With the GraphQL Server in WinCC Unified V18 we can now integrate various (IT) data platforms with simple programs. Those programs can be written in Python, Java, Kotlin, Go, JavaScript, or whatever kind of programming language you prefer.
In my case I have used Kotlin to implement a simple Apache Kafka Consumer, which maps and writes values from my Home-Automation to the WinCC Unified SCADA system.
I can now use WinCC Unified for visualisation, even if I don’t have any PLC at home. WinCC Unified can be used as a Low- or No-Code platform to create fancy Web-Based visualisations with real-time values from any kind of data source.
WinCC Unified also has great alarming features. Alarm handling can be done in WinCC Unified and alerts could also be published back to the streaming platform with a producer.
I collect my Home-Automation values from a Raspberry Pi, which reads values from power meters, temperature sensors, or data via Bluetooth from my PV Converter. The values are published to a MQTT Broker. And from that MQTT Broker I bring my values to Apache Kafka and then to the WinCC Unified system.
With the GraphQL Server of WinCC Unified it would also be easily possible to implement an Apache Kafka Producer, so that values from PLC’s can easily be published to Apache Kafka, or any other data streaming platform.
From Apache Kafka I write my values to WinCC Unified and additionally to a CrateDB. CrateDB is a great NoSQL database with the power of SQL and it is highly scalable. It can be used for data analytics, machine learning, Grafana Dashboard, and more…
For sure you can also grab the data directly from the MQTT broker and bring it directly into WinCC Unified via the GraphQL Server without a streaming platform, but a streaming platform has additional benefits, which are not covered in this post…