Landfill Monitoring System with Mobile and Virtual Reality
This project won a Firebrand award at the Ignition Community Conference in 2019. More information including a video case study can be found here: ICC Firebrand Award page.
Project Drive
SCS Engineers had been working with the San Timoteo landfill in San Bernadino County California to build a digital solution for their energy and climate monitoring system. The original consisted of Excel documents, and the County wanted to utilize a centralized system accessible from mobile devices and chose to use Inductive Automation Ignition. Corso Systems was brought in to develop the system in Ignition, and once the beta for the Perspective Module was released, re-tool the application for mobile devices. Yes, we developed this in Vision first because we literally did not have access to Perspective. The day the module was released into Beta we got it and within a couple days had the entire application ported to Perspective. We released it the following week and stand by our claim it was the first Perspective Project in Production. This also enabled the system to import a virtual reality interface to display the site topography and equipment information including process data using a VR headset or Microsoft Hololens.
Solution
Corso Systems developed the application for this project using the Ignition Perspective Module, enabling mobile device access.
The first step, integrate with Google’s G-Suite for security and SAML authentication with Google Accounts. This allows users to login with their Google hosted email accounts and takes advantage of Google’s login security model including two factor authentication (2FA) and user management. Once this was in place, Corso Systems developed a Google Docs and Google Sheets integration enabling data entered into an Ignition form to populate Google Sheets and Docs for centralized, cloud-based tracking. The data included manually entered readings from operators and data automatically collected from the system from PLCs and various field sensors.
Leveraging the power of new technology, we also built an interface to import a Virtual Reality viewing application into Perspective. This allowed the user to pull up a 3D view of each facility as it was scanned by drones with 3D imaging tools. Users with virtual reality headsets or Microsoft Hololens hardware now have the ability to walk through a 3D version of the site as if they were in a video game. It also allows users on mobile or browser based devices to fly around the site similar to how they might navigate Google Earth.
This system was prototyped at the San Timoteo facility, and upon completion was then rolled out to 27 additional landfill sites in the region.
Benefits
Cloud based data collection with automatic backup and storage
G-Suite Security Integration taking Ignition’s security to the next level without any development overhead
Modern Ignition SCADA software allows for detailed process reporting, alarming, and process visualization capabilities
A mobile accessible HMI allows users to access any facility in the system on any device, anywhere
Project Details
Industry: Energy and Waste Management
Location: San Bernadino County California
Services: HMI, API Integration, Software Development, Ignition Module Development,
Technology
Inductive Automation’s Ignition
Google G-Suite
Google Docs and Sheets
Drones with 3D imaging cameras
Microsoft Hololens
SQL Server
Focus
Operator Safety
Process Visibility
Centralized data collection and management
Easy-to-use operator interfaces
Clear alarming and acknowledgement
Advanced technology integrations
Updated - 6/16/2022
