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Proficy Historian Module for the Azure IoT Edge

This reference implementation demonstrates how the Azure IoT Edge can be used to connect to existing Proficy Historian servers and send JSON encoded telemetry data from these servers using the Proficy Historian SDK pub/sub format (using a JSON payload) to Azure IoT Hub. All transport protocols supported by Azure IoT Edge can be used, i.e. HTTPS, AMQP and MQTT. The transport is selected in the transport setting in gateway_config.json.

This module uses the Proficy Historian API, which GE has approved being included in this repository. However, to use the API and this module you need to connect to a properly licensed Proficy Historian.

History of the module

While doing a POC with a customer of mine, they wanted to take advantage of Azure IoT Suite, but already had data collection in place, with data being persisted into a GE Proficy Historian. Because they did not want data polled multiple times and also didn't want the gateway to be installed into a very secure network, I created this module to subscribe to the persisted data from a replica of the Historian. Currently it supports subscribing to tags and getting instant notifications when these change.

Azure IoT Gateway SDK compatibility

The current version of the Proficy.Historian module is targeted at the Azure IoT Gateway SDK 2017-04-27 release. You no longer need to build Azure IoT Edge manually, as this module is based on the Nuget package available here

Directory Structure

/samples

This folder contains a sample configuration that instructs a vanilla gateway host to load the module and IoT Hub proxy module and configures the module to create a subscription on a standard server which publishes the specified tags to Azure IoT Hub.

/src

This folder contains the C# Proficy Historian module source file (GatewayModule.cs).

/tests

This folder contains unittests for the module. All should pass after building the module first. To run the tests, please open up in Visual Studio and just run the tests.

Building the Module

To build the module, open up the solution in Visual Studio and run the build command.

Configuring the Module

Proficy Historian tags whose values should be published to Azure IoT Hub can be configured in the module JSON configuration. A sample template configuration file can be found in samples/gateway_config.json. The configuration consists of a OPC-UA Application Configuration and Subscriptions section.

Application Configuration section

The args section should be confiugred as shown below

"args": {
    "ServerName": "<HistorianServerName>", //Mandatory
    "UserName": "<HistorianUserName>", //Mandatory
    "Password": "<HistorianPassWord>", //Mandatory
    "PrintToConsole": false, // Optional - default is false
    "TagsToSubscribe": [ ... ]
    ]
}

TagsToSubscribe section

The TagsToSubscribe section contains an array of Tagnames that should be subscribed to from the Proficy Historian server at startup.

    "TagsToSubscribe": [
        { "TagName": "<Tagname1>" }, // Tagname is mandatory, MinimumElapsedMilliSeconds is optional - default is 1000
        { "TagName": "<Tagname2>", "MinimumElapsedMilliSeconds": 1000 }
    ]

Running the module

To run the module and have it publish to IoT Hub, configure the name of your Hub (JSON field "IoTHubName") and the IoT Hub device ID and shared access key to use (JSON fields "Id" and "SharedAccessKey") in your version of gateway_config.json. Ensure that the right native module is configured, based on your platform (i.e. iothub.dll for Windows, libiothub.so for Linux, etc.).