With their impressive graphics and real time measurement and control capability, SCADA systems have been best suited to manufacturing or processing plants where complex graphical  representation of pumps, valves, tanks, gauges and sensors can all be displayed simultaneously on one or more screens (mimics) in real time.

With the advent of faster, long-distance communication links via radio, cellphone and more recently wireless internet protocols, SCADA systems are now seeing applications outside the traditional industrial arena in such areas as flood warning, stream gauging, geotechnical monitoring, weather station networks, irrigation monitoring and control, etc. As these are markets where our low powered data loggers excel,  naturally our clients are seeking improved SCADA
integration tools and protocols for our products.

By supporting the Modbus protocol (one of the more basic industrial protocols), Campbell Scientific’s data loggers have been able to connect to SCADA systems since 1997. This has enabled any system utilising our data loggers (e.g. weather station, measurement system or measurement and control system) to send and receive data and commands to a SCADA mimic screen.

Thanks to our software engineers, Campbell Scientific customers can now take advantage of a variety of SCADA integration tools.

1. RTMC & RTMC Pro

Campbell Scientific’s Loggernet software package contains the RTMC (Real Time Monitoring and Control) module. While RTMC is easy to use, it must be remembered that it is an elementary SCADA system which allow users to mimic simple measurement and control systems. RTMC Pro contains additional tools and features for more advanced applications. Further details on these two packages can be found on our website - http://www.campbellsci.com.au/software

2. Modbus

The CR800, CR850, CR1000 and CR3000 all support Modbus communications. As stated earlier, Modbus is one of the more primitive protocols and doesn’t allow many of the advanced features of our own data logger support software including remote clock set, program download/upload and historical data collection. It does allow the remote setting of control ports and reading / changing of input memory locations. By using Modbus with our loggers, you can connect to most of the commercial SCADA packages on the market. CITECT (http://www.citect.com/) is an Australian SCADA package that is commonly used by our clients. Outlook from National Instruments is another SCADA package that we recommend for its simplicity and ease-of-use. A working demo version of Outlook can be downloaded and tested with our data loggers from http://www.ni.com/downloads/ by searching for Lookout.

3. OPC Server

OPC Server is an optional software addition to our Loggernet package that provides simple connectivity to any SCADA system that provides OPC support. Loggernet is used to collect data as required and the OPC driver allows a SCADA system to link elements from the Loggernet database to SCADA “tags”. Further details can be found on http://www.campbellsci.com/pc-opc.

For more information on SCADA and how it can be used in your application contact our tech team!