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Automation for HVAC system 2010
Abstract
This report presents the design of a SCADA Adroit User Interface for an HVAC System. The report
presents the system specifications and their breakdown into a design problem. Which is then
developed into component blocks and the tasks to be performed in each block to meet the
specifications.
The design involves the use of Adroit7 software and Omniflex software. Since the Interface in created
in Adroit’s Classic User Interface the report presents how the Adroit components used work and
interact with each other. Problems associated with dealing with Adroit and the OPC server are present
together with their solutions.
Components that can be further investigated and developed as addition to this project are also
presented.
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Table of Contents
Abstract.................................................................................................................................................2
Acronyms..............................................................................................................................................4
1. Introduction...................................................................................................................................5
1.1. SCADA System.....................................................................................................................5
1.2. HVAC System.......................................................................................................................5
2. Design Outline...............................................................................................................................6
2.1. Project Specification..............................................................................................................6
2.2. Overall System Overview and Design Proposal.....................................................................6
2.2.1. Air Handling Unit(s)......................................................................................................7
2.2.2. PLC................................................................................................................................7
2.2.3. Supervisory Computer...................................................................................................7
2.2.4. Air-conditioner and heater (and Lights).........................................................................7
2.2.5. Remote Computer access...............................................................................................8
3. Design Process...............................................................................................................................9
3.1. Design Breakdown.................................................................................................................9
3.2. Design Components.............................................................................................................10
3.2.1. OPC Server..................................................................................................................10
3.2.2. ACUI...........................................................................................................................10
3.2.2.1. Pictures....................................................................................................................10
3.2.2.1.1. Testing interface.......................................................................................................11
3.2.2.1.2. Designed interface....................................................................................................12
3.2.3. Database.............................................................................................................................18
3.2.3. Internet.........................................................................................................................22
4. Management................................................................................................................................23
4.1. Time schedule......................................................................................................................23
4.2. Problems Experienced.........................................................................................................25
5. Conclusion...................................................................................................................................28
References...........................................................................................................................................28
Appendix A.........................................................................................................................................29
Appendix B.........................................................................................................................................30
Appendix C.........................................................................................................................................32
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Acronyms
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1. Introduction
1.1. SCADA System
A SCADA system supervises and controls a process while it simultaneously gathers data from it
and sends it to a central computer. The system also sends commands to the process. SCADA
systems can be thought of as industrial control systems. The basic structure of a SCADA system
consists of a supervisory computer, an HMI, RTUs or PLCs and communication tools. [1]
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2. Design Outline
2.1. Project Specification
The project description as can be found in [3] is :
“Design and develop an ADROIT Scada interface for a PLC based HVAC system. The design
will include understanding programming of the PLC, sensors (which already exist), OPC
server and the Scada packages.”
From the project description and supervisor’s explanation it was clear that the student had to
design an interface (HMI) to PLC system using Adroit SCADA. The Scada system is for an
HVAC system, thus the author would have to familiarise himself with all the components of such
a system. Thus the part in the description about understanding the programming of PLC and
sensors.
4 Rooms
Database
TCP/TIP
Air Handling Unit RS485
PLC
Air Conditioner Adroit
Interface(OPC
Humidifier 4-20mA
Browser)
interface
N/O
Heater contacts
Up to 4 N/O
contacts
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2.2.2. PLC
The PLC collects data from the sensors, does the necessary manipulation (calculations) , carries
out the necessary control(Turning the Heater and Air conditioning units on/off) and make values
available on its OPC server. These values can then be accessed by Scada Adroit for display and
writing into a database.
2.2.3.3. Database
The database is used to store the data from the PLC and Adroit. This data is available for use
as historical data.
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3. Design Process
3.1. Design Breakdown
From the project description and overall system overview given above, the author’s task was
clearly identified as designing an Adroit Scada interface. The design revolved around the proper
understanding and use of the Adroit software in order to achieve this. From figure 1(Page6) it is
seen that the design is actually concentrated on the components in the Laptop block (Supervisory
Computer). Then from the proper functioning of the inner blocks(components) within this block,
which will be designed, the other block (components), which make up the complete system, can
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OPC Server
Tags
Tag Addresses
Agents
Agents
ACUI
Pictures
Trends
Agents
Agents
Database
AHU Values Table
Rooms' Values Table
a target device (PLC). In either case the configuration file must be made active; so as to be the
device being configured can be visible on the OPC server. The OPC server is then able to
read off values from the PLC using IP (Ethernet cable). For this to occur, the author’s laptop
had its IP address set and connected to the PLC using an Ethernet cable. An OSU file on
Omniflex was used to connect the computer to the PLC, thus enable the OPC server to see it.
The connection mode is Conet/e on Network card.
This task took some time as the PLC initially was connected using a serial to USB. Trying to
achieve the connection was initially a failure. Then after going to Omniflex the problem was
discovered to have been the serial to USB drivers and the Vista. New drivers were installed
and then Omniflex CServer registered on the windows system32 registry. It was then found
that for the values on the PLC to appear on the OPC Server further configuration would have
to be done. To overcome this, the Ethernet connection as described above was used. The OPC
server is currently fully functional.
3.2.2. ACUI
The ACUI has a lot of different components that can be added together to form an Adroit
Scada interface. These components include pictures, trends, web, etc. The picture (mimic) is
where a combination of textboxes, buttons and jpegs can be placed to form a user interface, as
in Visual Basic. The trends can be added to graphically represent values as they change with
time. The complete user interface has been designed and developed using the ACUI. The
basics of how to get things done were extracted from an example in [5]. This example was
then extended to see how some required functionalities can be achieved in the actual user
interface.
3.2.2.1. Pictures
The mimic is formed by a combination of buttons and textboxes. These can be associated
with certain behaviours, which in turn is associated with an agent. The behaviour determines
what the mimic component will do when triggered (when button is clicked on for example) .
The agents are configured in the ACUI configurator. There they are given a name and the
type (Database, Analogue, Boolean, etc) of agent they are.
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The testing interface comprises of the mimic and a trend. The trend shares an analogue agent,
Speed, with the green textbox. This agent was configured (Appendix A) to scan the PLC
alive-counter tag on the OPC server. To get to the scan configurator; Select an agent
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(Appendix A) and then click on scan button in the Agent configurator. The write enable check
box (Appendix A) was checked so that if the value is manually changed on the interface it
changes on the server and thus the PLC registers. The value of the red textbox was changed
manually. It was associated with the agent called Temperature. Both the text boxes were
associated with the display value and operator action behaviour. The first behaviour says
which tag to display. The second one tells which action (Data entry) the textbox take when
should it is clicked on. The update button was used to trigger the addition the values in the
textboxes into the Database. The database set up and configuration will be discussed in
section 3.2.2.2. This button was associated with a Boolean agent, “Trigger”, and the
behaviour “operator action”. The operator action was a control action called “digital toggle.
The same agent was used on the max Trend button, which was used to maximise the trend
window. This button’s behaviour was selected to be the “Execute Command”. Since the same
agent was used in both buttons, the effects of the agent on one button were present on the
other. On the actual system one agent is used per tag. After a lot of experimentation and read-
up when working with the test interface the author had an idea of how his user interface will
look and will be configured. The trend was graphing the values on the alive-counter.
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The final 24 hour final set point mimic is shown in Figure7 below.
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Alarms
The alarms were configured using the high and low values of the tag. The dead band is given
to tell the alarm how far above the low value, after the alarm was triggerred by the value
going low, should the alarm turn off. The sirmilar case exists for a high alarm. The “Edit
Analog Agent” window for “ROOM32_RH” is give in Appendix C showing these values.
The Alarm for Room32 RH is associated with the its textbox’s blinking (text colour)
behaviour,using the agent “ROOM32_RH” “high” slot. The sirmilar setting is done for the
Room 32 TA,but with backround colour instead of text cololour.The triggerered alarms are
shown in red on the the interface below (Figure8).
The trends for each variable in each room include the AHU8 SP and MV values. Below is a
trend for RH in Room 32.
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Figure 9 Room 32 Relative Humidity (Showing the behaviour at 22:30 and Past 30 minutes )
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Figure 10 Room 32 Temperature (Showing the behaviour at 22:38 and Past 30 minutes )
The navigation panel (circled in green on Figure10) is used to view different times in the
trend. For data that was logged in the past and the logging had been stopped, or the database
had data logged to it and was written to disk, an agent can be used to log values to this
database. How to do this is explained in the following section. Then the data can be retrieved
for a specified period. This data can then displayed on a trend for a user specified time
interval.
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3.2.3. Database
The Database structure initially selected was the one that was presented to the author by the
supervisor, which is currently in use at SASRI. The supervisor advised that should the student be
capable of reproducing the similar structure of the database as one presented (Figure11 and Figure12)
to him he should do so. The required variables can also be observed from the figures below.
Figure 11 Database Structure showing tables and require room variables [6]
Figure 12 Database Structure showing tables and require AHU variables [6]
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Currently the student has developed the database given below as based on the test interface. To create
a data base to write values to from Adroit, the following steps were taken [5]:
Following the steps above, the same database format as the one given in Figures 11 & 12 can be
created. To write values into the database automatically the transaction scheduling and triggering
is edited. The time for each transaction can then be specified and a trigger that will force a write if
required. This was done with the values being “scanned” into the database. The author found that
for trends the historical data had to have been logged. That is the scanned data could not be
retrieved for use in Adroit. The tags thus had to be logged. This lead to the initial structure of the
database not being able to be kept. The first proposal was to have each tag stored in it own
Database, thus the data could not get too big in time as compared to when all the tags are in one
database. This idea would require a lot of different databases to be opened when data was to be
evaluated or viewed. Thus it was aborted. The possible structures of logged data are shown
below.
In Figure14 below the tables for different tags and logging methods are shown on the left. The
database values shown are the “RH” values for Room32. The agent was just configured to log the
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tag to the database. This method automatically creates a table, but gives the value and its
timestamp and does not the date of the sample. This would work fine for retrieving the data to
display on a trend in Adroit, but if a user wanted to view the data from the database, the data
would not be useful.
The second way was to create a table and log values into that table. The table “Room32”
(Figure15) was created and the agents, ‘Room32_RH” and “Room32_LL” , were configured to
log values to this table.
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The values were logged to the table. The logging changed the table’s format and had the values in
one column alternating (Figure16). This was going to be a problem when just trying to look at the
behaviour of one variable in a room.
Figure 16 Room 32 table showing the LL and RH values in one Database Table
The solution was to have a data base that has each tag in its own table. The tables are created then
in the configuration, each agent is give a table to write values to. See Appendix B for the
configuration steps.
Figure 17 The final database structure Showing the tag tables on the left
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3.2.3. Internet
The author had to investigate how he could connect to the interface and thus the its information
using the internet, if time permits. Then furthermore implement this method of internet
connection. Time could have allowed this but there was a problem with the ACUI connecting to
the server.(This is explained in section 4.2.). But some investigation was done and attempts made
to get the internet connection. Firstly it was found that ADROIT7 cannot host a web site[3] and
this was confirmed with the ADROIT technical support [7]. Two possible solutions were
considered.
VIZNET
VIZNET comes embedded in the ADROIT installation package. This component, just like
Adroit 7,can be used to create user interfaces. It has the capabilities to host a website. The
author investigated the VIZNET features and capabilities. At the point of documenting this
report the author had not gotten around connecting to the VIP server on his PC. The author
will continue to work on VIZNET and if any progress is made by the oral presentation day, it
will be presented there.
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4. Management
4.1. Time schedule
The original time schedule is given below together with the new time schedule. The Author and
His supervisor had weekly meetings on Tuesdays at 12h00 (Not shown on Schedule).
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The new time schedule shows the modifications that were made to the original time plan. In the
schedule the tasks whose time has elapsed are complete. The tasks which were performed before the
actual time scheduled have been moved to the weeks in weeks in which they were performed. Some
of the reasons why changes occurred is due to the problems faced. For example in waiting for the
licensing other tasks the author investigated which adroit component he would have to use to achieve
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1. Vacation
6 2010/03/29 2010/04/06 1.4w
2. User Interface
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Then the values of the tags already scanned started having problems with showing the changes that
were configured to the(With device in simulation mode in the Modbus TCP OPC Configurator). This
is shown in Figure18 below, where the value of the alive counter is circled in red on the Adroit ACUI
mimic, Adroit browser and the Modbus TCP OPC configurator.
Figure 18 Alive Counter values shown on Adroit ACUI interface, Adroit OPC browser and
Modbus TCP OPC Configurator
The Adroit Configuration Setup was showing that the device (NET1) is unhealthy. The changes in
the Alive Counter could also be viewed in the Matlab OPC Tool.
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Figure 19 Matlab OPC Tool showing the value of the "Alive Counter"
From this the author’s could conclude that the problem is rooted in the connection between the ACUI
mimic and the OPC Server. Since this connection is performed by “Adroit agents”. It was required to
look at what can possibly be the problem with the agents. The author noted that the “.WGP”, “.LGD”,
“.LGI” and “.BAK” files, accumulate data pertaining to the ADROIT ACUI. What could have caused
the problem could still be have been stored in these files. The author decided to cut all these files and
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put them elsewhere. Then the agent server was started and then an Analogue agent created. This
analogue agent was configured to scan “NET1” and thus creating a device agent for “NET1”. “NET1”
then appeared healthy on the Adroit Configuration Setup.
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5. Conclusion
The project has been described and planned for. As indicated in the timeline the project can be
finished within the required time. The project was thus finished in time and the Adroit interface
working properly on both the central computer (Laptop). It has been shown that Adroit 7 has the
capabilities to achieve the required tasks. The author gathered enough knowledge on these
capabilities to finish the project on time. This knowledge and tools were used to achieve a final
design that will have meets the requirements. Since Adroit cannot host a website[4],[7] this
feature could not be done. Instead other possibilities were investigated together their abilities and
functionalities they could implement. Since a lot time was lost in solving the problem that was
happening with the OPC Server, not enough time was spent on VIZNET to get an interface that
can be accessed using internet. Such a delay had not been anticipated [8] as the problem was not
expected. Further work can be done on VIZNET to get an interface that can be accessed over the
internet. It was thus found that all major projects components should be finished well in advance
and additional features left for the end. This is so as to give the designer time to go back to the
main project should a problem be encountered.
References
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Appendix A
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Appendix B
How to set up the agent log into a specified table in a database. Open the Agent Configuration
window, then click on the log button. The “Edit DataLog” window appears (Figure B1). Clicking on
SQL will open up the “Data Link Properties” window (Figure B1). Select the Microsoft Jet4 OLE DB
Provider,then click next. The select the database to store the values in from its directory. Then test the
connection. Clicking on “OK” takes one back to the “Edit DataLog” window. To connect the agent to
a specifific table type a “$” at the beginning of the Datasource string and type “$TableName” at the
end (Figure B1)
Figure B 1 Edit DataLog Agent window for ROOM32_RH, Left: the $ at the beginning of the
Datasource string. Right: “$TableName” at the end of the Datasource string.
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Appendix C
The “Edit Analog Agent” window for “ROOM32_RH” showing the alarm triggering limits and
deadbands.
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