What on Earth is Scada?
An introduction to SCADA
What is SCADA?
Abbreviation – Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition.
As the abbreviation explains, scada is used to represent the industrial process in a graphical manner and it can be used to monitor and control the process. Sometimes used to store the data for future use.
What is Intouch? or tutorials on intouch? or getting started on intouch?
It is a type of scada which is owned by wonderware ( now Schneider electric).
So since it is a SCADA we know what it is used for, so now what are the features available in Intouch?
Real time trend
Historical trend
Alarm condition
Security
Report generation
Recipe management
Scripts
Real time trend and Historical trends:
It is nothing but the representation of data in a graph format with respect to x and y axis.
The difference between real time and historical trend is we can store or log the data in historical trend but in the former logging of data is not possible.
Alarm condition:
There are many analog values involved in a process. Say for example, I am measuring the temperature of a boiler with thermocouple.
So there is a certain temperature the boiler should be maintained at so whenever it exceed the temperature the user has to be acknowledged, for this the alarm displays are used.
Security:
There are many operators in a plant from a technician to manager personnel so every detail is available in scada screens, if the user want to limit the specific screen to higher authorities then he can use this feature.
Report Generation:
The process of exporting to the analog values such as data from sensors to a excel sheet is called report generation this report can be used for later purposes to compare the productivity of the plant each month like that.
Recipe management:
In some industries, if we add same ingredients in different ratios we will get different products. Recipe manager makes it easier for varying and displaying ratios.
Scripts:
Imagine you are Realizing an AND logic using a plc. We use a ladder programming to write the code.
So how can we realize it in SCADA?
Scripts are the ways to do them. It is basically nothing but the basic of C program.
AND logic using scripts:
if S1 == 1 AND S2 == 1 then l1 = 1; endif;