Sensorconnect
2 minute read
Sensorconnect automatically detects ifm gateways connected to the network and reads data from the connected IO-Link sensors.
How it works
Sensorconnect continuosly scans the given IP range for gateways, making it effectively a plug-and-play solution. Once a gateway is found, it automatically download the IODD files for the connected sensors and starts reading the data at the configured interval. Then it processes the data and sends it to the MQTT or Kafka broker, to be consumed by other microservices.
If you want to learn more about how to use sensors in your asstes, check out the retrofitting section of the UMH Learn website.
IODD files
The IODD files are used to describe the sensors connected to the gateway. They
contain information about the data type, the unit of measurement, the minimum and
maximum values, etc. The IODD files are downloaded automatically from
IODDFinder once a sensor is found, and are
stored in a Persistent Volume. If downloading from internet is not possible,
for example in a closed network, you can download the IODD files manually and
store them in the folder specified by the IODD_FILE_PATH environment variable.
If no IODD file is found for a sensor, the data will not be processed, but sent to the broker as-is.
What’s next
- Read the Sensorconnect reference documentation to learn more about the technical details of the Sensorconnect microservice.