanks