2. Data Acquisition and Manipulation

Once your UMH instance is up and running, you can follow this guide to learn how to connect the instance to an OPC UA server. For this example we will use the OPC UA simulator that is provided by your instance.

Connect to external devices

You can connect your UMH instances to external devices using a variety of protocols. This is done in the Management Console and consists of two steps. First you connect to the device and check that your instance can reach it. The second step is to create a protocol converter for the connection, in which you define the data you want to collect and how it should be structured in your unified namespace.

To allow you to experience the UMH as quickly as possible, the connection to the internal OPC UA simulator is already pre-configured.

Therefore, the Add a Connection section is included for reference only. You can skip to Add a Protocol Converter below.

Add a Connection

1. To create a new connection, navigate to the Connections section in the left hand menu and click on the + Add Connection button in the top right hand corner.

   If you want to configure the connection to the OPC UA simulator by yourself, delete the preconfigured connection named default-opcua-simulator-connection.

   Having two connections to the same device can cause errors when deploying the Protocol Converter!

2. Under General Settings select your instance and give the connection a name. Enter the address and port of the device you want to connect to. To connect to the OPC UA Simulator, use

   • IP: united-manufacturing-hub-opcsimv2-service.united-manufacturing-hub.svc.cluster.local
   • Port: 50000

   You can also set additional location fields to help you keep track of your of your connections. The fields already set by the selected instance are inherited and cannot be changed.

3. Once everything is set up, you can click Save & Deploy. The instance will now attempt to connect to the device on the specified IP and port. If there is no error, it will be listed in the Connections section.

4. Click on the connection to view its details, to edit click on the Configuration button in the side panel.

Add a Protocol Converter

To access the data from the OPC UA Simulator you need to add a Protocol Converter to the connection.

1. Click on the connection to the OPC UA Simulator in the Connections table. If you are using the preconfigured one, it is called default-opcua-simulator-connection. Click on the + Add Protocol Converter button in the opening menu.

2. First you need to select the protocol used to communicate with the device, in this case OPC UA. This can be found under General.

3. Input: Many of the required details are already set based on the connection details. For this tutorial, we will subscribe to a tag and a folder on the OPC UA server. Tags and folders can be selected manually using the NodeID or by using the OPC UA Browser.

   If you want to select the nodes via the OPC UA Browser, uncheck the Root box, navigate to Root/Objects/Boilers/Boiler #2 and select the ParameterSet folder. Next navigate to Root/Objects/OpcPlc/Telemetry/Fast and select the FastUInt1 tag, then click Apply at the bottom.

   To add the nodes manually, close the OPC UA Browser by clicking on the OPC UA BROWSER button at the right edge of the window. The nodes must be added as Namespaced String NodeIDs. Now copy the code below and replace the current nodeIDs: with it.

   nodeIDs:
     - ns=4;i=5020
     - ns=3;s=FastUInt1
   

   In the input section, you must also specify the OPC UA server username and password, if it uses one.

   The Input should now look like this. Note that the indentation is important.

    opcua:
      endpoint: opc.tcp://united-manufacturing-hub-opcsimv2-service.united-manufacturing-hub.svc.cluster.local:50000
      username: "optional_username"
      password: "optional_password"
      subscribeEnabled: true
      useHeartbeat: true
      nodeIDs:
        - ns=4;i=5020
        - ns=3;s=FastUInt1
   

4. Processing: In this section you can manipulate the incoming data and sort it into the desired asset. The auto-generated configuration will sort each tag into the same asset based on the location used for the instance and connection, while the tag name will be based on the name of the tag on the OPC UA server.

   Further information can be found in the OPC UA Processor section next to the Processing field, for example how to create individual assets for each tag.

5. Output: The output section is generated entirely automatically by the Management Console.

6. Now click on Save & Deploy. Your Protocol Converter will be added.

7. To view the data, navigate to the Tag Browser on the left. Here, you can see all your tags. The tree on the left is build from the asset of each tag, you can navigate it by clicking on the asset parts.

Find out more about Data Modelling in the Unified Namespace in the Learning Hub.

What’s next

Next, we’ll dive into Data Visualisation, where you’ll learn how to create Grafana dashboards with your newly collected data.