🃏 🛕 🚣🏿 Master SCADA 4D. Is there life on ARM? 😯 💰 🌫️

Having a fairly wide experience in the field of industrial automation, we are always in search of the best options for solving our problems. Depending on the technical specifications of the customer, I had to stop at one or another software and hardware base. And if there were no strict requirements for installing Siemens equipment in conjunction with the TIA-portal, then, as a rule, the choice fell on MasterSCADA 3.XX. However, nothing lasts forever ...

About his experience of switching to MasterSCADA 4D, the prerequisites, the features of its work on embedded ARM architecture computers under the cut of this article.

Background

We started testing a relatively new development of Insat - MasterSCADA 4D - not so long ago. There were several prerequisites for this. Firstly, we conducted several independent surveys among specialists in the field of industrial automation in order to find out which SCADA systems are the most popular (Figure 1). According to the survey, the first place among domestic systems is occupied by the MasterSCADA system.

Figure 1 - The survey results of the most popular SCADA-systems (the picture is clickable) The

second prerequisite can be considered ...

Now we will go directly to the MasterSCADA 4D itself. It consists of two software products, namely: development environment and runtime environment. We will talk about the work of each of these parts below.

Development environment

The system project is created in the MasterSCADA 4D development environment, for this you need to get a free version on the Insat website and install it following the prompts.

Figure 2 - Interface of the development environment (the picture is clickable)

The first thing that catches your eye is a pleasant interface of the development environment and a convenient hierarchical structure for building the project. Now in one project you can create a program not only for the workstation, but also for the entire object, starting with the controller - ending with the server or the operator’s workstation.

The development environment works only on Windows, it is relatively familiar and tolerant, but the runtime (RunTime) was pleasantly surprised by its ability to integrate into various operating systems and processor architectures, but more on that later.

Also pleased with a large library of visualization elements. Specialists from various fields will be able to find visualization elements for themselves, without resorting to drawing or searching for icons on the Internet.

Figure 3 - Elements of visualization (the picture is clickable)

Communication protocols

The system supports various drivers (exchange protocols), which are integrated by default in MasterSCADA 4D:

Modbus TCP / RTU, RTU over TCP
DCON
OPC UA / DA / HDA
IEC61850
SNMP
PostgreSQL
MQTT
IEC104
MSSQL
MySQL
Mercury (separate library), etc.

Runtime

The runtime can be run on various operating systems and personal computer architectures, you can also run RunTime on the local machine, it is installed in conjunction with the development environment and runs for an hour (or 32 tags) without restrictions.

AntexGate device

MasterSCADA Runtime is preinstalled as a separate option on the AntexGate embedded PC with the ARM processor architecture and the Debian operating system, we will conduct tests on this device.

Figure 4 - AntexGate Device

Features:

CPU: 4-core x64 ARM v8 Cortex-A53
1.2Mhz RAM: LPDDR2 1024MB
Non-volatile memory: 8/16 / 32GB eMMC

Read more about the device here .

Run the program in the actuator. For example, we created a survey and device control using the Modbus RTU protocol, the process of setting up a survey is intuitive and somewhat similar to setting up a familiar OPC server. True, protocol drivers for exchanging data are now built into RunTime.

As an example, we will create a simple project for controlling three pumps and two valves, which is necessary for an abstract production process. In the development environment, it looks as follows, as in Figure 5.

Figure 5 - The project in the development environment (the picture is clickable)

As a result, we got a simple mnemonic diagram (Figure 6), which works in any browser with HTML5 support.

Figure 6 - Mimic diagram (GIF animation is clickable)

HMI Information Display Options

It is possible to connect to the runtime environment via WEB, this option does not limit us in choosing a client for viewing data on the mnemonic diagram.
In our case, the device provides information output via HDMI, Ethernet, 3G.
When connecting via HDMI, we access LocalHost 127.0 0.1: 8043 through the built-in browser in AntexGate, or connect to a fixed IP: 8043 address on the Internet or the local network of the enterprise with another Thin Client.

Figure 7 - WEB monitoring structure (clickable picture)

Interesting news was the long-awaited MQTT protocol, which was usually not enough for monitoring remote objects in SCADA systems.
Today, everyone has the opportunity to get an inexpensive VDS server on the Internet with a fixed IP address (for example, a company’s website server) and deploy MQTT Broker (for example, Mosquito) on it.
Having received one server with an MQTT broker, we can easily get rid of the operator’s expensive services - a fixed IP and pay 900 rubles a year instead of 4000 rubles for a 3G connection.

Figure 8 - MQTT monitoring structure (the picture is clickable)

Such a network construction will not only save on traffic, but will also protect data, since data transmission via Modbus TCP protocol on the Internet does not guarantee security and quality of communication.
Thus, you can sell replicated projects in which the client himself chooses an Internet provider. And no one has a headache with setting up and allocating IP addresses: the client himself inserts any SIM card or connects to a router with a DHCP server.

Performance

The main thing for the project is speed, the so-called "Tasks" will help us with this. By default, each node when it is created has only one - The main task. A project developer can create as many of them as necessary for a particular project. Features of the calculation, for example, the calculation cycle, will depend on the settings of a particular task. Each of them will work independently of the others in the device. Creating several tasks is advisable if it is necessary to provide different cycles of computing different programs of the project.

This feature is especially interesting for devices on board which have a processor with several cores. Each "Task" is launched as a separate process in the system and the load will be distributed evenly to the processor. The AntexGate device has an ARM processor with 4 cores of 1.2 GHz and 1 GB of RAM, which allows you to create at least 4 large tasks and distribute the load across the cores. Compared to PLCs, AntexGate can provide at least 4 times more computing power at the same price.

Figure 9 - Downloading AntexGate's computing capabilities in runtime (the picture is clickable)

As we can see from Figure 9, the CPU load is no more than 2.5%, and only 61MB of memory is allocated. Thus, a small project in runtime consumes very few embedded resources.
The device can be used not only as a controller, but already as a full-fledged server with a survey of more than 2000 I / O points and the ability to support more than 100 WEB-clients.

For example, connect 9 WEB-clients to the device and see the progress of resource consumption (Figure 10).

Figure 10 - Downloading the AntexGate computing capabilities when connecting 9 WEB clients (the picture is clickable)

As you can see from the figure above, the CPU load rose on average from 2.5% to 6%, and only 3MB more memory was allocated.
Due to the large supply of computing resources of the device, the developer does not need to save on the quality of the program created in MasterSCADA 4D.

Cross-platform

I also want to note the cross-platform nature of the SCADA system under consideration, which gives integrators a huge selection of platforms for implementing their projects. Thanks to this approach, the transition between operating systems or PC architectures is very simple.

Conclusion

MasterSCADA 4D is a relatively new product from Insat. To date, information on working with this software product is not as much as we would like. However, you can download a free development environment from the official website of the company; it has very detailed help on working with the program.

Figure 11 - Help window (the picture is clickable)

In conclusion, I would like to say that this article has input data on the MasterSCADA 4D software product and a lot of things are not said. However, with your support, we will release more detailed examples and lessons on working with this software product.

I would like to see in the comments which questions interest you most. And we will turn the most frequently asked ones into a lesson on creating projects in MasterSCADA 4D if possible.

Master SCADA 4D. Is there life on ARM?