An OEM producer of high precision film measurement equipment tasked Corso Systems with upgrading their visualization infrastructure (based on Wonderware) to a cloud-based monitoring and alerting system built on Ignition. One of their requirements was a dedicated mobile app both in the iOS App Store and the Google Play marketplace.

These mobile apps needed to generate native mobile alerts based on alarms from the cloud-based Ignition gateway. All of the data needed to come from sites all around the world using MQTT Sparkplug B. The automation platform would also get upgraded from Opto22 SNAP PAC controllers to Opto22 groov EPIC controllers which made Corso Systems’ job even easier.

Mobile Meets Ignition and MQTT

• Cloud-based Ignition Gateway

  • Built-in Process Historian for data collection, trending, and reporting

  • Alarm notifications generate mobile notifications

  • MQTT Sparkplug B Integration using Cirrus Link’s MQTT Engine module at the gateway and Corso Systems’ MQTT Coil at the site level

• iOS and Android Native Apps

  • React Native was used for the dedicated native mobile app development environment

  • Real-time data integration with MQTT Data tied directly into the React Native Applications

  • Native Mobile notifications tied into Ignition Alarms

• Opto22

  • groov EPIC PLC Hardware

  • SNAP PAC Hardware

• Browser-Based Visualization

  • React was used for a browser-based, non-Mobile experience

  • Real-time data integration with MQTT data tied directly into the React Application

Ignition and Mobile App Integration Summary

With our Ignition experience, MQTT with Sparkplug B, and React development for data visualization outside of Ignition, Corso Systems was a perfect fit for this customer’s application.

We first developed the React front-end for browser-based data visualization to ensure our design elements were up to the customers standards. Then, we converted it into a React Native application to deploy to the mobile app stores.

We’d deployed our MQTT Coil application on many previous projects, so integrating it with the customer’s Opto22 PLCs was a breeze for us. We integrated MQTT Coil with their Opto22 Modbus mapping—then the data was flowing to the Cirrus Link broker on our cloud Ignition gateway in minutes.

Next, we integrated the backend data from Ignition and the MQTT broker with the browser-based and mobile apps. Within just a few hours, we had data showing up on screens across both iOS and Android devices, as well as on a PC with a standard web browser. In addition to real-time data, we also published historical trends for each data point on the React and React Native apps, giving the customer even more functionality than they had previously.

We generated API calls from Ignition to the mobile device built-in notification systems on both iOS and Android. This important feature is not available with the current Ignition App from Inductive Automation on any platform. Using React Native is likely the most cost effective solution for getting mobile notifications from SCADA systems.

Results

Corso Systems created a fully-modernized, secure, low bandwidth application that our customer could use to integrate their systems worldwide. It gave them an excellent marketing push, and ground breaking technology to debut at some of the first in-person conferences in 2022 and beyond.

The customer was very happy with the overall experience, and immediately moved into additional phases for more functionality with the platform that we developed here at Corso Systems.

Are you ready to go mobile? Contact us today to learn more, or schedule a meeting to get started right away.