Industrial Automation Knowledge Base

Connectivity to EcoStruxure Augmented Operator Advisor relies on additional software in the middle (Node-Red, EcoStruxure Operator Terminal Expert etc...). With EcoStruxure Automation Expert, it is possible to interface directly to EcoStruxure Augmented Operator Advisor using NETIO and REST API. In this knowledge base, you will find an explanation of how this integration could be achieved.

Check out this overview of the built-in recipe functions in EcoStruxure Machine SCADA Expert!

Do you have a need for multiple communication drivers in your HMI Project?  Want to scan them at using different scan rates?

An overview of the Web Viewer settings and web page options with EcoStruxure Operator Terminal Expert v3.2 and later

Want to know what the requirements and the process for installing the EcoStruxure Augmented Operator Advisor Local Builder?

Issue EcoStruxure™ Process Expert is based on the collaboration of different software (called "participants") and a single database for the control system application, with the capability to accept new participants and third-party components Each EcoStruxure™ Process Expert configuration embeds at least one virtual machine, which runs the software participants required to design and operate the control system If user find extremely slow and sluggish performance whenever working with the software participants, user might need to adjust the virtual machine parameters Resolution Each virtual machine is allocated the following default resources: 4 GB of memory 2 logical processors If the virtual machine hosts memory-intensive software applications (like Control, Supervision and third-party applications), user might need to allocate more RAM or logical processors to ensure virtual machine doesn’t need to swap back and forth to disk. System Server Configuration Wizard Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Schneider Electric.  

Issue Required to test a peer-to-peer data transfer between controllers using multi-instance of PLC Simulators before downloading to a real controller. Resolution Flexible and easy to configure data transfer, via multi-instance of PLC Simulators, using READ_REMOTE and WRITE_REMOTE communication function blocks. Reduce time to market, engineering and commissioning time.   Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Schneider Electric.  

Issue If you ever tried to link EcoStruxure Plant Data Expert: Essential Nodes directly to EcoStruxure Augmented Operator Advisor Nodes, you will find that EcoStruxure Augmented Operator Advisor Nodes do not accept the CMS payload which EcoStruxure Plant Data Expert: Essential Nodes produce.   Resolution This is an article to teach us how we can use EcoStruxure Plant Data Expert: Essential Nodes with EcoStruxure Augmented Operator Advisor Nodes with the introduction of Change Node within our Flow.   Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Schneider Electric.

Issue This document will help you in the integration and configuration of the IO.MBTCP driver for AVEVA System Platform as well as in the integration of the AVEVA Insight cloud historization solution.   Resolution For this proof of concept, we have created a small application in M580 with a localized variable. This variable will be read through IO.MBTCP Driver and then will be published in AVEVA Insight. Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Schneider Electric.  

Have you ever wondered how you can extract data from a database and include in a report generated in EcoStruxure Machine SCADA Expert?  This article will provide the steps to do just that! 

Issue The aim of this document is to provide a step by step guide for the installation and setup of EcoStruxure Automation Expert Soft dPAC into a Raspberry PI 4 and deploy a solution from the Buildtime software. Resolution Download the pdf document  Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Schneider Electric.  

Issue There are often customer requirements to send safety related data over communications links. At the same time, the requirement automatically arises for the transference of safe and non-safe data via a collective standard network. A safe network will allow the Safety controller to communicate with each other and provides a robust and safe means of sending safety related data using the communications medium that best suits the applications and budget.   Resolution With M580 Safety CPU firmware 3.20 or later, the safe time synchronization is based on an internal "monotonic" time clock. The safe communication DOES NOT need NTP time synchronization as the CPU is sharing its safe time with all its local and remote I/Os. The remote I/O drop uses BM•CRA31210 module and must have a firmware 2.60 or later to work. A monotonic clock is a time source that always moves forward and will not be impacted by variations leading to jumps in time (due to NTP or Daylight Savings Time updates). Monotonic uses Thomas Habets's cross platform "monotonic_clock" library under the hood.   Attached herewith are two documents file that guide you on how to implement Safe Peer-to-Peer communication between two M580 Safety ePAC (MASTER PAC and SLAVE PAC).   Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Schneider Electric.  

Introduction This document aims to assist users to configure PLC Viewer App, which runs on AVEVA System Platform. With this configuration, the user will be able to view and navigate through the PLC logic on the supervision system.    Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Schneider Electric.  

Background Growing in popularity now is the trend to propagate data into the Cloud. AVEVA Insight Online is one of the featured Applications which we can easily propagate data to and have them displayed as smart data to be viewed anywhere.     When using AVEVA Insight Online as it is, without any added configurations, we usually have our contents displayed in its simplest form as below.   Objective When this knowledge is applied, not only are we able to get the Units of Measurements to show (on the Analog Tags), but we are able to also get Digital Tags to show a descriptive state instead of just ON and OFF.    Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Schneider Electric.  

Objective The objective of this article is to guide us through data acquisition with EMSE over OPC UA. And we shall be going for full blown OPC UA security (the need for user authentication, Certificates and X.509 Token usage) so that we can experience what is involved to get it running. We shall be touching heavily on EcoStruxture OPC UA Expert as well because the simulation project will be running behind that, in a PLC Simulator. Snapshots Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Schneider Electric.  

Issue How to communicate with an M580 dPAC over OPC UA using EcoStruxure Automation Expert. Resolution Tutorial video Attached in BOX folder. https://schneider-electric.box.com/s/g9wneg4u2iaa0ipdn5o6pinzv32vhcg4 Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Schneider Electric.  

Issue Explicit messaging can be used more effectively instead of implicit messaging in a few use cases. E.g. polling multiple services devices connected through a Modbus TCP to serial gateway; or configuring event-based read/write communication instead of cyclic ones. EcoStruxure Control Expert provides many function blocks for explicit messaging. The Data_Exch block stands out as it allows to program any Modbus or Ethernet/IP query required by the users. However, from its user manual, it's not so clear on how to go about it. Resolution This article can be read as additional guidance to users apart from the block's user manual. Focus is on using this block for any Modbus query, and as an example, Function codes 22 and 23 are implemented. Usage of Data_Exch over Ethernet/IP is not included as it has been well described in an existing document. Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Schneider Electric.  

AOA, Cloud VM, Cloud, Azure,3G, 4G

Objective This article is about how to create a Library of our own so that common objects ay be easily shared with all other Solutions (using ACME.common as an example).   Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Schneider Electric.  

Issue Cannot open a project under Project Configuration Tool following the installation of Windows Updates. Cannot start PCT project servers following installation or Windows Updates. Product Line Project Configuration Tool Environment Building Operation Project Configuration Tool (PCT) Cause Configuring Windows Updates for unsupervised installation can result in an ungraceful shutdown of Virtual Box and Project Configuration Tool There have been cases where an ungraceful shutdown of PCT or VBox has resulted in a damaged project or a damaged server within a project. Resolution All projects within the Project Configuration Tool should be shut down prior to the installation of Windows Updates.