Manufacturing Connect Edge FAQs
Manufacturing Connect Edge is an operating system on an Industrial PC (IPC) appliance. This edge-level software seamlessly collects data from IoT devices/systems (such as sensors and PLCs) and integrates the data into the cloud or into on-premise enterprise systems. Extensive knowledge of 250+ device drivers, both legacy and newer systems, enables Manufacturing Connect Edge to manage the variety of devices in an industrial environment. Manufacturing Connect Edge software provides support for many protocols/buses (RS232, RS485, CAN, Ethernet, Fieldbus). The raw or processed data can be visualized and analyzed at the edge or sent to Manufacturing Connect, in near real time.
Contact us to schedule a Manufacturing Connect Edge Demo.
- Enter the IP address into a browser running on the same network as the Manufacturing Connect Edge device.
- For example, enter https://192.168.1.49, into the address bar.
The latest versions of the following browsers:
- Google Chrome
- Mozilla Firefox
- Safari
- Microsoft Edge
If you encounter any issues with Manufacturing Connect Edge, make sure to remove any ad blockers.
Try the Manufacturing Connect Edge Installation and Deployments guide to start using Manufacturing Connect Edge concepts and procedures.
Yes, you can use Manufacturing Connect Edge without Manufacturing Connect. You can collect data from a device and visualize data through Manufacturing Connect Edge with the DeviceHub and Flows components.
No, you should only access the machine using the WebUI or the provided Terminal User Interface.
- Port 443 must be open to access the Manufacturing Connect Edge Web User Interface.
- Ports 80, 443, 8883, and 51820 must be open to maintain the activation of Manufacturing Connect Edge through Manufacturing Connect.
See Firewall Port Configuration Requirements to learn more about other ports used by Manufacturing Connect Edge services.
Yes. You can use the LDAP/Active Directory. In the Manufacturing Connect Edge navigation panel, select System > LDAP/AD Auth.
You can attempt to log in five times before you are locked out. With each attempt, the timeout increases until you are locked out after the fifth try. You can restart to reset the timeout counter.
An admin can reset a user's password from the System > User pane. The user must restart after a reset by the admin. An admin password cannot be reset due to security. If you are an admin that has forgotten your password, you must reinstall.
Upgrade is next to the core license on the License pane. Only a single core license is allowed. If you have a different core license, you can use Upgrade. Using Upgrade replaces the current core license.
Add License on the License pane is used to add a feature/pack license such as Analytics or a Marketplace add-on.
Use Upgrade next to the core license on the License pane. You need a .upd file for the new version and a currently installed version of Manufacturing Connect Edge that supports upgrades to the new version. See the Software Updates for details on which version you must start from to begin the upgrade process from Manufacturing Connect Edge.
Refer to DeviceHub Troubleshooting for reasons and steps to resolve these issues.
Refer to DeviceHub Troubleshooting for possible reasons for this issue and how to resolve it.
Check out the Industrial Systems Connection Guide.
DeviceHub provides the mechanism for connecting to physical devices (PLCs, sensors) to collect data from them.
- DeviceHub needs to be configured for southbound connections, including connections to PLCs.
- DeviceHub collects data from physical devices and publishes it to an internal message broker. The data can be managed locally and sent to any desired destination.
- DeviceHub's main purpose is to collect data from PLCs (Programmable Logic Controller) and publish it to a Message Broker subject for further distribution.
- PLC-level statistics and input/output data can be obtained at the edge using DeviceHub.
- There are 250+ device drivers included in DeviceHub. DeviceHub supports many PLC manufacturers, such as Siemens, Allen-Bradley, Mitsubishi, Omron. See also the Industrial Systems Connection Guide.
- These Manufacturing Connect Edge components are independent and need separate configurations. Both configurations are required to get the maximum value out of Manufacturing Connect Edge.
- DeviceHub needs to be configured for southbound connections to PLCs.
- DataHub is used to manage the data stored in the no-sql time series database that Manufacturing Connect Edge offers. You can choose to store data for a specific period of time to perform batch analytics on the historic data.
- You can add your own databases and connect them using Integration. You can set up users to manage the databases and connections you create.
- A DeviceHub device tag refers to the PLC tag/register. PLC registers hold PLC runtime information.
- Tags are the actual input and output registers in a device to which sensors are connected. Every PLC has a tag and tags differ from PLC to PLC.
- Examples of tags include: digital input, digital output, analog input, analog output, timers, counters.
There is no limit for polling rates.
- Devices send these attributes to Manufacturing Connect edge. There is a special OMA object designated for this purpose.
- You can always update these attributes manually with the Device Details form
Try double-checking connection parameters and firewall settings.
Use the Remote Access service, along with Manufacturing Connect Edge and Manufacturing Connect configurations.
No, the PLC cannot be programmed from Manufacturing Connect Edge. The PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) needs to be already programmed before setting up in Manufacturing Connect Edge. Manufacturing Connect Edge reads the PLC data.
Try setting the polling interval for DeviceHub Tags. See Add Tags for more information about length of time. Polling PLC registers too often may cause too much data to be sent over the network from which the Manufacturing Connect Edge is connected.
DeviceHub polls in two different ways:
- If you have 5000 tags which are not in sequence, and use different data types for each tag, then Manufacturing Connect Edge will make 5000 calls to the PLC (a very rare scenario, but it works). The PLC outputs only when the program cycle completes. This means that once it hits the END ladder (START to END is the PLC cycle time) it will display the response for the tags, so the external calls to the PLC do not affect its cycle time.
- If you have 5000 tags of the same data type, and they are in sequence, Manufacturing Connect edge makes on call to get all those tags, and then parses the data at the driver level.
Flows offers flow-based programming with a drag-and-drop flow editor. It is for data manipulation, data normalization, and visualization.
Flows has an import/export feature to share flows.
The Flows Manager module has a max limit of 4 concurrently running flows. If a flow crashes, the module tries to restart it 5 times, and then stops it permanently. This causes the module to reach the limit, which generated the “limit reached” error. When you see that error, download the flow file, delete the flow instance. start a new one, import it, and then edit the flow logic to make sure it will not crash. Soon a warning status will be implemented for the flows, which is expected to obviate the confusion.
Before exporting nodes, select the nodes and connecting wires within a flow tab. See Manage the Flow Canvas.
The most likely cause of this is due to the use of custom nodes. If a custom node is used in your flow, you must download and reinstall the custom nodes. Custom nodes are not included in backups.
The Node-Red MySQL 6.x was updated to a new authentication protocol. You can change the authentication method to SHA256 Password from Workbench. See MySQL Internals Manual- Authentication Method for instructions.
The MySQL 5.x still uses the old authentication.
See OPC UA Client for more information about supported servers.
For containers, we rely on the security that Docker offers. For deployment, you can use certificate-based authentication to add a private registry (Manufacturing Connect, quay.io, Google Container Registry - GCR, Registry, Docker Trusted Registry, Docker Hub.) and then use images on these registries to launch containers.
The Applications > Containers section only displays containers that are currently active or stopped.
Since none of the uploaded images have been used with a Docker command, the Applications > Containers section does not display anything related to those images. You must construct the correct Docker command and run it.
Only after running the Docker command will anything related to the uploaded images appear in the Applications > Containers section.
See The Docker Run Command-Line Reference for more information about how to structure a Docker command to run a container.
If you ran the Docker command and the image does not appear in the Applications > Containers section, open a new ticket, and provide the Docker command that was used.
Manufacturing Connect Edge does NOT have MQTT broker. It has an MQTT client. However, you can launch a container with MQTT broker and connect to it.
For the System>External Storage feature, passwords with the special character comma(,) are not supported. Change the password to not contain comma or commas.
A Backup is a .DAT file that cannot be customized and contain a predetermined list of configuration settings.
A Template is a .json file that can be customized to contain a list of selectable configuration settings.
The key difference between the two are the use purposes. Restoring a hardware-damaged Manufacturing Connect Edge Device should be done with a Backup while cloning a Manufacturing Connect Edge Device to other devices should be done with a Template.
Furthermore, a restore operation will replicate and overwrite the Manufacturing Connect Edge device's system state from the backup (.DAT) file. On the contrary, a Template upload operation will append (and not overwrite) its configurations settings to the Manufacturing Connect Edge device.
See Manage Templates to learn more about customizing templates.