Besides talking to PLCs and field devices, the eScada server can itself act as a data source for the rest of the factory: several instances of common server protocols can be configured and run at the same time, each in its own thread, and the tags and items to share are declared in a configuration file per instance.
Through these open standards, the data of your machines becomes available to company systems without middleware and without custom developments: MES and ERP systems, data collection platforms and analysis tools can read production data directly from the HMI solution, each through the protocol it prefers.
The following servers are available:
- OPC-UA server: an OPC-UA TCP endpoint with the security policies Basic128Rsa15, Basic256, Basic256Sha256 and Aes128Sha256RsaOaep, Sign and Sign & Encrypt modes, certificates managed in a PKI folder, anonymous or user and password authentication, configurable sampling rate and session limit. Tags with several items are published as arrays, single items as scalars.
- Modbus TCP server: the project tags mapped on coils, discrete inputs, holding registers and input registers, with the number of concurrent client sessions and the list of allowed addresses configurable per instance.
- Weihenstephan Standards server: the physical interface aligned to Version 8 of the Weihenstephan Standards for bottling and packaging plants and machines of the food industry, with device description file, allowed addresses and a watchdog that disconnects inactive clients.
- SECS/GEM equipment: the HMI solution exposed as a GEM Equipment towards a factory host (MES, cell controller) over HSMS-SS, according to the SEMI standards of the semiconductor and electronics industries. Full description in the SECS/GEM equipment sheet.
From everywhere in your company, or from a remote site, these open standards make the HMI solution a ready node of an Industry 4.0 architecture: the machine data reaches MES, ERP, historians and analysis platforms in real time, without gateways in between.
The same data serves the goals of Industry 5.0, the human-centric, sustainable and resilient industry: the operator keeps the HMI pages and the process under control while the factory systems read what they need, energy and consumption figures become available for monitoring and reduction, and features like "Easy backup and restore" and "Zero-install deploy" keep the production line resilient.
Open standards for the factory of today, and the foundations for the human-centric factory of tomorrow.