About Cirrus Link

Cirrus Link Solutions provides software to manage data assets for real-time control and industrial applications. The company’s modules for Ignition from Inductive Automation® help you build enterprise applications with IIoT and SCADA software, Cloud Injectors, and MQTT servers.

Available modules for Ignition include MQTT Transmission, MQTT Engine and Distributor (Server), drivers for Electronic Flow Meters (EFM), and cloud injectors for AWS, Azure, IBM Cloud, and Google Cloud. These Cirrus Link modules help you connect OT (Operational Technology) data to IT (Information Technology) software.

Cirrus Link also co-developed the Opto 22 groov EPIC & SNAP PAC driver for the Ignition platform with Opto 22. This driver allows Ignition software to communicate with a PAC Control strategy running on groov EPIC, SoftPAC, or a SNAP PAC controller.

For more information, please visit Cirrus Link Solutions.

Integration with Opto 22

Opto 22’s groov EPIC edge programmable industrial controller comes with Inductive Automation’s Ignition Edge® on board, which includes the MQTT Transmission module and the Opto 22 groov EPIC & SNAP PAC driver. 

What problems can it solve?

Do you have distributed assets across remote sites, enterprise-wide plants, or multi-site network architectures? If so, you’ve probably had concerns about some of these:

  • Efficient data communication
  • Network infrastructure costs
  • Network bandwidth
  • Security
  • Building data models for AI applications

MQTT addresses these concerns by using a publish-subscribe technology with report by exception, rather than a standard poll-response method that requires repetitive communication. A lightweight protocol, MQTT puts little strain on networks. To improve security, MQTT uses device-originated, outbound, two-way communication that eliminates the need for complex firewall settings, port-forwarding rules, or a VPN to access data.

In generic MQTT communication, however, a standard data payload format is not defined, so client applications require some customization or middleware to interpret his data. To avoid this customization, Cirrus Link Solutions developed Sparkplug B, an open source payload definition. Sparkplug B provides a topic namespace to help contextualize data, and state awareness to ensure data integrity.

With digital transformation and IIoT projects, many companies are looking to take advantage of cloud services such as AWS, Azure, IBM Cloud, and Google Cloud. The challenge is getting data from the plant floor or machine into these platforms without having to build complex or custom middleware. Cirrus Link’s Cloud Injector Modules for Ignition provide a quick and easy way to move data from edge devices running Ignition—such as Opto 22’s groov EPIC—into these platforms, with the communication method and data format that they understand.
 

Have questions or an application you’d like to discuss? Please contact us.