Open Automation Software’s latest update now includes a new interface for Sparkplug B Edge of Network Nodes and Host Applications.
The OAS IIoT platform has recently added support for Sparkplug B as an Edge Network Node and a Host Application. Sparkplug B is an industry-standard that enables common topic and payload definitions for MQTT data transport.
As an Edge of Network (EoN) Node for Sparkplug B, OAS can offer bi-directional communications to all tags in the OAS Engine using any combination of Sparkplug B identifiers. This is achieved using four new properties to define the hosting Group ID, Edge Node ID, Device ID, and Metric name in each OAS tag.
This interface supports all data sources of OAS, including Allen Bradley ControlLogix, CompactLogix, GuardLogix, Micro800 MicroLogix, SLC 500, PLC-5 PLCs, Siemens S7 controllers, Modbus TCP, RTU, and ASCII masters and slaves, OPC UA clients and servers, OPC DA clients and servers, MTConnect, custom MQTT payloads, .NET interfaces, REST API, and databases.
In addition, OAS provides a Sparkplug B Host Application interface to control and consume data from the EoN Node to receive and extract NDATA and DDATA automatically to tag values and write data to EoN Node Metric values through NCMD and DCMD Sparkplug B commands. OAS tags can also be created automatically based on the NBIRTH and DBIRTH data received from an EoN Node.
You can connect to any third-party MQTT Broker that supports MQTT V3.11 or V5.0, including HiveMQ, Mosquitto, or OAS built-in MQTT Broker. OAS supports Sparkplug B versions 2.2 and 3.0.
For step-by-step instructions for setting up Sparkplug B communications, watch the video below:
Supported Data Sources
- Allen Bradley
- Modbus
- Siemens S7
- OPC UA
- OPC DA
- MTConnect
- Kafka
- Excel
- AWS IoT
- MQTT
- Rest API
- .NET API
- Databases
- Other IoT Endpoints
Refer to “Getting Started with Sparkplug B EoN Node” for a step-by-step guide on using OAS as a Sparkplug B Edge of Network Node. Similarly, “Getting Started with Sparkplug B Host Application” provides detailed instructions on using OAS as a Sparkplug B Host Application.
You can also utilize the OAS Data Route feature to enable server-to-server data transport and additional protocol translation, including Sparkplug B EoN Node to EoN Node data transfer.
