Hello, not sure if this is the right place, but here goes. I’m currently involved in automating a wastewater treatment process using a PLC. I’m in need of a SCADA system to control equipment, visualize data, and monitor each step of the process.
I received a recommendation for a Windows-compatible SCADA, but I’m not a fan of Windows due to its slow performance on industrial computers. Are there any free Linux-friendly alternatives or solutions to achieve the same functionality? Any insights would be greatly appreciated.
Really? If it’s a big enough treatment works to warrant a SCADA, then I doubt an automation engineer with the experience to set it all up would be asking this question, but here goes. You’ve a couple of obstacles:
every contract I’ve ever seen for industrial automation has either specified which control plane they want directly, or they’ll have a list of approved suppliers which you must use. Someone after you will have to maintain this. Those maintainers will only accept the things that they have been trained on. Those things are Windows PCs running Windows software. They will reject anything else. The people running network security on those machines will have a very short list of the acceptable operating systems for running SCADA systems. That list will be a couple of versions of Windows Server. They will also reject anything else.
that’s not nearly enough information to make a recommendation. Which PLCs? Allen Bradley, Siemens, Mitsubishi, …? I can’t think of a job I’ve ever been on where the local HMI hasn’t matched the PLCs. The SCADA software almost invariably matches the PLCs used in the main motor control centre, with perhaps a couple of oddball PLCs for proprietary panels and such like. Could maybe ask the supplier if they’ve a Linux alternative? Siemens will laugh at you and Mitsi won’t understand the question, but AB just might.
Sorry - I’m a Linux evangelist, but I don’t think it’s a good fit for here. SCADA performance generally isn’t bad due to Windows Server - it’s fine, does what it’s intended to - but because eg. STEP 7 is an appallingly slow and bloated piece of software which would bring a mainframe to its knees. Which is bizarre - the over-the-wire protocol connecting the machines is generally a short binary blob described in the PLC configuration - these bits are the drive statuses, these bits are an int or a float for an instrument readout - and it shouldn’t be at all slow updating it all, but slow it is.
I am not an automation engineer. I am a chemical engineer specialized in water treatment, but I know little of SCADA. Programming a PLC is supper easy for my applications and usually all I need is to control a valve or two, to control dosing pumps, read modbus data, store it and make reports with it. That is also achievable with influx and grafana in an industrial computer.
But in this particular application I want to control other equipment with human input, thus a SCADA is needed.
I don’t like the proprietary software of Siemens or Schneider. That’s why I was wondering if there is another option.
Maybe I should be thinking in HMI and not a SCADA.
Offtopic question. Are you familiar with AVEVA (Wonderware) System Platform? We have been working on it for smart city command and control centre. The challenge is bringing in equipments from different OEMs under a single interface. Some projects want this to simplify operations. They prefer one application over many. What
Another thing is I saw you specified some OEMs. And most of the time they have some variant of an open protocol that only works with their PLC. Why does the SCADA/Automation not move into some universal standards? Is it because very few OEMs have significant market share? I am aware of OPC UA. But no universal support.
You can do some pretty cool things with WW SP, but I feel like working with it really makes me appreciate Linux and the Foss community so much more. WW always feels so proprietary.