vNode

FREE
GUIDE:
5 STEPS TO
CONNECT
YOUR PLANT
DEVICES TO
THE CLOUD

© vNode 2019 US +1 (754) 755-0009, UK (+44) 161 660 3241

www.vnodeautomation.com
 5 Steps to Connect your Plant Devices to the Cloud

This document will explain you, our reader, how to connect your Plant Devices, such as PLCs, Power Meters,
Sensors, DCSs, HVAC, or any other controller to cloud Services.

We will guide on a step by step basis which will work as a guide for you, or others working with you.

Please keep in mind in vNode Automation we have our vNode IoT Gateway which solves most of the cases
and you can download it for free from the website.

Why connecting the plant devices to the cloud

Every day end user can see how the online software services are evolving and with leading companies
such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, the industrial user has many options to use cloud
services like, storage, reporting, Business Intelligence, Machine to Machine, Machine Learning, online
monitoring, and many more.

It is no secret the industrial software business will move forward to services on the cloud exponentially.
But the big question this document wants to answer is, how do we connect our sites to the cloud services?
Whether is a power plan, a refinery, a hotel, a retail store or a pump station, they will all have the same
need: Send their data to the Cloud.

Step #1. Identify your source of data:

When you think of collecting data, the first thing we need to do is identify where is the data I need right
now? What system has it? Where is it located? Where is generated?

Typically there will be control systems that could vary from PLCs, RTUs, Scales, Power Meters, Sensors,
HVAC Controllers, DCSs, SCADA Systems, BMS Systems, Historians, Databases, among others.

As an example if you have water pumping stations and you need to send their data to the Cloud, the
system that has the data today will be the PLC controlling the pumping system.

So your first tasks is:

List the systems you need to take the data from and write them down.

• I.E. PLC from Pumping Station

• _______________________________________________________________________________________________________
• _______________________________________________________________________________________________________
• _______________________________________________________________________________________________________
• _______________________________________________________________________________________________________

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 5 Steps to Connect your Plant Devices to the Cloud

Step #2. Identify your systems brand, protocol and type of connection.

At this point you already know where you want to take your data from, but now we need to go deeper.

• Brand: This is important information because the brand will tell so much to your system integrator
or your service provider on how to connect to the device. For example we in vNode Automation
by just knowing the brand we how at a 90% how to connect to a device. Going back to the water
pumping stations example, the PLC could be a Siemens PLCs. Just by knowing this we know how
to communicate with this types of PLCs.

• Protocol: Every device or control system will have a communication protocol, which is like
the language a person speaks; you can only speak to a person in a language that person can
understand, otherwise there cannot be speaking communication. With the devices it is the same,
you can only communicate with a device with the Protocol that device understands. Some typical
protocols are, but not only:

- Modbus
- MQTT
- OPC DA
- OPC UA
- Ethernet/IP
- Bacnet
- SNMP
- Profinet
- FINS
- IEC 60870
- DNP3
- ODBC
- ASCII

•Type of connection: This is important so you know if your device has a physical and transport way
to connect to the network. Some older devices for example come with RS 485 or RS 232 physical
ports, which can’t be connected to a network as it is, but you could implement converters that will
allow them to do it.

So identify how the device will connect, for example:

- Ethernet Port
- 4G
- Modem
- WiFi
- Serial RS 232

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IoT Connectivity Software
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 5 Steps to Connect your Plant Devices to the Cloud

Your task for this step is to fill the information from the devices you listed in the Step#1.

• PLC From Pumping Station, Siemens PLC, Profinet Protocol, Ethernet Port (Example).

• _______________________________________________________________________________________________________
• _______________________________________________________________________________________________________
• _______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Step #3. Connectivity Parameters and Data Points

Once you have the 2 previous steps covered, you will need to know the parameters required to establish
a connection.

• IP Address for the device. The IP Address is required to connect any devices using TCP/IP
transport methods, it is important that the IP address can be reached from the network we want
to connect from. Port number: every TCP/IP socket needs a port to establish the connection, it
important to know that port.

• Data Points: Once you connect to the device you will want to read or receive the data you are
looking for, for example Temperature, Pressure, Operation Hours, Alarms, Status, SetPoint; so it
is important you previously identify which are those points you need to collect and how are they
named in the device.

- Some devices will expose their data points so you can browse them, but not all devices.

Your task for this step is to complete the information from Step #2. With IP Address, Port Number and
Data Point names.

• PLC From Pumping Station, Siemens PLC, Profinet Protocol, Ethernet Port (Example), IP 192.168.1.21,
Port 102, Temperature DB200:REAL:25

• _______________________________________________________________________________________________________
• _______________________________________________________________________________________________________
• _______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Step #4. Data destination

With steps 1 to 3 you know all the information regarding on your data sources, now it is time to focus on
the data destination, data destination requires less information, but it is very important.

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IoT Connectivity Software
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 5 Steps to Connect your Plant Devices to the Cloud

The question with data Destination is what protocol or data format the system that will receive the data
supports?

Typically the systems on the cloud will be ready to understand IoT Protocols and IT Protocols such as:

- MQTT
- RESTful API
- OPC UA
- SQL
- MongoDB
- JSON format
- XML format
- HTTPS

It is important to know what protocol the destination supports, because that one will be the protocol that
the dada needs to be delivered on.

So for example if my data destination is Azure IoT Hub, which supports MQTT, then we need to deliver
that data from the PLCs in MQTT protocol.

Going back to the pump station example where we have a Siemens PLC, whose protocol is Profinet over
TCP/IP; but we need to deliver that data in MQTT, so that Azure IoT Hub can understand it. How do we
convert the data from the Siemens Protocol to the Azure Protocol?

Your task here is to write down the data destinations and the protocols it supports

• Azure IoT Hub, support MQTT and OPC UA

• _______________________________________________________________________________________________________
• _______________________________________________________________________________________________________
• _______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Step #5. The IoT Gateway implementation

So now we have all information from Data Sources and all information about data Destinations.
We now need to consider link them together

• Protocol Mapping: is like linking the dots, all you need to do is list the protocols from your data
sources and link to the protocol of the data destination, and that will tell you what protocols you need
to map.

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IoT Connectivity Software
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 5 Steps to Connect your Plant Devices to the Cloud

In our example it would be “Profinet (Siemens) to MQTT). But you can any combination you need like:

- Modbus to OPC UA
- Ethernet/IP (Allen Bradley) to MQTT
- Bacnet to REST API
- SNMP to SQL
- ASCII to MongoDB
- Modbus to REST
- And so on……

This is the job of the IoT Gateway, you will need to select and IoT gateway, could be software or Hardware
that will do the protocol mappings you require in order to be able to deliver the data in the desired format
to the destination.

This the part where we at vNode Automation become very useful, our vNode IoT Gateway does exactly
that. It will take the data from any data Source and map it into the necessary protocol for the destination
to understand.

vNode has many more features than that, it is Secure, Reliable, Tag Unlimited, Store & Forward Ready,
Calculation Built In, Windows and Linux compatible, software or hardware options.

At a glance this is what vNode does:

DATA SOURCES INPUTS OUTPUTS

Mitsubishi Bacnet
GE SNMP
Allen Bradley ABB Modbus
Triconex Siemens MQTT
ICCP Siemens PLCs Azure IoT Hub
Omron
Honeywell OPC DA AWS IoT
Foxboro
SQL Server OPC UA MQTT Broker
Bailey Store and Forward
MYSQL ASCII REST API
Omniflow Calculations
TXT OPC UA
Johnson Controls ORACLE Aliasing
PostgreSQL CSV SQL
DNP3 Machine to machine
Access JSON Mongo DB
Citect Scripting Mode
Mettler Toledo REST Client CSV, TXT, JSON
iFix
InTouch Schneider Electric Custom Protocols
GE Mark Turbines Others...
IEC 61850
IEC 60870-5-101/102/104

If you wish to test it you can download from our website at any time, the download is free and we provide
free trail license.

CLICK HERE TO GET A FREE TRIAL

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IoT Connectivity Software
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 The Unlimited Industrial
IoT Connectivity Software
vNode leverages the technologies and best practices from the Operations Technology (OT)
and Information Technology (IT) worlds to providing an “Of-the-Shelf” solution for the
Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0.

The platform design allows user applications to connect, manage, monitor, and control
diverse automation devices and software applications through one intuitive user interface.

OPC UACLIENT
(SCADA,
MES, ETC.)
NO SQL
DATABASE RESTAPICLIENT
(ERP, ETC.)
SQL
DATABASE
HISTORICAL
DATAFILES

INVERTER vNode
Central

PLC AMAZON
WEB SERVICES

AZURE
IoT HUB
SCADA
STORE MQTT
& FORWARD

DATAFILES

DATABASE

vNode
GENERAL
Remote ARCHITECTURE
…… n REMOTES

Contact us:

Main office: Regional offices: Email: Website:

United States, United Kingdom: info@vnodeautomation.com. vnodeautomation.com
1549 NE 123St, (+44) 161 660 3241 support@vnodeautomation.com
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7
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