1 00:00:00,880 --> 00:00:03,120 Welcome back to the automation podcast. My name 2 00:00:03,120 --> 00:00:05,200 is Sean Tierney with Insights and Automation, and 3 00:00:05,200 --> 00:00:07,440 I wanna thank you for tuning back in 4 00:00:07,440 --> 00:00:09,119 this week. Now this week on the show, 5 00:00:09,119 --> 00:00:11,539 I meet up with Connor Mason from Software 6 00:00:11,599 --> 00:00:12,099 Toolbox, 7 00:00:12,425 --> 00:00:14,664 who gives us an overview of their product 8 00:00:14,664 --> 00:00:16,425 suite, and then he gives us a demo 9 00:00:16,425 --> 00:00:17,945 at the end. And even if you're listening, 10 00:00:17,945 --> 00:00:19,725 I think you're gonna find the demo interesting 11 00:00:19,945 --> 00:00:22,345 because Connor does a great job of talking 12 00:00:22,345 --> 00:00:23,885 through what he's doing on the screen. 13 00:00:24,185 --> 00:00:25,545 With that said, let's go ahead and jump 14 00:00:25,545 --> 00:00:28,109 into this week's episode with Connor Mason from 15 00:00:28,350 --> 00:00:29,089 Software Toolbox. 16 00:00:29,470 --> 00:00:32,429 I wanna welcome Connor from Software Toolbox to 17 00:00:32,429 --> 00:00:34,750 the show. Connor, it's really exciting to have 18 00:00:34,750 --> 00:00:36,510 you. It's just a lot of fun talking 19 00:00:36,510 --> 00:00:39,090 to your team as we prepared for this, 20 00:00:39,149 --> 00:00:41,152 and, I'm really looking forward to because I 21 00:00:41,234 --> 00:00:42,674 just know in your company over the years, 22 00:00:42,674 --> 00:00:44,215 you guys have so many great solutions 23 00:00:44,674 --> 00:00:46,195 that I really just wanna thank you for 24 00:00:46,195 --> 00:00:48,274 coming on the show. And before you jump 25 00:00:48,274 --> 00:00:51,075 into talking about products and technologies Yeah. Could 26 00:00:51,075 --> 00:00:52,835 you first tell us just a little bit 27 00:00:52,835 --> 00:00:53,490 about yourself? 28 00:00:53,890 --> 00:00:56,530 Absolutely. Thanks, Sean, for having us on. Definitely 29 00:00:56,530 --> 00:00:57,969 a pleasure to be a part of this 30 00:00:57,969 --> 00:01:01,010 environment. So my name is Connor Mason. Again, 31 00:01:01,010 --> 00:01:02,469 I'm with Software Toolbox. 32 00:01:02,850 --> 00:01:04,450 We've been around for quite a while. So 33 00:01:04,450 --> 00:01:05,730 we'll get into some of that history as 34 00:01:05,730 --> 00:01:07,090 well before we get into all the the 35 00:01:07,090 --> 00:01:09,584 fun technical things. But, you know, I've worked 36 00:01:09,584 --> 00:01:11,825 a lot with the variety of OT and 37 00:01:11,825 --> 00:01:13,744 IT projects that are ongoing at this point. 38 00:01:14,064 --> 00:01:15,924 I've come up through our support side. 39 00:01:16,305 --> 00:01:17,424 It's definitely where we grow a lot of 40 00:01:17,424 --> 00:01:19,265 our technical skills. It's a big portion of 41 00:01:19,265 --> 00:01:20,784 our company. We'll get that into that a 42 00:01:20,784 --> 00:01:24,109 little more. Currently a technical application consultant lead. 43 00:01:24,109 --> 00:01:25,870 So like I said, I I help run 44 00:01:25,870 --> 00:01:28,430 our support team, help with these large solutions 45 00:01:28,430 --> 00:01:29,810 based projects and consultations, 46 00:01:30,590 --> 00:01:32,269 to find what's what's best for you guys 47 00:01:32,269 --> 00:01:34,189 out there. There's a lot of different things 48 00:01:34,189 --> 00:01:36,495 that in our in our industry is new, 49 00:01:36,814 --> 00:01:39,875 exciting. It's fast paced. Definitely keeps me busy. 50 00:01:40,415 --> 00:01:43,694 My background was actually in data analytics. I 51 00:01:43,694 --> 00:01:45,615 did not come through engineering, did not come 52 00:01:45,615 --> 00:01:46,674 through the automation, 53 00:01:47,775 --> 00:01:49,454 trainings at all. So this is a whole 54 00:01:49,454 --> 00:01:51,295 new world for me about five years ago, 55 00:01:51,295 --> 00:01:52,709 and I've learned a lot, and I really 56 00:01:52,709 --> 00:01:53,450 enjoyed it. 57 00:01:53,829 --> 00:01:55,670 So, I really appreciate your time having us 58 00:01:55,670 --> 00:01:56,409 on here, 59 00:01:56,790 --> 00:01:58,390 Sean. Well, I appreciate you coming on. I'm 60 00:01:58,390 --> 00:01:59,750 looking forward to what you're gonna show us 61 00:01:59,750 --> 00:02:01,349 today. I had a the audience should know 62 00:02:01,349 --> 00:02:02,549 I had a little preview of what they 63 00:02:02,549 --> 00:02:03,989 were gonna show, so I'm looking forward to 64 00:02:03,989 --> 00:02:06,310 it. Awesome. Well, let's jump right into it 65 00:02:06,310 --> 00:02:08,125 then. So like I said, we're here at 66 00:02:08,125 --> 00:02:09,004 Software Toolbox, 67 00:02:09,324 --> 00:02:10,625 kinda have this ongoing 68 00:02:11,004 --> 00:02:13,965 logo and and just word map of connect 69 00:02:13,965 --> 00:02:14,465 everything, 70 00:02:14,764 --> 00:02:16,384 and that's really where we lie. 71 00:02:17,004 --> 00:02:18,844 Some people have called us data plumbers in 72 00:02:18,844 --> 00:02:21,664 the past. It's all these different connections where 73 00:02:22,020 --> 00:02:24,419 you have something, maybe legacy or something new, 74 00:02:24,419 --> 00:02:26,419 you need to get into another system. Well, 75 00:02:26,419 --> 00:02:27,939 how do you connect all those different points 76 00:02:27,939 --> 00:02:29,879 to it? And, you know, throughout 77 00:02:30,259 --> 00:02:32,419 all these projects we worked on, there's always 78 00:02:32,419 --> 00:02:34,974 something unique in those different projects. And we 79 00:02:34,974 --> 00:02:36,995 try to work in between those unique areas 80 00:02:37,215 --> 00:02:39,155 and in between all these different integrations 81 00:02:39,455 --> 00:02:41,294 and be something that people can come to 82 00:02:41,294 --> 00:02:42,194 as an expert, 83 00:02:42,655 --> 00:02:44,974 have those high level discussions, find something that 84 00:02:44,974 --> 00:02:47,375 works for them at a cost effective solution. 85 00:02:47,375 --> 00:02:50,050 So outside of just, you know, products that 86 00:02:50,050 --> 00:02:51,569 we offer, we also have a lot of 87 00:02:51,569 --> 00:02:53,810 just knowledge in the industry, and we wanna 88 00:02:53,810 --> 00:02:54,629 share that. 89 00:02:55,009 --> 00:02:56,930 You'll kinda see along here, there are some 90 00:02:56,930 --> 00:02:58,770 product names as well that you might recognize. 91 00:02:59,090 --> 00:03:01,009 Our top server and OmniServer, we'll be talking 92 00:03:01,009 --> 00:03:02,610 about LOPA as well. It's been around in 93 00:03:02,610 --> 00:03:04,854 the industry for, you know, decades at this 94 00:03:04,854 --> 00:03:05,334 point. 95 00:03:05,655 --> 00:03:07,894 And also our symbol factory might be something 96 00:03:07,894 --> 00:03:09,674 you you may have heard in other products, 97 00:03:09,974 --> 00:03:12,614 that they actually utilize themselves for HMI and 98 00:03:12,614 --> 00:03:13,514 and SCADA graphics. 99 00:03:14,134 --> 00:03:16,239 That is that is our product. So you 100 00:03:16,239 --> 00:03:18,159 may have interacted it with us without even 101 00:03:18,159 --> 00:03:19,759 knowing it, and I hope we get to 102 00:03:19,759 --> 00:03:21,360 kind of talk more about things that we 103 00:03:21,360 --> 00:03:21,860 do. 104 00:03:22,719 --> 00:03:24,639 So before we jump into all the fun 105 00:03:24,639 --> 00:03:26,439 technical things as well, I kind of want 106 00:03:26,439 --> 00:03:28,879 to talk about just the overall software toolbox 107 00:03:28,879 --> 00:03:30,284 experience as we call it. 108 00:03:31,165 --> 00:03:33,085 We're we're more than just someone that wants 109 00:03:33,085 --> 00:03:34,925 to sell you a product. We we really 110 00:03:34,925 --> 00:03:37,585 do work with, the idea of solutions. 111 00:03:38,044 --> 00:03:40,444 How do we provide you value and solve 112 00:03:40,444 --> 00:03:41,985 the problems that you are facing 113 00:03:42,284 --> 00:03:44,605 as the person that's actually working out there 114 00:03:44,605 --> 00:03:45,330 on the field, 115 00:03:45,729 --> 00:03:47,110 on those operation lines, 116 00:03:47,729 --> 00:03:49,969 and making things as well. And that's really 117 00:03:49,969 --> 00:03:50,870 our big priority 118 00:03:51,169 --> 00:03:53,509 is providing a high level of knowledge, 119 00:03:53,889 --> 00:03:55,830 variety of the things we can work with, 120 00:03:55,889 --> 00:03:57,189 and then also the support. 121 00:03:57,490 --> 00:03:59,425 It's very dear to me coming through the 122 00:03:59,425 --> 00:04:01,185 the support team is still working, you know, 123 00:04:01,185 --> 00:04:03,764 day to day throughout that software toolbox, 124 00:04:04,064 --> 00:04:06,544 and it's something that has been ingrained into 125 00:04:06,544 --> 00:04:07,284 our heritage. 126 00:04:08,625 --> 00:04:10,864 Next year will be thirty years of software 127 00:04:10,864 --> 00:04:12,465 toolbox in 2026. 128 00:04:12,465 --> 00:04:14,520 So we're established in 1996. 129 00:04:14,840 --> 00:04:17,240 Through those thirty years, we have committed to 130 00:04:17,240 --> 00:04:20,120 supporting the people that we work with. And 131 00:04:20,120 --> 00:04:21,899 I I I can just tell you that 132 00:04:21,959 --> 00:04:24,860 that entire motto lives throughout everyone that's here. 133 00:04:25,319 --> 00:04:28,514 So from that, over 97% 134 00:04:28,514 --> 00:04:30,514 of the customers that we interact with through 135 00:04:30,514 --> 00:04:32,675 support say they had an awesome or great 136 00:04:32,675 --> 00:04:33,175 experience. 137 00:04:34,914 --> 00:04:36,834 Having someone that you can call that understands 138 00:04:36,834 --> 00:04:39,474 the products you're working with, understands the environment 139 00:04:39,474 --> 00:04:41,875 you're working in, understands the priority of certain 140 00:04:41,875 --> 00:04:44,029 things. If you ever have a plant shut 141 00:04:44,029 --> 00:04:46,269 down, we know how stressful that is. Those 142 00:04:46,269 --> 00:04:47,870 are things that we work through and help 143 00:04:47,870 --> 00:04:49,089 people throughout. So 144 00:04:49,550 --> 00:04:51,949 this really is the core pillars of Software 145 00:04:51,949 --> 00:04:53,389 Toolbox and who we are, 146 00:04:53,790 --> 00:04:55,949 beyond just the products, and and I really 147 00:04:55,949 --> 00:04:57,490 think this is something unique 148 00:04:57,794 --> 00:04:59,894 that we have continued to grow 149 00:05:00,274 --> 00:05:02,615 and stand upon for those thirty years. 150 00:05:04,514 --> 00:05:06,375 So jumping right into 151 00:05:06,754 --> 00:05:08,834 some of the industry challenges we've been seeing 152 00:05:08,834 --> 00:05:10,110 over the past few years. 153 00:05:11,229 --> 00:05:13,069 This is also a fun one for me, 154 00:05:13,069 --> 00:05:15,149 talking about data analytics and tying these things 155 00:05:15,149 --> 00:05:15,649 together. 156 00:05:16,110 --> 00:05:18,209 In my prior life and education, 157 00:05:18,829 --> 00:05:20,849 I worked with just tons of data, and 158 00:05:21,229 --> 00:05:23,229 I never fully knew where it might have 159 00:05:23,229 --> 00:05:25,354 come from, why it was such a mess, 160 00:05:25,414 --> 00:05:27,254 who structured it that way, but it's my 161 00:05:27,254 --> 00:05:29,595 job to get some insights out of that. 162 00:05:30,535 --> 00:05:31,435 And knowing 163 00:05:31,894 --> 00:05:33,894 what the data actually was and why it 164 00:05:33,894 --> 00:05:36,935 matters is a big part of actually getting 165 00:05:36,935 --> 00:05:39,459 value. So if you have dirty data, if 166 00:05:39,459 --> 00:05:42,100 you have data that's just clustered, it's in 167 00:05:42,100 --> 00:05:42,600 silos, 168 00:05:43,060 --> 00:05:44,740 it's very often you're not gonna get much 169 00:05:44,740 --> 00:05:45,800 value out of it. 170 00:05:46,500 --> 00:05:48,579 This was a study that we found in 171 00:05:48,579 --> 00:05:49,699 2024, 172 00:05:50,019 --> 00:05:52,574 from Garner Research, And it said that, 173 00:05:53,115 --> 00:05:54,095 based on the question 174 00:05:54,954 --> 00:05:57,194 that business were asked, were there any top 175 00:05:57,194 --> 00:05:58,175 strategic priorities 176 00:05:58,475 --> 00:05:59,774 for your data analytics 177 00:06:00,074 --> 00:06:01,935 functions in 2024? 178 00:06:02,074 --> 00:06:03,595 And almost 50%, 179 00:06:03,595 --> 00:06:04,980 it's right at '49, 180 00:06:05,060 --> 00:06:06,980 said that they wanted to improve data quality, 181 00:06:06,980 --> 00:06:08,680 and that was a strategic priority. 182 00:06:09,620 --> 00:06:11,300 This is about half the industry is just 183 00:06:11,300 --> 00:06:13,939 talking about data quality, and it's exactly because 184 00:06:13,939 --> 00:06:15,699 of those reasons I said in my prior 185 00:06:15,699 --> 00:06:18,339 life gave me a headache, to look at 186 00:06:18,339 --> 00:06:19,720 all these different things that 187 00:06:20,264 --> 00:06:21,944 I don't even know where they became from 188 00:06:21,944 --> 00:06:24,024 or or why they were so different. And 189 00:06:24,024 --> 00:06:25,785 the person that made that may have been 190 00:06:25,785 --> 00:06:28,024 gone may not have the contacts, and making 191 00:06:28,024 --> 00:06:30,425 that from the person that implemented things to 192 00:06:30,425 --> 00:06:31,884 the people that are making decisions, 193 00:06:32,639 --> 00:06:35,439 is a very big task sometimes. So if 194 00:06:35,439 --> 00:06:37,920 we can create a better pipeline of data 195 00:06:37,920 --> 00:06:39,060 quality at the beginning, 196 00:06:39,439 --> 00:06:41,839 makes those people's lives a lot easier up 197 00:06:41,839 --> 00:06:42,339 front 198 00:06:42,639 --> 00:06:44,959 and allows them to get value out of 199 00:06:44,959 --> 00:06:46,800 that data a lot quicker. And that's what 200 00:06:46,800 --> 00:06:48,854 businesses need. You know, I wanna 201 00:06:49,314 --> 00:06:51,634 just data quality. Right? Mhmm. I think a 202 00:06:51,634 --> 00:06:53,235 lot of us, when we think of that, 203 00:06:53,235 --> 00:06:54,294 we think of, 204 00:06:54,995 --> 00:06:57,974 you know, error error detection. We think of 205 00:06:58,194 --> 00:07:00,134 lost connections. We think of, 206 00:07:01,189 --> 00:07:03,990 you know, just garbage data coming through. But 207 00:07:03,990 --> 00:07:05,990 I I think from an analytical side, there's 208 00:07:05,990 --> 00:07:08,069 a different view on that, you know, in 209 00:07:08,069 --> 00:07:09,770 line with what you were just saying. 210 00:07:10,389 --> 00:07:12,150 So how do you when you're talking to 211 00:07:12,150 --> 00:07:14,310 somebody about data quality, how do you get 212 00:07:14,310 --> 00:07:16,705 them to shift gears and focus in on 213 00:07:16,705 --> 00:07:18,705 what you're talking about and not like a 214 00:07:18,705 --> 00:07:20,965 quality connection to the device itself? 215 00:07:21,745 --> 00:07:23,745 Absolutely. Yeah. We I kinda live in both 216 00:07:23,745 --> 00:07:25,425 those worlds now. You know, I I get 217 00:07:25,425 --> 00:07:27,264 to see that that connection state. And when 218 00:07:27,264 --> 00:07:29,425 you're operating in real time, that quality is 219 00:07:29,425 --> 00:07:31,040 also very important to you. Mhmm. And I 220 00:07:31,040 --> 00:07:32,560 kind of use that at the same realm. 221 00:07:32,560 --> 00:07:34,000 Think of that when you're thinking in real 222 00:07:34,000 --> 00:07:35,920 time, if you know what's going on in 223 00:07:35,920 --> 00:07:38,079 the operation and where things are running, that's 224 00:07:38,079 --> 00:07:40,000 important to you. That's the quality that you're 225 00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:41,759 looking for. You have to think beyond just 226 00:07:41,759 --> 00:07:43,680 real time. We're talking about historical data. We're 227 00:07:43,680 --> 00:07:45,360 talking about data that's been stored for months 228 00:07:45,360 --> 00:07:47,654 and years. Think about the quality of that 229 00:07:47,654 --> 00:07:49,574 data once it's made up to that level. 230 00:07:49,574 --> 00:07:51,574 Are they gonna understand what was happening around 231 00:07:51,574 --> 00:07:53,415 those periods? Are they gonna understand what those 232 00:07:53,415 --> 00:07:55,115 tags even are? Are they gonna understand 233 00:07:55,574 --> 00:07:57,435 what those conventions that you've implemented, 234 00:07:57,975 --> 00:08:00,960 to give them insights into this operation. Is 235 00:08:00,960 --> 00:08:03,120 that a clear picture? So, yeah, you're absolutely 236 00:08:03,120 --> 00:08:05,040 right. There are two levels to this, and 237 00:08:05,040 --> 00:08:06,319 and that is a big part of it. 238 00:08:06,319 --> 00:08:08,080 The the real time data and historical, and 239 00:08:08,080 --> 00:08:09,680 we're gonna get some of that into into 240 00:08:09,680 --> 00:08:10,819 our demo as well. 241 00:08:11,279 --> 00:08:14,180 It it's a it's a big area for 242 00:08:14,615 --> 00:08:15,194 the business, 243 00:08:15,895 --> 00:08:17,514 and the people working in the operations. 244 00:08:18,295 --> 00:08:19,835 Yeah. I think quality too. 245 00:08:20,215 --> 00:08:20,715 Think, 246 00:08:21,095 --> 00:08:22,775 you know, you may have data. It's good 247 00:08:22,775 --> 00:08:24,535 data. It was collected correctly. You had a 248 00:08:24,535 --> 00:08:26,295 good connection to the device. You got it. 249 00:08:26,295 --> 00:08:28,395 You got it as often as you want. 250 00:08:28,680 --> 00:08:31,319 But that data could really be useless. It 251 00:08:31,319 --> 00:08:33,799 could tell you nothing. Right. Exactly. Right? It 252 00:08:33,799 --> 00:08:35,159 could be a flow rate on part of 253 00:08:35,159 --> 00:08:37,259 the process that irrelevant to 254 00:08:37,639 --> 00:08:39,960 monitoring the actual production of the product or 255 00:08:39,960 --> 00:08:41,720 or whatever you're making. And, 256 00:08:42,444 --> 00:08:43,964 you know, I've known a lot of people 257 00:08:43,964 --> 00:08:46,144 who filled up their databases, their historians, 258 00:08:47,084 --> 00:08:49,644 with they just they just logged everything. And 259 00:08:49,644 --> 00:08:51,485 it's like a lot of that data was 260 00:08:51,485 --> 00:08:54,044 what I would call low quality because it's 261 00:08:54,044 --> 00:08:55,904 low information value. Right? 262 00:08:56,519 --> 00:08:58,539 Absolutely. I'm sure you run into that too. 263 00:08:59,000 --> 00:09:00,440 Yeah. We we run into a lot of 264 00:09:00,440 --> 00:09:02,440 people that, you know, I've got x amount 265 00:09:02,440 --> 00:09:04,440 of data points in my historian and, you 266 00:09:04,440 --> 00:09:06,199 know, then we start digging into, well, I 267 00:09:06,199 --> 00:09:08,120 wanna do something with it or wanna migrate. 268 00:09:08,120 --> 00:09:09,639 Okay. Like, well, what do you wanna achieve 269 00:09:09,639 --> 00:09:11,164 at the end of this? Right? And and 270 00:09:11,164 --> 00:09:14,365 asking those questions, you know, it's great that 271 00:09:14,365 --> 00:09:15,825 you have all these things historized. 272 00:09:16,524 --> 00:09:18,205 Are you using it? Do you have the 273 00:09:18,205 --> 00:09:19,264 right things historized? 274 00:09:19,644 --> 00:09:21,485 Are they even set up to be, you 275 00:09:21,485 --> 00:09:23,725 know, worked upon once they are historized by 276 00:09:23,725 --> 00:09:25,745 someone outside of this this landscape? 277 00:09:26,149 --> 00:09:27,669 And I think OT plays such a big 278 00:09:27,669 --> 00:09:29,669 role in this, and that's why we start 279 00:09:29,669 --> 00:09:31,429 to see the convergence of the IT and 280 00:09:31,429 --> 00:09:33,049 OT teams just because that communication 281 00:09:33,429 --> 00:09:35,590 needs to occur sooner. So we're not just 282 00:09:35,590 --> 00:09:37,990 passing along, you know, low quality data, bad 283 00:09:37,990 --> 00:09:39,284 quality data as well. 284 00:09:39,845 --> 00:09:41,764 And we'll get into some of that later 285 00:09:41,764 --> 00:09:42,264 on. 286 00:09:43,524 --> 00:09:45,444 So to jump into some of our products 287 00:09:45,444 --> 00:09:48,105 and solutions, I kinda wanna give this overview 288 00:09:48,324 --> 00:09:50,964 of the automation pyramid. This is where we 289 00:09:50,964 --> 00:09:53,304 work from things like the field device communications. 290 00:09:53,605 --> 00:09:56,000 And you you have certain sensors, meters, 291 00:09:56,460 --> 00:09:58,160 actuators along the actual lines, 292 00:09:58,540 --> 00:10:00,700 wherever you're working. We work across all the 293 00:10:00,700 --> 00:10:03,259 industries, so this can vary between those. 294 00:10:03,899 --> 00:10:05,419 Through there, you work up kind of your 295 00:10:05,419 --> 00:10:07,500 control area. A lot of control engineers are 296 00:10:07,500 --> 00:10:08,000 working. 297 00:10:08,375 --> 00:10:09,575 This is where I think a lot of 298 00:10:09,575 --> 00:10:11,975 the audience is very familiar with PLCs. Your 299 00:10:11,975 --> 00:10:13,995 your typical name, Siemens, Rockwell, 300 00:10:14,615 --> 00:10:16,235 your Schneiders that are creating, 301 00:10:16,695 --> 00:10:19,575 these hardware products. They're interacting with things on 302 00:10:19,575 --> 00:10:21,899 the operation level, and they're generating data. 303 00:10:22,620 --> 00:10:23,820 That that was kind of our bread and 304 00:10:23,820 --> 00:10:25,820 butter for a very long time and still 305 00:10:25,820 --> 00:10:28,059 is that communication level of getting data from 306 00:10:28,059 --> 00:10:30,379 there, but now getting it up the stack 307 00:10:30,379 --> 00:10:31,759 further into the pyramid 308 00:10:32,139 --> 00:10:33,040 of your supervisory, 309 00:10:33,580 --> 00:10:34,639 MES connections, 310 00:10:35,315 --> 00:10:37,495 and it'll also now open to these ERP. 311 00:10:37,955 --> 00:10:40,274 We have a lot of large corporations that 312 00:10:40,274 --> 00:10:41,414 have data across 313 00:10:41,955 --> 00:10:44,274 variety of different solutions and also want to 314 00:10:44,274 --> 00:10:46,855 integrate directly down into their operation levels. 315 00:10:47,600 --> 00:10:48,800 There's a lot of value to doing that, 316 00:10:48,800 --> 00:10:50,320 but there's also a lot of watch outs, 317 00:10:50,559 --> 00:10:52,800 and a lot of security concerns. So that'll 318 00:10:52,800 --> 00:10:54,660 be a topic that we'll be getting into. 319 00:10:55,600 --> 00:10:57,200 We also all know that the cloud is 320 00:10:57,200 --> 00:11:00,080 here. It's been here, and it's it's gonna 321 00:11:00,080 --> 00:11:01,379 continue to 322 00:11:01,695 --> 00:11:02,975 push its way into, 323 00:11:03,295 --> 00:11:05,634 these cloud providers into OT as well. 324 00:11:06,975 --> 00:11:08,335 There there's a lot of benefit to it, 325 00:11:08,335 --> 00:11:10,575 but there there's also some watch outs as 326 00:11:10,575 --> 00:11:11,554 this kind of realm, 327 00:11:12,575 --> 00:11:13,075 changes 328 00:11:13,535 --> 00:11:15,480 in the landscape that we've been used to. 329 00:11:15,720 --> 00:11:17,240 So there's a lot of times that we 330 00:11:17,240 --> 00:11:19,500 wanna get data out there. There's value into 331 00:11:19,799 --> 00:11:21,559 AI agents. It's a hot it's a hot 332 00:11:21,559 --> 00:11:22,779 commodity right now. 333 00:11:23,159 --> 00:11:24,759 Analytics as well. How do we get those 334 00:11:24,759 --> 00:11:27,019 things directly from shop floor, 335 00:11:27,320 --> 00:11:29,399 up into the cloud directly, and how do 336 00:11:29,399 --> 00:11:30,299 we do that securely? 337 00:11:31,165 --> 00:11:33,004 It's things that we've been working on. We've 338 00:11:33,004 --> 00:11:34,305 had successful projects, 339 00:11:34,845 --> 00:11:37,004 continues to be an interest area and I 340 00:11:37,004 --> 00:11:38,625 don't see it slowing down at all. 341 00:11:40,524 --> 00:11:42,524 Now, when we kind of begin this level 342 00:11:42,524 --> 00:11:43,825 at the bottom of connectivity, 343 00:11:44,365 --> 00:11:46,384 people mostly know us for our top server. 344 00:11:47,029 --> 00:11:50,089 This is our platform for industrial device connectivity. 345 00:11:50,549 --> 00:11:52,230 It's a thing that's talking to all those 346 00:11:52,230 --> 00:11:55,029 different PLCs in your plant, whether that's brownfield 347 00:11:55,029 --> 00:11:55,689 or greenfield. 348 00:11:56,549 --> 00:11:58,149 We pretty much know that there's never gonna 349 00:11:58,149 --> 00:12:00,809 be a plant that's a single PLC manufacturer, 350 00:12:01,815 --> 00:12:03,495 that exists in one plant. There's always gonna 351 00:12:03,495 --> 00:12:05,415 be something that's slightly different. 352 00:12:06,054 --> 00:12:08,934 Definitely from Brownfield, things different engineers made different 353 00:12:08,934 --> 00:12:09,434 choices, 354 00:12:09,735 --> 00:12:11,254 things have been eminent, and you gotta keep 355 00:12:11,254 --> 00:12:12,075 running them. 356 00:12:12,455 --> 00:12:15,274 TopServe provides this single platform to connect to 357 00:12:15,919 --> 00:12:18,500 a long laundry list of different PLCs. 358 00:12:19,120 --> 00:12:22,179 And if this sounds very familiar to Kepserver, 359 00:12:22,879 --> 00:12:24,100 well, you're not wrong. 360 00:12:24,799 --> 00:12:27,539 Kepserver is the same exact technology that TopServer 361 00:12:27,600 --> 00:12:30,365 is. What's the difference then is probably the 362 00:12:30,365 --> 00:12:31,825 biggest question we usually get. 363 00:12:32,684 --> 00:12:34,544 The difference technology wise is nothing. 364 00:12:34,924 --> 00:12:37,085 The difference in the back end is that 365 00:12:37,085 --> 00:12:37,585 actually 366 00:12:38,125 --> 00:12:40,544 it's all the same product, same product releases, 367 00:12:40,845 --> 00:12:41,610 same price, 368 00:12:42,329 --> 00:12:44,269 but we have been the biggest single 369 00:12:44,649 --> 00:12:47,450 source of Kepserver or Topsyra implementation into the 370 00:12:47,450 --> 00:12:47,950 market, 371 00:12:48,570 --> 00:12:51,070 for almost two plus decades at this point. 372 00:12:51,129 --> 00:12:52,269 So the single biggest 373 00:12:52,889 --> 00:12:56,004 purchase that we own this own labeled version 374 00:12:56,004 --> 00:12:58,165 of Kepserver to provide to our customers. They 375 00:12:58,165 --> 00:13:00,325 interact with our support team, our solutions teams 376 00:13:00,325 --> 00:13:02,404 as well, and we sell it along the 377 00:13:02,404 --> 00:13:04,004 stack of other things because it it fits 378 00:13:04,004 --> 00:13:06,245 so well. And we've been doing this since 379 00:13:06,245 --> 00:13:08,909 the early two thousands when, Kepware was a 380 00:13:08,990 --> 00:13:10,669 a much smaller company than it is now, 381 00:13:10,669 --> 00:13:12,589 and we've had a really great relationship with 382 00:13:12,589 --> 00:13:15,230 them. So if you've enjoyed the technology of 383 00:13:15,230 --> 00:13:15,970 of Kepserver, 384 00:13:16,429 --> 00:13:18,589 maybe there's some users out there. If you 385 00:13:18,589 --> 00:13:20,269 ever heard of TopServer and that has been 386 00:13:20,269 --> 00:13:22,274 unclear, I hope this clear clarifies it. 387 00:13:23,235 --> 00:13:25,475 But it it is a great technology stack 388 00:13:25,475 --> 00:13:27,315 that that we build upon and we'll get 389 00:13:27,315 --> 00:13:28,774 into some of that in our demo. 390 00:13:29,634 --> 00:13:31,475 Now the other question is, what if you 391 00:13:31,475 --> 00:13:33,495 don't have a standard communication protocol, 392 00:13:33,955 --> 00:13:34,774 like a modbus, 393 00:13:35,450 --> 00:13:37,290 like an Allen Bradley PLC as well? We 394 00:13:37,290 --> 00:13:39,389 see this a lot with, you know, testing 395 00:13:39,610 --> 00:13:40,110 areas, 396 00:13:40,570 --> 00:13:41,070 pharmaceuticals, 397 00:13:42,170 --> 00:13:44,910 maybe also in packaging, barcode scanners, 398 00:13:45,290 --> 00:13:46,110 weigh scales, 399 00:13:46,570 --> 00:13:48,225 printers online as well. 400 00:13:48,704 --> 00:13:51,024 They they may have some form of basic 401 00:13:51,024 --> 00:13:53,985 communications that talks over just TCP or or 402 00:13:53,985 --> 00:13:54,485 serial. 403 00:13:55,745 --> 00:13:57,345 And how do you get that information that's 404 00:13:57,345 --> 00:13:59,504 really valuable still, but it's not going through 405 00:13:59,504 --> 00:14:01,345 a PLC. It's not going into your typical 406 00:14:01,345 --> 00:14:02,324 agent mind SCADA. 407 00:14:02,700 --> 00:14:04,460 It might be very manual process for a 408 00:14:04,460 --> 00:14:05,980 lot of these test systems as well, how 409 00:14:05,980 --> 00:14:08,320 they're collecting and analyzing the data. 410 00:14:08,860 --> 00:14:10,220 Well, you may have heard of our Arm 411 00:14:10,220 --> 00:14:12,220 server as well. It's been around, like I 412 00:14:12,220 --> 00:14:14,540 said, for a couple decades and just a 413 00:14:14,540 --> 00:14:15,840 proven solution that 414 00:14:16,154 --> 00:14:17,995 without coding, you can go in and build 415 00:14:17,995 --> 00:14:18,894 a custom protocol 416 00:14:19,195 --> 00:14:20,894 that expects a format 417 00:14:21,274 --> 00:14:22,174 from that device, 418 00:14:22,954 --> 00:14:25,754 translates it, puts it into standard tags, and 419 00:14:25,754 --> 00:14:27,834 now that those tags can be accessible through 420 00:14:27,834 --> 00:14:29,839 the open standards of OPC, 421 00:14:30,459 --> 00:14:32,860 or to it was a a Veeva user 422 00:14:32,860 --> 00:14:34,000 suite link as well. 423 00:14:34,699 --> 00:14:37,440 And that really provides a nice combination 424 00:14:37,819 --> 00:14:39,120 of your standard communications 425 00:14:39,579 --> 00:14:42,459 and also these more custom communications may have 426 00:14:42,459 --> 00:14:44,514 been done through scripting in the past. Well, 427 00:14:44,514 --> 00:14:45,975 you know, put this onto, 428 00:14:46,834 --> 00:14:49,394 an actual server that can communicate through those 429 00:14:49,394 --> 00:14:50,455 protocols natively, 430 00:14:51,235 --> 00:14:53,394 and just get that data into those SCADA 431 00:14:53,394 --> 00:14:54,375 systems, HMIs, 432 00:14:54,834 --> 00:14:56,054 where you need it. 433 00:14:56,595 --> 00:14:58,834 You know, I used that. Many years ago, 434 00:14:58,834 --> 00:14:59,815 I had an integrator 435 00:15:00,410 --> 00:15:01,769 who came to me. He's like, Sean, I 436 00:15:01,769 --> 00:15:03,610 wanna this is back in the RSVUE days. 437 00:15:03,610 --> 00:15:05,850 He's like, Sean, I I got, like, 20 438 00:15:05,850 --> 00:15:08,410 Euotherm devices on a four eighty five, and 439 00:15:08,410 --> 00:15:10,730 they speak ASCII, and I gotta I gotta 440 00:15:10,730 --> 00:15:13,004 get into RSVUE 32. And, 441 00:15:13,644 --> 00:15:15,804 you know, OmniSIR, I love that you could 442 00:15:15,804 --> 00:15:18,285 you could basically developing and we did Omega 443 00:15:18,285 --> 00:15:20,605 and some other devices too. You're developing your 444 00:15:20,605 --> 00:15:22,225 own protocol, but it's beautiful. 445 00:15:22,845 --> 00:15:25,325 And and the fact that when you're testing 446 00:15:25,325 --> 00:15:26,465 it, it color codes 447 00:15:26,845 --> 00:15:27,345 everything. 448 00:15:27,710 --> 00:15:29,710 So you know, hey. That part worked. The 449 00:15:29,710 --> 00:15:32,029 header worked. The data worked. Oh, the trailing 450 00:15:32,029 --> 00:15:34,029 didn't work, or the terminated didn't work, or 451 00:15:34,029 --> 00:15:35,970 the data's not in the right format. Or 452 00:15:36,029 --> 00:15:37,549 I just it was a joy to work 453 00:15:37,549 --> 00:15:39,230 with back then, and I can imagine it's 454 00:15:39,230 --> 00:15:40,394 only gotten better since. 455 00:15:40,955 --> 00:15:42,315 Yeah. I think it's like a little engineer 456 00:15:42,315 --> 00:15:44,394 playground where you get in there. It started 457 00:15:44,394 --> 00:15:47,134 really decoding and seeing how these devices communicate. 458 00:15:47,195 --> 00:15:48,715 And then once you've got it running, it 459 00:15:48,795 --> 00:15:50,554 it's one of those things that it it 460 00:15:50,554 --> 00:15:54,075 just performs and, is saved by many people 461 00:15:54,075 --> 00:15:56,335 from developing custom code, having to 462 00:15:56,690 --> 00:15:58,789 manage that custom code and integrations, 463 00:15:59,649 --> 00:16:01,970 you know, for for many years. So it 464 00:16:02,049 --> 00:16:04,289 it's one of those things that's kinda tried, 465 00:16:04,289 --> 00:16:06,850 tested, and, it it's kind of a staple 466 00:16:06,850 --> 00:16:08,710 still our our base level communications. 467 00:16:09,975 --> 00:16:12,535 Alright. So moving along kind of our automation 468 00:16:12,535 --> 00:16:13,654 pyramid as well. 469 00:16:14,134 --> 00:16:16,695 Another part of our large offering is the 470 00:16:16,695 --> 00:16:18,855 Cogent data hub. Some people may have heard 471 00:16:18,855 --> 00:16:20,455 from this as well. It's been around for 472 00:16:20,455 --> 00:16:21,735 a good while. It's been part of our 473 00:16:21,735 --> 00:16:24,160 portfolio for for a while as well. This 474 00:16:24,160 --> 00:16:26,660 starts building upon where we had the communication 475 00:16:26,960 --> 00:16:28,960 now up to those higher echelons of the 476 00:16:28,960 --> 00:16:29,460 pyramid. 477 00:16:30,240 --> 00:16:31,759 This is gonna bring in a lot of 478 00:16:31,759 --> 00:16:34,240 different connectivities. You if you're not if you're 479 00:16:34,240 --> 00:16:34,740 listening, 480 00:16:35,120 --> 00:16:37,215 it it's kind of this cog and spoke 481 00:16:37,455 --> 00:16:39,855 type of concept for real time data. We 482 00:16:39,855 --> 00:16:41,315 also have historical implementations. 483 00:16:42,495 --> 00:16:45,055 You can connect through a variety of different 484 00:16:45,055 --> 00:16:48,254 things. OPC, both the profiles for alarms and 485 00:16:48,254 --> 00:16:51,134 events, and even OPC UA's alarming conditions, which 486 00:16:51,134 --> 00:16:54,450 is still getting adoption across the, across the 487 00:16:54,450 --> 00:16:55,910 industry, but it is growing. 488 00:16:56,370 --> 00:16:58,210 As part of the OPC UA standard, we 489 00:16:58,210 --> 00:16:59,750 have integrations to MQTT. 490 00:17:00,129 --> 00:17:01,750 It can be its own MQTT 491 00:17:02,210 --> 00:17:04,390 broker, and it can also be an MQTT 492 00:17:04,529 --> 00:17:05,029 client. 493 00:17:05,695 --> 00:17:07,535 That has grown a lot. It's one of 494 00:17:07,535 --> 00:17:10,575 those things that lives be besides OPC UA, 495 00:17:10,575 --> 00:17:12,195 not exactly a replacement. 496 00:17:13,215 --> 00:17:15,055 If you ever have any questions about that, 497 00:17:15,055 --> 00:17:16,735 it's definitely a topic I love to talk 498 00:17:16,735 --> 00:17:17,069 about. 499 00:17:18,029 --> 00:17:20,829 There's space for for this to combine the 500 00:17:20,829 --> 00:17:23,089 benefits of both of these, and it's so 501 00:17:23,389 --> 00:17:24,769 versatile and flexible 502 00:17:25,149 --> 00:17:26,690 for these different type of implementations. 503 00:17:27,630 --> 00:17:28,669 On top of that, 504 00:17:29,069 --> 00:17:30,669 it it's it's a really strong tool for 505 00:17:30,669 --> 00:17:32,049 conversion and aggregation. 506 00:17:33,525 --> 00:17:35,125 You kind of add this, like, its name 507 00:17:35,125 --> 00:17:37,125 says, it's a it's a data hub. You 508 00:17:37,125 --> 00:17:39,205 send all the different information to this. It 509 00:17:39,205 --> 00:17:40,265 stores it into, 510 00:17:40,725 --> 00:17:42,184 a hierarchy with 511 00:17:42,565 --> 00:17:44,884 a variety of different modeling that you can 512 00:17:44,884 --> 00:17:47,659 do within it. That's gonna store these values 513 00:17:47,799 --> 00:17:49,980 across a standard data format. 514 00:17:50,359 --> 00:17:52,119 Once I had data into this, any of 515 00:17:52,119 --> 00:17:54,519 those different connections, I can then send data 516 00:17:54,519 --> 00:17:55,259 back out. 517 00:17:55,640 --> 00:17:57,159 So if I have anything that I know 518 00:17:57,159 --> 00:17:58,839 is coming in through a certain plug in 519 00:17:58,839 --> 00:17:59,579 like OPC, 520 00:18:00,335 --> 00:18:02,095 bring that in, send it out to on 521 00:18:02,095 --> 00:18:03,474 these other ones, OPC, 522 00:18:03,934 --> 00:18:05,634 DA over to MQTT. 523 00:18:06,575 --> 00:18:08,414 It could even do DDA if I'm still 524 00:18:08,414 --> 00:18:10,994 using that, which I probably wouldn't suggest. But 525 00:18:11,295 --> 00:18:11,454 overall, 526 00:18:12,414 --> 00:18:14,414 there's a lot of good benefits from having 527 00:18:14,414 --> 00:18:16,609 something that can also be a standardization, 528 00:18:17,789 --> 00:18:19,869 between all your different connections. I have a 529 00:18:19,869 --> 00:18:22,109 lot of different things, maybe variety of OPC 530 00:18:22,109 --> 00:18:22,609 servers, 531 00:18:23,309 --> 00:18:24,529 legacy or newer. 532 00:18:25,150 --> 00:18:26,910 Bring that into a data hub, and then 533 00:18:26,910 --> 00:18:28,769 all your other connections, your historians, 534 00:18:29,230 --> 00:18:31,765 your MAS, your SCADAs, it can connect to 535 00:18:31,765 --> 00:18:34,085 that single point. So it's all getting the 536 00:18:34,085 --> 00:18:36,025 same data model 537 00:18:36,565 --> 00:18:39,205 and values from a single source rather than 538 00:18:39,205 --> 00:18:41,625 going out and making many to many connections. 539 00:18:43,285 --> 00:18:45,545 A a large thing that it was originally, 540 00:18:46,289 --> 00:18:47,990 used for was getting around DCOM. 541 00:18:49,490 --> 00:18:51,890 That word is, you know, it might send 542 00:18:51,890 --> 00:18:54,289 some shivers down people's spines still, to this 543 00:18:54,289 --> 00:18:56,130 day, but it's it's not a fun thing 544 00:18:56,130 --> 00:18:57,730 to deal with DCOM and also with the 545 00:18:57,730 --> 00:18:58,950 security hardening. 546 00:19:00,125 --> 00:19:02,205 It's just not something that you really want 547 00:19:02,205 --> 00:19:02,785 to do. 548 00:19:03,085 --> 00:19:04,545 I'm sure there's a lot of security 549 00:19:05,085 --> 00:19:07,825 professionals would advise against EPRA doing it. 550 00:19:08,765 --> 00:19:10,445 This tunneling will allow you to have a 551 00:19:10,445 --> 00:19:12,365 data hub that locally talks to any of 552 00:19:12,365 --> 00:19:13,744 the DA server client, 553 00:19:14,440 --> 00:19:16,600 communicate between two data hubs over a tunnel 554 00:19:16,600 --> 00:19:18,759 that pushes the data just over TCP, takes 555 00:19:18,759 --> 00:19:20,140 away all the comm wrappers, 556 00:19:20,600 --> 00:19:22,119 and now you just have values that get 557 00:19:22,119 --> 00:19:24,200 streamed in between. Now you don't have to 558 00:19:24,200 --> 00:19:26,200 configure any DCOM at all, and it's all 559 00:19:26,200 --> 00:19:26,700 local. 560 00:19:27,125 --> 00:19:29,065 So a lot of people went transitioning, 561 00:19:29,605 --> 00:19:32,505 between products where maybe the server only supports 562 00:19:32,565 --> 00:19:34,884 OPC DA, and then the client is now 563 00:19:34,884 --> 00:19:37,144 supporting OPC UA. They can't change it yet. 564 00:19:38,244 --> 00:19:40,985 This has allowed them to implement a solution 565 00:19:41,519 --> 00:19:43,680 quickly and cost and at a cost effective 566 00:19:43,680 --> 00:19:46,019 price, without ripping everything out. 567 00:19:46,480 --> 00:19:47,920 You know, I wanna ask you too. I 568 00:19:47,920 --> 00:19:49,519 can see because this thing is it's a 569 00:19:49,519 --> 00:19:51,359 data hub. So if you're watching and you're 570 00:19:51,440 --> 00:19:53,059 if you're listening and not watching, 571 00:19:53,375 --> 00:19:55,375 you you're not gonna see, you know, server, 572 00:19:55,375 --> 00:19:58,674 client, UAD, a broker, server, client. 573 00:19:59,295 --> 00:20:00,975 You know, just all these different things up 574 00:20:00,975 --> 00:20:02,815 here on the site. Do you what how 575 00:20:02,815 --> 00:20:04,654 does somebody find out if it does what 576 00:20:04,654 --> 00:20:06,174 they need? I mean, do you guys have 577 00:20:06,174 --> 00:20:08,140 a line they can call to say, I 578 00:20:08,140 --> 00:20:09,980 wanna do this to this. Is that something 579 00:20:09,980 --> 00:20:11,500 Data Hub can do, or is there a 580 00:20:11,500 --> 00:20:13,519 demo? What would you recommend to somebody? 581 00:20:13,900 --> 00:20:14,400 Absolutely. 582 00:20:14,859 --> 00:20:17,419 Reach out to us. We we have a 583 00:20:17,419 --> 00:20:19,339 a lot of content outline, and it's not 584 00:20:19,339 --> 00:20:21,660 behind any paywall or sign in links even. 585 00:20:21,660 --> 00:20:23,440 You you can always go to our website. 586 00:20:23,505 --> 00:20:25,744 It's just softwaretoolbox.com. 587 00:20:25,744 --> 00:20:26,244 Mhmm. 588 00:20:26,545 --> 00:20:28,305 And that's gonna get you to our product 589 00:20:28,305 --> 00:20:30,944 pages. You can download any product directly from 590 00:20:30,944 --> 00:20:33,424 there. They have demo timers. So typically with, 591 00:20:33,825 --> 00:20:36,224 with coaching data hub, after an hour, it 592 00:20:36,224 --> 00:20:38,500 will stop. You can just rerun it. And 593 00:20:38,500 --> 00:20:40,500 then call our team. Yeah. We have a 594 00:20:40,500 --> 00:20:42,419 solutions team that can work with you on, 595 00:20:42,419 --> 00:20:44,179 hey. What do I need as well? Then 596 00:20:44,179 --> 00:20:45,940 our support team, if you run into any 597 00:20:45,940 --> 00:20:48,179 issues, can help you troubleshoot that as well. 598 00:20:48,179 --> 00:20:48,679 So, 599 00:20:48,980 --> 00:20:51,059 I'll have some contact information at the end, 600 00:20:51,220 --> 00:20:53,015 that'll get some people to, you know, where 601 00:20:53,015 --> 00:20:54,694 they need to go. But you're absolutely right, 602 00:20:54,694 --> 00:20:55,194 Sean. 603 00:20:55,654 --> 00:20:58,214 Because this is so versatile, everyone's use case 604 00:20:58,214 --> 00:20:59,654 of it is usually something a little bit 605 00:20:59,654 --> 00:21:01,734 different. And the best people to come talk 606 00:21:01,734 --> 00:21:03,894 to that is us because we've we've seen 607 00:21:03,894 --> 00:21:05,220 all those differences. So 608 00:21:05,779 --> 00:21:07,299 I think a lot of people run into 609 00:21:07,299 --> 00:21:08,819 the fact, like, they have a problem. Maybe 610 00:21:08,819 --> 00:21:10,339 it's the one you said where they have 611 00:21:10,339 --> 00:21:12,740 the OPC UA and it needs to connect 612 00:21:12,740 --> 00:21:15,720 to an OPC DA client. And, you know, 613 00:21:15,859 --> 00:21:17,539 and a lot of times, they're they're a 614 00:21:17,539 --> 00:21:20,414 little gunshot to buy a license because they 615 00:21:20,575 --> 00:21:22,494 wanna make sure it's gonna do exactly what 616 00:21:22,494 --> 00:21:24,414 they need first. And I think that's where 617 00:21:24,414 --> 00:21:26,255 having your people can, you know, answer their 618 00:21:26,255 --> 00:21:28,095 questions saying, yes. We can do that or, 619 00:21:28,095 --> 00:21:29,234 no. We can't do that. 620 00:21:29,615 --> 00:21:31,535 Or, you know, a a demo that they 621 00:21:31,535 --> 00:21:33,134 could download and run for an hour at 622 00:21:33,134 --> 00:21:34,759 a time to actually do a proof of 623 00:21:34,759 --> 00:21:36,759 concept for the boss who's gonna sign off 624 00:21:36,759 --> 00:21:38,919 on purchasing this. And then the other thing 625 00:21:38,919 --> 00:21:41,500 is too, a lot of products like this 626 00:21:41,640 --> 00:21:43,240 have options. And you wanna make sure you're 627 00:21:43,240 --> 00:21:45,400 buying the ticking the right boxes when you 628 00:21:45,400 --> 00:21:47,375 buy your license because you don't wanna buy 629 00:21:47,375 --> 00:21:48,894 something you're not gonna use. You wanna buy 630 00:21:48,894 --> 00:21:51,294 the exact pieces you need. So I highly 631 00:21:51,294 --> 00:21:53,375 recommend I mean, this product just does like, 632 00:21:53,375 --> 00:21:55,134 I have, in my mind, like, five things 633 00:21:55,134 --> 00:21:57,075 I wanna ask right now, but not gonna. 634 00:21:57,294 --> 00:21:59,534 But, yeah, def definitely, when it when it 635 00:21:59,534 --> 00:22:01,089 comes to a product like this, great to 636 00:22:01,089 --> 00:22:03,009 touch base with these folks. They're super friendly 637 00:22:03,009 --> 00:22:05,169 and helpful, and, they'll they'll put you in 638 00:22:05,169 --> 00:22:05,909 the right direction. 639 00:22:06,369 --> 00:22:08,129 Yeah. I I can tell you that's working 640 00:22:08,129 --> 00:22:09,029 someone to support. 641 00:22:09,329 --> 00:22:11,569 Selling someone a solution that doesn't work is 642 00:22:11,569 --> 00:22:13,855 not something I've been doing. Bad day. Right. 643 00:22:13,855 --> 00:22:16,115 Exactly. Yeah. And we work very closely, 644 00:22:16,494 --> 00:22:18,434 between anyone that's looking at products. 645 00:22:18,894 --> 00:22:21,134 You know, me being as technical product managers, 646 00:22:21,134 --> 00:22:23,134 well, I I'm engaged in those conversations. And 647 00:22:23,375 --> 00:22:25,375 Mhmm. Yeah. If you need a demo license, 648 00:22:25,375 --> 00:22:27,490 reach out to us to extend that. We 649 00:22:27,490 --> 00:22:29,169 wanna make sure that you are buying something 650 00:22:29,169 --> 00:22:30,470 that provides you value. 651 00:22:31,169 --> 00:22:33,329 Now kind of moving on into a similar 652 00:22:33,329 --> 00:22:35,169 realm. This is one of our still somewhat 653 00:22:35,169 --> 00:22:37,169 newer offerings, I say, but we've been around 654 00:22:37,169 --> 00:22:39,730 five five plus years, and it's really grown. 655 00:22:39,730 --> 00:22:42,369 And I kinda said here, it's called OPC 656 00:22:42,369 --> 00:22:42,869 router, 657 00:22:43,565 --> 00:22:45,244 and and it's not it's not a networking 658 00:22:45,244 --> 00:22:47,164 tool. A lot of people may may kinda 659 00:22:47,164 --> 00:22:49,164 get that. It's more of a, kind of 660 00:22:49,164 --> 00:22:50,144 a term about, 661 00:22:50,684 --> 00:22:52,684 again, all these different type of connections. How 662 00:22:52,684 --> 00:22:54,765 do you route them to different ways? It 663 00:22:54,765 --> 00:22:56,924 it kind of it it separates itself from 664 00:22:56,924 --> 00:23:00,200 the Cogent data hub, and and acting at 665 00:23:00,200 --> 00:23:02,200 this base level of being like a visual 666 00:23:02,200 --> 00:23:02,700 workflow 667 00:23:03,159 --> 00:23:04,299 that you can assign 668 00:23:04,759 --> 00:23:05,259 various 669 00:23:05,639 --> 00:23:08,039 tasks to. So if I have certain events 670 00:23:08,039 --> 00:23:09,960 that occur, I may wanna do some processing 671 00:23:09,960 --> 00:23:11,980 on that before I just send data along, 672 00:23:12,125 --> 00:23:13,725 where the data hub is really working in 673 00:23:13,725 --> 00:23:15,025 between converting, 674 00:23:15,404 --> 00:23:17,025 streaming data, real time 675 00:23:17,404 --> 00:23:17,904 connections. 676 00:23:18,525 --> 00:23:20,445 This gives you a a kind of a 677 00:23:20,445 --> 00:23:22,684 playground to work around of if I have 678 00:23:22,684 --> 00:23:23,184 certain 679 00:23:23,565 --> 00:23:26,144 tasks that are occurring, maybe through a database 680 00:23:26,220 --> 00:23:28,380 that I wanna trigger off of a certain 681 00:23:28,380 --> 00:23:28,880 value, 682 00:23:29,579 --> 00:23:31,679 based on my SCADA system, 683 00:23:31,980 --> 00:23:33,579 well, you can build that in in these 684 00:23:33,579 --> 00:23:36,480 different workflows to execute exactly what you need. 685 00:23:37,099 --> 00:23:38,240 Very, very flexible. 686 00:23:39,154 --> 00:23:40,914 Again, it has all these different type of 687 00:23:40,914 --> 00:23:41,414 connections. 688 00:23:41,875 --> 00:23:44,115 The very unique ones that have also grown 689 00:23:44,115 --> 00:23:46,775 into kind of that OT IT convergence, 690 00:23:47,474 --> 00:23:49,015 is it can be a REST API 691 00:23:49,394 --> 00:23:52,034 server and client as well. So I can 692 00:23:52,034 --> 00:23:54,400 be sending out requests to, 693 00:23:54,940 --> 00:23:57,259 RESTful servers where we're seeing that hosted in 694 00:23:57,259 --> 00:23:58,940 a lot of new applications. I wanna get 695 00:23:58,940 --> 00:24:01,099 data out of them. Or once I have 696 00:24:01,099 --> 00:24:01,599 consumed 697 00:24:01,900 --> 00:24:03,900 a variety of data, I can become the 698 00:24:03,900 --> 00:24:06,535 REST server in OPC router and offer that 699 00:24:06,535 --> 00:24:09,355 to other applications to request data from itself. 700 00:24:09,414 --> 00:24:10,695 So, again, it can kind of be that 701 00:24:10,695 --> 00:24:12,234 centralized area of information. 702 00:24:12,934 --> 00:24:14,535 The other thing as we talked about in 703 00:24:14,535 --> 00:24:17,335 the automation pyramid is it has connections directly 704 00:24:17,335 --> 00:24:19,355 into SAP and ERP systems. 705 00:24:19,890 --> 00:24:21,490 So if you have work orders, if you 706 00:24:21,490 --> 00:24:22,150 have materials, 707 00:24:22,930 --> 00:24:23,990 that you wanna continue 708 00:24:24,849 --> 00:24:27,170 to track and maybe trigger things based off 709 00:24:27,170 --> 00:24:30,369 information from your your operation floors via PLCs 710 00:24:30,369 --> 00:24:30,869 tracking, 711 00:24:31,694 --> 00:24:33,694 how they're using things along the line, and 712 00:24:33,694 --> 00:24:35,214 that needs to match up with what the 713 00:24:35,214 --> 00:24:36,835 SAP system has for, 714 00:24:37,214 --> 00:24:39,454 the amount of materials you have. This can 715 00:24:39,454 --> 00:24:40,355 be that bridge. 716 00:24:40,734 --> 00:24:43,134 It's really is built off the mindset of 717 00:24:43,134 --> 00:24:45,490 the OT world as well. So we kinda 718 00:24:45,490 --> 00:24:47,970 say this helps empower the OT level because 719 00:24:47,970 --> 00:24:50,049 we're now giving them the tools to that 720 00:24:50,049 --> 00:24:52,950 they understand what what's occurring in their operations. 721 00:24:53,569 --> 00:24:55,890 And what could you do by having a 722 00:24:55,890 --> 00:24:57,569 tool like this to allow you to kind 723 00:24:57,569 --> 00:24:59,345 of create automated workflows 724 00:24:59,884 --> 00:25:02,305 based off certain values and certain events 725 00:25:02,924 --> 00:25:04,445 and automate some of these things that you 726 00:25:04,445 --> 00:25:07,265 may be doing manually or doing very convoluted 727 00:25:07,325 --> 00:25:08,704 through a variety of solutions. 728 00:25:09,244 --> 00:25:09,744 So 729 00:25:10,170 --> 00:25:12,009 this is one of those prod, products as 730 00:25:12,009 --> 00:25:14,009 well that's very advanced in the things that 731 00:25:14,009 --> 00:25:14,509 supports. 732 00:25:15,930 --> 00:25:19,049 Linux and Docker containers is, is definitely could 733 00:25:19,049 --> 00:25:22,109 be a hot topic, rightly fleet rightfully so. 734 00:25:22,505 --> 00:25:24,025 And this can run on a on a 735 00:25:24,025 --> 00:25:26,585 Docker container deployed as well. So we we've 736 00:25:26,585 --> 00:25:28,745 seen that with the I IT folks that 737 00:25:28,745 --> 00:25:31,225 really enjoy being able to control and to 738 00:25:31,225 --> 00:25:31,965 higher deployment, 739 00:25:32,424 --> 00:25:34,585 allows you to update easily, allows you to 740 00:25:34,585 --> 00:25:37,319 control and spin up new containers as well. 741 00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:39,500 This gives you a lot of flexibility 742 00:25:40,039 --> 00:25:43,099 to to deploy and manage these systems. 743 00:25:43,559 --> 00:25:45,000 You know, I may wanna have you back 744 00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:46,599 on to talk about this. I used to 745 00:25:46,759 --> 00:25:48,700 there's an old product called Rascal 746 00:25:49,399 --> 00:25:50,919 that I used to use. It was a 747 00:25:50,919 --> 00:25:52,759 transaction manager, and it would 748 00:25:53,424 --> 00:25:55,845 based on data changing or on a time 749 00:25:56,305 --> 00:25:58,384 that as a trigger, it could take data 750 00:25:58,384 --> 00:26:00,945 either from the PLC to the database or 751 00:26:00,945 --> 00:26:02,565 from the database to the PLC, 752 00:26:03,105 --> 00:26:05,025 and it would work with stored procedures. And 753 00:26:05,025 --> 00:26:07,025 and this seems like it hits all those 754 00:26:07,025 --> 00:26:07,525 points, 755 00:26:07,970 --> 00:26:09,809 And it sounds like it's a visual like 756 00:26:09,809 --> 00:26:11,570 you said, right there on the slide, visual 757 00:26:11,570 --> 00:26:14,369 workflow builder. Yep. So you really piqued my 758 00:26:14,369 --> 00:26:16,049 interest with this one, and and it may 759 00:26:16,049 --> 00:26:17,890 be something we wanna come back to and 760 00:26:17,890 --> 00:26:19,349 and revisit in the future, 761 00:26:19,970 --> 00:26:22,034 because, it just it's just I know that 762 00:26:22,034 --> 00:26:24,054 that older product was very useful 763 00:26:24,434 --> 00:26:24,755 and, 764 00:26:25,234 --> 00:26:26,755 you know, it really solved a lot of 765 00:26:26,755 --> 00:26:28,534 old applications back in the day. 766 00:26:28,914 --> 00:26:31,234 Yeah. Absolutely. And this this just takes that 767 00:26:31,234 --> 00:26:32,694 on and builds even more. 768 00:26:33,679 --> 00:26:36,319 If you if anyone was, kind of listening 769 00:26:36,319 --> 00:26:37,759 at the beginning of this year or two, 770 00:26:37,759 --> 00:26:39,359 a conference called Prove It that was very 771 00:26:39,359 --> 00:26:40,259 big in the industry, 772 00:26:40,640 --> 00:26:42,160 we were there to and we presented on 773 00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:44,819 stage a solution that we had. Highly recommend 774 00:26:44,960 --> 00:26:46,880 going searching for that. It's on our web 775 00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:48,960 pages. It's also on their YouTube links, and 776 00:26:48,960 --> 00:26:49,785 it's it's called Prove 777 00:26:50,325 --> 00:26:50,984 It. And 778 00:26:51,285 --> 00:26:53,045 OPC router was a big part of that 779 00:26:53,045 --> 00:26:53,924 in the back end. 780 00:26:54,244 --> 00:26:55,765 I would love to dive in and show 781 00:26:55,765 --> 00:26:57,444 you the really unique things. Kind of as 782 00:26:57,444 --> 00:26:59,765 a quick overview, we're able to use Google 783 00:26:59,765 --> 00:27:02,484 AI vision to take camera data and detect 784 00:27:02,484 --> 00:27:04,480 if someone was wearing a hard hat. All 785 00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:07,140 that logic and behind of getting that information 786 00:27:07,279 --> 00:27:09,759 to Google AI vision, was through REST with 787 00:27:09,759 --> 00:27:12,259 OPC router. Then we were parsing that information 788 00:27:12,399 --> 00:27:14,019 back through that, 789 00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:16,640 connection and then providing it back to the 790 00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:18,424 PLCs. So we go all the way from 791 00:27:18,424 --> 00:27:20,505 a camera to a PLC controlling a light 792 00:27:20,505 --> 00:27:21,005 stack, 793 00:27:21,384 --> 00:27:23,964 up to Google AI vision through OPC router, 794 00:27:24,184 --> 00:27:25,884 all on hotel Wi Fi. 795 00:27:26,424 --> 00:27:28,924 It's very imp it's very, very fun presentation, 796 00:27:29,224 --> 00:27:30,825 and, our I think our team did a 797 00:27:30,825 --> 00:27:31,805 really great job. 798 00:27:32,269 --> 00:27:34,429 So a a a pretty new offering I 799 00:27:34,429 --> 00:27:35,649 have I wanna highlight, 800 00:27:36,029 --> 00:27:37,569 is our is our data caster. 801 00:27:38,509 --> 00:27:40,369 This is a an actual piece of hardware. 802 00:27:40,669 --> 00:27:43,549 You know, our software toolbox is we we 803 00:27:43,549 --> 00:27:45,629 do have some hardware as well. It's just, 804 00:27:45,974 --> 00:27:47,815 part of the nature of this environment of 805 00:27:47,815 --> 00:27:50,294 how we mesh in between things. But the 806 00:27:50,294 --> 00:27:51,595 the idea is that, 807 00:27:52,615 --> 00:27:54,775 there's a lot of different use cases for 808 00:27:54,775 --> 00:27:56,775 HMI and SCADA. They have grown so much 809 00:27:56,775 --> 00:27:58,375 from what they used to be, and they're 810 00:27:58,375 --> 00:28:01,115 very core part of the automation stack. 811 00:28:01,789 --> 00:28:03,470 Now a lot of times, these are doing 812 00:28:03,470 --> 00:28:05,549 so many things beyond that as well. What 813 00:28:05,549 --> 00:28:07,470 we found is that in different areas of 814 00:28:07,470 --> 00:28:09,630 operations, you may not need all that different 815 00:28:09,630 --> 00:28:10,130 control. 816 00:28:10,669 --> 00:28:12,109 You may not even have the space to 817 00:28:12,109 --> 00:28:14,029 make up a whole workstation for that as 818 00:28:14,029 --> 00:28:14,505 well. 819 00:28:15,065 --> 00:28:17,785 What this does, the data caster, is, just 820 00:28:17,785 --> 00:28:20,125 simply plug it plugs it into any network 821 00:28:20,184 --> 00:28:23,305 and into an HDMI compatible display, and it 822 00:28:23,305 --> 00:28:25,545 gives you a very easy configure workplace to 823 00:28:25,545 --> 00:28:28,125 put a few key metrics onto a screen. 824 00:28:28,664 --> 00:28:30,700 So if I have different things from you 825 00:28:30,700 --> 00:28:33,039 can connect directly to PLCs like Allen Bradley. 826 00:28:33,179 --> 00:28:35,740 You can connect to SQL databases. You can 827 00:28:35,740 --> 00:28:38,140 also connect to rest APIs to gather the 828 00:28:38,140 --> 00:28:39,599 data from these different sources 829 00:28:39,900 --> 00:28:41,740 and build a a a kind of easy 830 00:28:41,740 --> 00:28:42,799 to to view, 831 00:28:43,454 --> 00:28:45,294 KPI dashboard in a way. So if you're 832 00:28:45,294 --> 00:28:47,375 on a operation line and you wanna look 833 00:28:47,375 --> 00:28:49,134 at your current run rate, maybe you have 834 00:28:49,134 --> 00:28:50,674 certain things in the POC tags, 835 00:28:50,974 --> 00:28:53,775 you know, flow and pressure that's very important 836 00:28:53,775 --> 00:28:56,190 for those operators to see. They may not 837 00:28:56,190 --> 00:28:59,309 be, even the capacity to be interacting with 838 00:28:59,309 --> 00:29:00,690 anything. They just need visualizations 839 00:29:00,990 --> 00:29:02,130 of what's going on. 840 00:29:02,589 --> 00:29:04,369 This product can just be installed, 841 00:29:05,069 --> 00:29:07,630 you know, industrial areas with, with any type 842 00:29:07,630 --> 00:29:09,775 of display that you can easily access and 843 00:29:09,775 --> 00:29:11,454 and give them something that they can easily 844 00:29:11,454 --> 00:29:12,095 look at. 845 00:29:12,414 --> 00:29:14,815 It's configured all through a web browser to 846 00:29:14,815 --> 00:29:16,654 display what you want. You can put on 847 00:29:16,654 --> 00:29:18,815 different colors based on levels of values as 848 00:29:18,815 --> 00:29:19,315 well. 849 00:29:19,694 --> 00:29:21,855 And it's just I feel like a very 850 00:29:21,855 --> 00:29:24,299 simple thing that sometimes it seems so simple, 851 00:29:24,299 --> 00:29:25,980 but those might be the things that provide 852 00:29:25,980 --> 00:29:28,079 value on the actual operation floor. 853 00:29:28,859 --> 00:29:31,179 This is, for anyone that's watching, kind of 854 00:29:31,179 --> 00:29:33,279 a quick view of a very simple screen. 855 00:29:33,420 --> 00:29:35,259 What we're showing here is what it would 856 00:29:35,259 --> 00:29:37,259 look like from all the different data sources. 857 00:29:37,259 --> 00:29:37,664 So 858 00:29:38,225 --> 00:29:41,424 talking directly to ControlLogs PLC, talking to SQL 859 00:29:41,424 --> 00:29:41,924 databases, 860 00:29:42,705 --> 00:29:44,085 micro eight eight hundreds, 861 00:29:44,865 --> 00:29:47,105 an arrest client, and and what's coming very 862 00:29:47,105 --> 00:29:48,705 soon, definitely by the end of this year, 863 00:29:48,705 --> 00:29:50,325 is OPC UA support. 864 00:29:50,690 --> 00:29:52,849 So any OPC UA server that's out there 865 00:29:52,849 --> 00:29:55,670 that's already having your PLC data or etcetera, 866 00:29:56,049 --> 00:29:57,650 this could also connect to that and get 867 00:29:57,650 --> 00:29:58,630 values from there. 868 00:29:59,490 --> 00:30:01,089 Can I can you make it I'm I'm 869 00:30:01,250 --> 00:30:03,009 here I go? Can you make it so 870 00:30:03,009 --> 00:30:06,150 it, like, changes, like, pages every few seconds? 871 00:30:07,445 --> 00:30:09,365 Right now, it is a single page, but 872 00:30:09,365 --> 00:30:10,884 this is, like I said, very new product, 873 00:30:10,884 --> 00:30:12,884 so we're taking any feedback. If, yeah, if 874 00:30:12,884 --> 00:30:15,285 there's this type of slideshow cycle that would 875 00:30:15,285 --> 00:30:15,785 be, 876 00:30:16,164 --> 00:30:18,164 you know, valuable to anyone out there, let 877 00:30:18,164 --> 00:30:20,609 us know. We're definitely always interested to see 878 00:30:20,609 --> 00:30:22,289 the people that are actually working out at 879 00:30:22,289 --> 00:30:24,710 these operation sites, what what's valuable to them. 880 00:30:24,929 --> 00:30:26,690 Yeah. A lot of kiosks you see when 881 00:30:26,690 --> 00:30:29,170 when you're traveling, it'll say, like, line one 882 00:30:29,329 --> 00:30:31,089 well, I'll just throw out there. Line one, 883 00:30:31,089 --> 00:30:32,609 and that'll be on there for five seconds, 884 00:30:32,609 --> 00:30:34,525 and then it'll go line two. That'll be 885 00:30:34,525 --> 00:30:35,964 on there for five seconds, and then line 886 00:30:36,204 --> 00:30:37,565 you know, I and that's why I just 887 00:30:37,565 --> 00:30:39,164 mentioned that because I can see that being 888 00:30:39,164 --> 00:30:39,744 a question 889 00:30:40,285 --> 00:30:42,605 that, that that I would get from somebody 890 00:30:42,605 --> 00:30:44,525 who is asking me about it. Oh, great 891 00:30:44,525 --> 00:30:45,825 question. Appreciate it. 892 00:30:46,444 --> 00:30:47,599 Alright. So 893 00:30:47,980 --> 00:30:49,980 now we're gonna set time for a little 894 00:30:49,980 --> 00:30:52,539 hands on demo. For anyone that's just listening, 895 00:30:52,539 --> 00:30:54,299 we're gonna I'm gonna talk about this at 896 00:30:54,299 --> 00:30:55,980 at a high level and walk through everything. 897 00:30:55,980 --> 00:30:56,480 But 898 00:30:56,779 --> 00:30:58,160 the idea is that, 899 00:30:58,619 --> 00:31:00,240 we have a few different POCs, 900 00:31:00,619 --> 00:31:02,575 very common in Allen Bradley and just a 901 00:31:02,575 --> 00:31:03,634 a Siemens seven, 902 00:31:04,174 --> 00:31:06,355 s seven fifteen hundred that's in our office, 903 00:31:06,654 --> 00:31:07,934 pretty close to me on the other side 904 00:31:07,934 --> 00:31:09,475 of the wall wall, actually. 905 00:31:10,335 --> 00:31:12,095 We're gonna first start by connecting that to 906 00:31:12,095 --> 00:31:13,855 our top server like we talked about. This 907 00:31:13,855 --> 00:31:14,674 is our industrial 908 00:31:14,975 --> 00:31:18,740 communication server, that offers both OCDA, OC UA, 909 00:31:19,200 --> 00:31:21,840 SweetLink connectivity as well. And then we're gonna 910 00:31:21,840 --> 00:31:24,259 bring this into our Cogent data hub. 911 00:31:24,559 --> 00:31:26,799 This we talked about is getting those values 912 00:31:26,799 --> 00:31:28,960 up to these higher levels. What we'll be 913 00:31:28,960 --> 00:31:31,585 doing is also tunneling the data. We talked 914 00:31:31,585 --> 00:31:33,825 about being able to share data through the 915 00:31:33,825 --> 00:31:34,884 data hubs themselves. 916 00:31:35,585 --> 00:31:37,585 Kinda explain why we're doing that here and 917 00:31:37,585 --> 00:31:39,585 the value you can add. And then we're 918 00:31:39,585 --> 00:31:40,644 also gonna showcase 919 00:31:41,345 --> 00:31:42,404 adding on MQTT 920 00:31:42,944 --> 00:31:43,845 to this level. 921 00:31:44,289 --> 00:31:46,369 Taking beta now just from these two PLCs 922 00:31:46,369 --> 00:31:47,890 that are sitting on a rack, and I 923 00:31:47,890 --> 00:31:50,070 can automatically make all that information 924 00:31:50,529 --> 00:31:53,190 available in the MQTT broker. So any MQTT 925 00:31:53,410 --> 00:31:55,170 client that's out there that wants to subscribe 926 00:31:55,170 --> 00:31:55,904 to that data, 927 00:31:56,545 --> 00:31:58,865 now has that accessible. And I've created this 928 00:31:58,865 --> 00:32:00,805 all through a a really simple workflow. 929 00:32:01,345 --> 00:32:03,605 We also have some databases connected. 930 00:32:04,144 --> 00:32:04,644 Influx, 931 00:32:05,025 --> 00:32:06,865 we install with Code and DataHub, has a 932 00:32:06,865 --> 00:32:09,080 free visualization tool that kinda just helps you 933 00:32:09,080 --> 00:32:10,599 see what's going on in your processes. I 934 00:32:10,599 --> 00:32:12,039 wanna showcase a little bit of that as 935 00:32:12,039 --> 00:32:12,539 well. 936 00:32:12,840 --> 00:32:15,320 Alright. So now jumping into our demo, when 937 00:32:15,320 --> 00:32:16,920 we first start off here is the our 938 00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:17,660 top server. 939 00:32:18,119 --> 00:32:19,960 Like I mentioned before, if anyone has worked 940 00:32:19,960 --> 00:32:21,320 with KEP server in the past, this is 941 00:32:21,320 --> 00:32:22,700 gonna look very similar. 942 00:32:23,294 --> 00:32:25,774 Like it because it is. The same technology 943 00:32:25,774 --> 00:32:26,994 and all the things here. 944 00:32:27,454 --> 00:32:28,894 The the first things that I wanted to 945 00:32:28,894 --> 00:32:30,194 establish in our demo, 946 00:32:30,575 --> 00:32:32,194 was our connection to our POCs. 947 00:32:32,575 --> 00:32:34,174 I have a few here. We're only gonna 948 00:32:34,174 --> 00:32:36,494 use the Allen Bradley and the Siemens, for 949 00:32:36,494 --> 00:32:38,014 the the time that we have on our 950 00:32:38,014 --> 00:32:40,680 demo here. But how this builds out as 951 00:32:40,680 --> 00:32:41,339 a platform 952 00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:44,039 is you create these different channels and the 953 00:32:44,039 --> 00:32:46,200 devices connections between them. This is gonna be 954 00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:48,940 your your physical connections to them. It's either, 955 00:32:49,559 --> 00:32:50,539 IP TCPIP 956 00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:53,724 connection or maybe your serial connection as well. 957 00:32:53,724 --> 00:32:55,884 We have support for all of them. It 958 00:32:55,884 --> 00:32:57,184 really is a long list. 959 00:32:57,724 --> 00:32:59,265 Anyone watching out there, 960 00:32:59,644 --> 00:33:01,424 you can kind of see all the different 961 00:33:01,484 --> 00:33:03,325 drivers that that we offer. 962 00:33:03,644 --> 00:33:05,664 So allowing this into a single platform, 963 00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:07,460 you can have all your connectivity 964 00:33:07,759 --> 00:33:08,500 based here. 965 00:33:08,880 --> 00:33:11,539 All those different connections that you now have 966 00:33:11,920 --> 00:33:14,180 that up the stack, your SCADA, your historians, 967 00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:16,960 MAS even as well, they can all go 968 00:33:16,960 --> 00:33:18,000 to a single source. 969 00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:19,380 Makes that management, 970 00:33:19,795 --> 00:33:20,295 troubleshooting, 971 00:33:20,674 --> 00:33:22,454 all those a bit easier as well. 972 00:33:24,195 --> 00:33:25,634 So one of the first things I did 973 00:33:25,634 --> 00:33:27,394 here, I have this built out, but I'll 974 00:33:27,394 --> 00:33:29,815 kinda walk through what you would typically do. 975 00:33:30,355 --> 00:33:33,315 You have your Allen Bradley ControlLogix Ethernet driver 976 00:33:33,315 --> 00:33:35,099 here first. You know, I have 977 00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:37,339 some IPs in here I won't show, but, 978 00:33:37,960 --> 00:33:40,759 regardless, we have our our our drivers here, 979 00:33:40,759 --> 00:33:42,380 and then we have a set of tags. 980 00:33:42,519 --> 00:33:45,000 These are all the global tags in the 981 00:33:45,000 --> 00:33:47,674 programming of the PLC. How I got these 982 00:33:47,674 --> 00:33:50,154 to to kind of map automatically is in 983 00:33:50,154 --> 00:33:52,795 our in our driver, we're able to create 984 00:33:52,795 --> 00:33:54,954 tags automatically. So you're able to send a 985 00:33:54,954 --> 00:33:56,954 command to that device and ask for its 986 00:33:56,954 --> 00:33:58,095 entire tag database. 987 00:33:58,634 --> 00:34:00,799 They can come back, provide all that, map 988 00:34:00,799 --> 00:34:02,559 it out for you, create those tags as 989 00:34:02,559 --> 00:34:03,059 well. 990 00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:04,880 This saves a lot of time from, you 991 00:34:04,880 --> 00:34:06,400 know, an engineer have to go in and, 992 00:34:06,720 --> 00:34:07,220 addressing 993 00:34:07,519 --> 00:34:10,159 all the individual items themselves. So once it's 994 00:34:10,159 --> 00:34:12,719 defined in the program project, you're able to 995 00:34:12,719 --> 00:34:14,019 bring this all in automatically. 996 00:34:14,375 --> 00:34:15,974 I'll show now how easy that makes it 997 00:34:15,974 --> 00:34:18,234 connecting to something like the Cogent data hub. 998 00:34:18,614 --> 00:34:20,534 In a very similar fashion, we have a 999 00:34:20,534 --> 00:34:22,315 connection over here to the Siemens, 1000 00:34:22,694 --> 00:34:24,775 PLC that I also have. You can see 1001 00:34:24,775 --> 00:34:26,635 beneath it all these different tag structures, 1002 00:34:27,260 --> 00:34:29,099 and this was created the exact same way. 1003 00:34:29,420 --> 00:34:32,139 While those those PLC support it, you can 1004 00:34:32,139 --> 00:34:34,380 do an automatic tag generation, bring in all 1005 00:34:34,380 --> 00:34:35,980 the structure that you've already built out your 1006 00:34:35,980 --> 00:34:36,880 PLC programming, 1007 00:34:37,179 --> 00:34:39,179 and and make this available on this OPC 1008 00:34:39,179 --> 00:34:41,119 server now as well. So 1009 00:34:41,625 --> 00:34:43,465 that's really the basis. We first need to 1010 00:34:43,465 --> 00:34:44,364 establish communications 1011 00:34:44,824 --> 00:34:47,465 to these PLCs, get that tag data, and 1012 00:34:47,465 --> 00:34:49,244 now what do we wanna do with it? 1013 00:34:49,304 --> 00:34:51,465 So in this demo, what I wanted to 1014 00:34:51,465 --> 00:34:52,445 bring up was, 1015 00:34:52,985 --> 00:34:55,079 the code in DataHub next. So 1016 00:34:56,119 --> 00:34:58,280 here, I see a very similar kind of 1017 00:34:58,280 --> 00:35:00,840 layout. We have a different set set of 1018 00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:02,440 plugins on the left side. 1019 00:35:02,920 --> 00:35:05,480 So for anyone listening, the Cogent Data Hub 1020 00:35:05,480 --> 00:35:07,244 again is kind of our 1021 00:35:07,565 --> 00:35:09,585 aggregation and conversion tool. 1022 00:35:10,045 --> 00:35:12,625 All these different type of protocols like OPC 1023 00:35:12,845 --> 00:35:13,345 UA, 1024 00:35:13,885 --> 00:35:14,865 OPC DA, 1025 00:35:15,565 --> 00:35:17,644 and OPC A and E for alarms and 1026 00:35:17,644 --> 00:35:20,704 events. We also support OPC alarms and conditions, 1027 00:35:21,005 --> 00:35:23,960 which is the newer profile for alarms in 1028 00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:24,859 OPC UA. 1029 00:35:25,559 --> 00:35:28,039 We have all a variety of different ways 1030 00:35:28,039 --> 00:35:29,880 that you can get data out of things 1031 00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:32,219 and data's into the data hub. 1032 00:35:32,839 --> 00:35:34,139 We can also do bridging. 1033 00:35:34,440 --> 00:35:37,159 This concept is, how you share data in 1034 00:35:37,159 --> 00:35:37,659 between 1035 00:35:37,994 --> 00:35:40,074 different points. So let's say I had a 1036 00:35:40,074 --> 00:35:41,934 connection to one OPC server, 1037 00:35:42,234 --> 00:35:44,815 and it was communicating to a certain PLC, 1038 00:35:44,875 --> 00:35:46,554 and there were certain registers I was getting 1039 00:35:46,554 --> 00:35:48,634 data from. Well, now I also wanna connect 1040 00:35:48,634 --> 00:35:50,699 to a different OPC server that has, 1041 00:35:51,099 --> 00:35:52,639 entirely different brand of PLCs. 1042 00:35:53,099 --> 00:35:54,539 And then maybe I wanna share data in 1043 00:35:54,539 --> 00:35:56,539 between them directly. Well, with this software, I 1044 00:35:56,539 --> 00:35:58,539 can just bridge those points between them. Once 1045 00:35:58,539 --> 00:35:59,980 they're in the data hub, I can do 1046 00:35:59,980 --> 00:36:01,659 kind of whatever I want with them. I 1047 00:36:01,659 --> 00:36:03,420 can then allow them to write between those 1048 00:36:03,420 --> 00:36:05,534 PLCs and share data that way, and you're 1049 00:36:05,534 --> 00:36:07,855 not now having to do any type of 1050 00:36:07,855 --> 00:36:10,094 hardwiring directly in between them, and then I'm 1051 00:36:10,094 --> 00:36:12,414 compatible to communicate to each other. Through the 1052 00:36:12,414 --> 00:36:15,694 standards of OPC and these variety of different 1053 00:36:15,694 --> 00:36:18,434 communication levels, I can integrate them together. 1054 00:36:19,694 --> 00:36:21,349 You know, you bring up a good point. 1055 00:36:21,750 --> 00:36:23,750 When you do something like that, is there 1056 00:36:23,750 --> 00:36:26,010 any heartbeat? Like, is there on the general 1057 00:36:26,070 --> 00:36:27,450 or under under, 1058 00:36:27,989 --> 00:36:30,469 one of these, topics? Is there are there 1059 00:36:30,469 --> 00:36:32,809 tags we can use that are from DataHub 1060 00:36:32,950 --> 00:36:33,450 itself 1061 00:36:34,014 --> 00:36:36,655 that can be sent to the destination, like 1062 00:36:36,655 --> 00:36:38,675 a heartbeat or, you know, 1063 00:36:39,295 --> 00:36:40,275 the merge transactions? 1064 00:36:40,655 --> 00:36:40,894 Or 1065 00:36:41,614 --> 00:36:42,434 Yeah. Absolutely. 1066 00:36:43,135 --> 00:36:45,534 So with this as well, there's pretty strong 1067 00:36:45,534 --> 00:36:47,614 scripting engine, and I have done that in 1068 00:36:47,614 --> 00:36:49,769 the past where you can make internal tags. 1069 00:36:50,809 --> 00:36:52,969 And that that could be a a timer. 1070 00:36:52,969 --> 00:36:54,010 It could be a counter. 1071 00:36:54,489 --> 00:36:56,250 And and just kind of allows you to 1072 00:36:56,250 --> 00:36:57,929 create your own tags as well that you 1073 00:36:57,929 --> 00:36:59,869 could do the same thing, could share that, 1074 00:37:00,329 --> 00:37:02,409 through bridge connection to a PLC. So, yeah, 1075 00:37:02,409 --> 00:37:04,315 there there are definitely some people that had 1076 00:37:04,315 --> 00:37:06,155 those cert and, you know, use cases where 1077 00:37:06,155 --> 00:37:08,335 they wanna get something to just track, 1078 00:37:08,635 --> 00:37:10,474 on this software side and get it out 1079 00:37:10,474 --> 00:37:11,695 to those hardware PLCs. 1080 00:37:11,994 --> 00:37:13,594 Absolutely. I mean, when you send out the 1081 00:37:13,594 --> 00:37:15,594 data out of the PLC, the PLC doesn't 1082 00:37:15,594 --> 00:37:16,954 care to take my data. But when you're 1083 00:37:16,954 --> 00:37:18,414 getting data into the PLC, 1084 00:37:18,890 --> 00:37:21,289 you wanna make sure it's updating and it's 1085 00:37:21,289 --> 00:37:23,050 fresh. And so, you know, they throw a 1086 00:37:23,050 --> 00:37:24,650 counter in there, the script thing, and be 1087 00:37:24,650 --> 00:37:26,010 able to have that. As as long as 1088 00:37:26,010 --> 00:37:27,449 you see that incrementing, you know, you got 1089 00:37:27,449 --> 00:37:29,289 good data coming in. That's that's a good 1090 00:37:29,289 --> 00:37:29,789 feature. 1091 00:37:30,250 --> 00:37:30,750 Absolutely. 1092 00:37:31,375 --> 00:37:33,055 You know, another big one is the the 1093 00:37:33,055 --> 00:37:33,555 redundancy. 1094 00:37:34,255 --> 00:37:36,575 So what this does is beyond just the 1095 00:37:36,575 --> 00:37:39,535 OPC, we can make redundancy to basically anything 1096 00:37:39,535 --> 00:37:41,535 that has two things running of it. So 1097 00:37:41,535 --> 00:37:42,675 any of these different connections. 1098 00:37:43,550 --> 00:37:45,550 How it's unique is what it does is 1099 00:37:45,550 --> 00:37:47,630 it just looks at the buckets of data 1100 00:37:47,630 --> 00:37:49,889 that you create. So for an example, 1101 00:37:50,190 --> 00:37:52,449 if I do have two different OPC servers 1102 00:37:52,909 --> 00:37:54,989 and I put them into two areas of, 1103 00:37:54,989 --> 00:37:57,309 let's say, OPC server one and OPC server 1104 00:37:57,309 --> 00:37:57,764 two, 1105 00:37:58,324 --> 00:38:01,144 I can what now create an OPC redundancy 1106 00:38:02,005 --> 00:38:04,724 data bucket. And now any client that connects 1107 00:38:04,724 --> 00:38:06,565 externally to that and wants that data, it's 1108 00:38:06,565 --> 00:38:08,505 gonna go talk to that bucket of data. 1109 00:38:08,565 --> 00:38:10,500 And that bucket of data is going to 1110 00:38:10,739 --> 00:38:13,699 automatically change in between sources as things go 1111 00:38:13,699 --> 00:38:15,780 down, things come back up, and the client 1112 00:38:15,780 --> 00:38:17,860 would never know what's hap what that happened 1113 00:38:17,860 --> 00:38:19,860 unless you wanted to. There are internal tasks 1114 00:38:19,860 --> 00:38:21,539 to show what's the current source and things, 1115 00:38:21,539 --> 00:38:23,539 but the idea is to make this trans 1116 00:38:24,659 --> 00:38:26,344 kind of hidden that 1117 00:38:26,885 --> 00:38:29,144 regardless of what's going on in the operations, 1118 00:38:29,445 --> 00:38:30,885 if I have this set up, 1119 00:38:31,204 --> 00:38:32,984 I can have my external applications 1120 00:38:33,605 --> 00:38:35,925 just reading from a single source without knowing 1121 00:38:35,925 --> 00:38:37,684 that there's two things behind it that are 1122 00:38:37,684 --> 00:38:38,820 actually controlling that. 1123 00:38:39,380 --> 00:38:41,780 Very important for, you know, historian connections where 1124 00:38:41,780 --> 00:38:43,860 you wanna have a full complete picture of 1125 00:38:43,860 --> 00:38:45,780 that data that's coming in. If you're able 1126 00:38:45,780 --> 00:38:48,180 to make a redundant connection to two different, 1127 00:38:48,500 --> 00:38:50,820 servers and then allow that historian to talk 1128 00:38:50,820 --> 00:38:53,034 to a single point where it doesn't have 1129 00:38:53,034 --> 00:38:54,815 to control that switching back and forth. 1130 00:38:55,355 --> 00:38:57,275 It it will just see that data flow 1131 00:38:57,275 --> 00:38:57,775 streamlessly 1132 00:38:58,155 --> 00:38:59,914 as as either one is up at that 1133 00:38:59,914 --> 00:39:00,414 time. 1134 00:39:00,715 --> 00:39:02,474 Kinda beyond that as well, there's quite a 1135 00:39:02,474 --> 00:39:03,994 few other different things in here. I don't 1136 00:39:03,994 --> 00:39:05,275 think we have time to cover all of 1137 00:39:05,275 --> 00:39:07,619 them. But for for our demo, what I 1138 00:39:07,619 --> 00:39:10,339 wanna focus on first is our OPC UA 1139 00:39:10,339 --> 00:39:10,839 connection. 1140 00:39:11,780 --> 00:39:13,699 This allows us both to act as a 1141 00:39:13,699 --> 00:39:16,339 OPC UA client to get data from any 1142 00:39:16,339 --> 00:39:18,199 servers out there, like our top server. 1143 00:39:18,775 --> 00:39:20,614 And also we can act as an OPC 1144 00:39:20,614 --> 00:39:23,175 UA server itself. So if anything's coming in 1145 00:39:23,175 --> 00:39:25,494 from maybe you have multiple connections to different 1146 00:39:25,494 --> 00:39:25,994 servers, 1147 00:39:26,614 --> 00:39:29,175 multiple connections to other things that aren't OPC 1148 00:39:29,175 --> 00:39:31,335 as well, I can now provide all this 1149 00:39:31,335 --> 00:39:33,195 data automatically in my own namespace 1150 00:39:33,559 --> 00:39:34,920 to allow things to connect to me as 1151 00:39:34,920 --> 00:39:37,159 well. And that's part of that aggregation feature, 1152 00:39:37,320 --> 00:39:39,579 and kind of topic I was mentioning before. 1153 00:39:40,519 --> 00:39:42,599 So with that, I have a connection here. 1154 00:39:42,599 --> 00:39:44,599 It's pulling data all from my top server. 1155 00:39:44,599 --> 00:39:45,960 I have a few different tags from my 1156 00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:48,300 Alec Bradley and and my Siemens PLC selected. 1157 00:39:48,924 --> 00:39:50,764 The next part of this, while I was 1158 00:39:50,764 --> 00:39:52,224 meshing, was the tunneling. 1159 00:39:53,324 --> 00:39:55,005 Like I said, this is very popular to 1160 00:39:55,005 --> 00:39:56,764 get around DCOM issues, 1161 00:39:57,164 --> 00:39:58,444 but there's a lot of reasons why you 1162 00:39:58,444 --> 00:40:00,684 still may use this beyond just the headache 1163 00:40:00,684 --> 00:40:02,280 of DCOM and what it was. 1164 00:40:02,840 --> 00:40:05,000 What this runs on is a a TCP 1165 00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:07,480 stream that takes all the data points as 1166 00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:09,579 a value, a quality, and a timestamp, 1167 00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:12,519 and it can mirror those in between another 1168 00:40:12,519 --> 00:40:14,840 DataHub instance. So if I wanna get things 1169 00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:17,514 across a network, like my OT side, where 1170 00:40:17,514 --> 00:40:18,014 NASH 1171 00:40:18,954 --> 00:40:20,795 previously, I would have to come in and 1172 00:40:20,795 --> 00:40:21,295 allow 1173 00:40:21,675 --> 00:40:21,994 a, 1174 00:40:22,474 --> 00:40:26,014 open port onto my network for any OPC 1175 00:40:26,074 --> 00:40:26,894 UA clients, 1176 00:40:27,914 --> 00:40:30,449 across the network to access that, I can 1177 00:40:30,449 --> 00:40:32,609 now actually change the direction of this and 1178 00:40:32,609 --> 00:40:34,449 allow me to tunnel data out of my 1179 00:40:34,449 --> 00:40:36,849 network without opening up any ports. This is 1180 00:40:36,849 --> 00:40:37,969 really big for security. 1181 00:40:38,369 --> 00:40:41,170 If anyone out there, security professional or working 1182 00:40:41,170 --> 00:40:42,690 as an engineer, you have to work with 1183 00:40:42,690 --> 00:40:44,775 your IT and security a lot, they don't 1184 00:40:44,894 --> 00:40:46,735 you don't wanna have an open port, especially 1185 00:40:46,735 --> 00:40:48,675 to your operations and OT side. 1186 00:40:49,135 --> 00:40:51,135 So this allows you to change that direction 1187 00:40:51,135 --> 00:40:53,454 of flow and push data out of this 1188 00:40:53,454 --> 00:40:56,355 direction into another area like a DMZ computer 1189 00:40:56,710 --> 00:40:58,710 or up to a business level computer as 1190 00:40:58,710 --> 00:40:59,210 well. 1191 00:41:00,070 --> 00:41:01,750 The other things as well that I have 1192 00:41:01,750 --> 00:41:02,949 configured in this demo, 1193 00:41:03,989 --> 00:41:06,630 the benefit of having that tunneling streaming data 1194 00:41:06,630 --> 00:41:07,690 across this connection 1195 00:41:07,989 --> 00:41:10,570 is I can also store this data locally 1196 00:41:10,994 --> 00:41:12,614 in a, influx database. 1197 00:41:13,234 --> 00:41:14,835 The purpose of that then is that I 1198 00:41:14,835 --> 00:41:16,454 can actually historize this, 1199 00:41:17,234 --> 00:41:19,654 provide then if this connection ever goes down 1200 00:41:19,954 --> 00:41:20,694 to backfill 1201 00:41:20,994 --> 00:41:21,815 any information 1202 00:41:22,114 --> 00:41:24,514 that was lost during that tunnel connection going 1203 00:41:24,514 --> 00:41:25,014 down. 1204 00:41:25,440 --> 00:41:27,679 So with this added layer on and real 1205 00:41:27,679 --> 00:41:29,940 time data scenarios like OPC UA, 1206 00:41:30,559 --> 00:41:32,960 unless you have historical access, you would lose 1207 00:41:32,960 --> 00:41:34,480 a lot of data if that connection ever 1208 00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:36,739 went down. But with this, I can actually 1209 00:41:37,359 --> 00:41:39,780 use the back end of this InfluxDB, 1210 00:41:40,505 --> 00:41:41,724 buffer any values. 1211 00:41:42,025 --> 00:41:43,644 When my connection comes back up, 1212 00:41:44,265 --> 00:41:46,744 pass them along that stream again. And if 1213 00:41:46,744 --> 00:41:49,244 I have anything that's historically connected, like, 1214 00:41:49,704 --> 00:41:50,605 another InfluxDB, 1215 00:41:51,385 --> 00:41:52,605 maybe a PI historian, 1216 00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:54,179 Vue historian, 1217 00:41:55,039 --> 00:41:57,199 any historian offering out there that can allow 1218 00:41:57,199 --> 00:41:59,440 that connection. I can then provide all those 1219 00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:01,599 records that were originally missed and backfill that 1220 00:42:01,599 --> 00:42:02,579 into those systems. 1221 00:42:03,119 --> 00:42:05,119 So I switched over to a second machine. 1222 00:42:05,119 --> 00:42:07,304 It's gonna look very similar here as well. 1223 00:42:07,864 --> 00:42:09,944 This also has an instance of the Cogent 1224 00:42:09,944 --> 00:42:12,605 Data Hub running here. For anyone not watching, 1225 00:42:13,385 --> 00:42:15,304 what we've actually have on this side is 1226 00:42:15,304 --> 00:42:17,704 the the portion of the tunneler that's sitting 1227 00:42:17,704 --> 00:42:20,184 here and listening for any data requests coming 1228 00:42:20,184 --> 00:42:21,970 in. So on my first machine, I was 1229 00:42:21,970 --> 00:42:23,269 able to connect my PLCs, 1230 00:42:23,809 --> 00:42:26,610 gather that information into Cogent DataHub, and now 1231 00:42:26,610 --> 00:42:27,910 I'm pushing that information, 1232 00:42:28,450 --> 00:42:31,010 across the network into a separate machine that's 1233 00:42:31,010 --> 00:42:33,030 sitting here and listening to gather information. 1234 00:42:34,295 --> 00:42:35,994 So what I can quickly do is just 1235 00:42:36,215 --> 00:42:37,815 make sure I have all my data here. 1236 00:42:37,815 --> 00:42:39,355 So I have these different points, 1237 00:42:39,735 --> 00:42:42,055 both from my Allen Bradley PLCs. I have 1238 00:42:42,055 --> 00:42:42,635 a few, 1239 00:42:43,655 --> 00:42:44,394 different simulation 1240 00:42:44,855 --> 00:42:46,875 demo points, like temperature, 1241 00:42:47,494 --> 00:42:47,994 pressure, 1242 00:42:48,420 --> 00:42:50,980 tank level, a few statuses, and all this 1243 00:42:50,980 --> 00:42:51,639 is updating 1244 00:42:52,179 --> 00:42:54,179 directly through that stream as the PLC is 1245 00:42:54,179 --> 00:42:55,319 updating it as well. 1246 00:42:55,780 --> 00:42:57,619 I also have my scenes controller. I have 1247 00:42:57,619 --> 00:42:57,940 some, 1248 00:42:58,420 --> 00:42:59,239 current values 1249 00:42:59,539 --> 00:43:02,599 and a few different counters tags as well. 1250 00:43:03,255 --> 00:43:04,714 All of this again is being 1251 00:43:05,014 --> 00:43:07,574 directly streamed through that tunnel. I'm not connecting 1252 00:43:07,574 --> 00:43:09,574 to an OPC server at all on this 1253 00:43:09,574 --> 00:43:10,074 side. 1254 00:43:10,375 --> 00:43:12,135 I can show you that here. There's no 1255 00:43:12,135 --> 00:43:14,694 connections configured. I'm not talking to the PLCs 1256 00:43:14,694 --> 00:43:16,619 directly on this machine as well. But maybe 1257 00:43:16,619 --> 00:43:19,260 we'll pass all the information through without opening 1258 00:43:19,260 --> 00:43:22,319 up any ports on my OT demo machine 1259 00:43:22,539 --> 00:43:23,279 per se. 1260 00:43:23,659 --> 00:43:26,159 So what's the benefit of that? Well, again, 1261 00:43:26,460 --> 00:43:26,960 security. 1262 00:43:28,139 --> 00:43:30,539 Also, the ability to do the store and 1263 00:43:30,539 --> 00:43:31,359 forward mechanisms. 1264 00:43:32,775 --> 00:43:35,175 On the other side, I was logging directly 1265 00:43:35,175 --> 00:43:36,155 to a InfluxDB. 1266 00:43:36,934 --> 00:43:38,714 This could be my d- my buffer, 1267 00:43:39,014 --> 00:43:40,394 and then I was able to 1268 00:43:40,695 --> 00:43:43,195 configure it where if any values were lost, 1269 00:43:43,335 --> 00:43:45,000 to store that across the network. 1270 00:43:45,880 --> 00:43:48,059 So now with this side, if I pull 1271 00:43:48,360 --> 00:43:50,380 up Chronic Graph, which is a free visualization 1272 00:43:50,599 --> 00:43:53,420 tool that installs with the DataHub as well, 1273 00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:56,539 I can see some very nice, 1274 00:43:57,000 --> 00:43:58,059 visual workflows 1275 00:43:58,840 --> 00:44:01,195 and and visual diagrams of 1276 00:44:01,655 --> 00:44:03,735 what is going on with this data. So 1277 00:44:03,735 --> 00:44:05,275 I have a pressure that 1278 00:44:05,735 --> 00:44:08,135 is just a simulator in this, Allen Bradley 1279 00:44:08,135 --> 00:44:10,295 PLC that ramps up and and comes back 1280 00:44:10,295 --> 00:44:12,614 down. It's not actually connected to anything that's 1281 00:44:12,614 --> 00:44:14,859 reading a real pressure, but you can see 1282 00:44:14,859 --> 00:44:17,039 over time, I can kind of change through 1283 00:44:17,739 --> 00:44:19,760 these different layers of time. 1284 00:44:21,260 --> 00:44:22,859 And I might go back a little far, 1285 00:44:22,859 --> 00:44:24,139 but I have a lot of data that's 1286 00:44:24,139 --> 00:44:26,139 been stored in here. For a while during 1287 00:44:26,139 --> 00:44:28,239 my test, I turned this off and, 1288 00:44:28,539 --> 00:44:30,554 made it fail, but then I came back 1289 00:44:30,554 --> 00:44:32,315 in and I was able to recreate all 1290 00:44:32,315 --> 00:44:34,574 the data and backfill it as well. So 1291 00:44:35,195 --> 00:44:36,574 through through these views, 1292 00:44:36,875 --> 00:44:38,014 I can see that 1293 00:44:38,315 --> 00:44:39,454 as data disconnects, 1294 00:44:39,835 --> 00:44:41,434 as it comes back on, I have a 1295 00:44:41,434 --> 00:44:42,255 very cyclical 1296 00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:45,079 view of the data because it was able 1297 00:44:45,079 --> 00:44:47,320 to recover and store and forward from that 1298 00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:47,820 source. 1299 00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:50,619 Like I said, Sean, data quality 1300 00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:52,760 is a big thing in this industry. It's 1301 00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:54,760 a big thing for people both at the 1302 00:44:54,760 --> 00:44:55,739 operations side, 1303 00:44:56,154 --> 00:44:58,074 and both people making decision in the business 1304 00:44:58,074 --> 00:44:59,755 layer. So being able to have a full 1305 00:44:59,755 --> 00:45:00,255 picture, 1306 00:45:00,554 --> 00:45:03,214 without gaps, it is definitely something that, 1307 00:45:03,514 --> 00:45:04,574 you should be prioritizing, 1308 00:45:05,114 --> 00:45:06,014 when you can. 1309 00:45:06,394 --> 00:45:08,394 Now what we're seeing here is you're using 1310 00:45:08,394 --> 00:45:08,894 InfluxDB 1311 00:45:09,275 --> 00:45:11,214 on this, destination PC 1312 00:45:11,679 --> 00:45:14,480 or IT side PC and chronograph, which was 1313 00:45:14,480 --> 00:45:17,360 that utility or that package that comes, gets 1314 00:45:17,360 --> 00:45:18,420 installed. It's free. 1315 00:45:19,360 --> 00:45:21,360 But you don't actually have to use that. 1316 00:45:21,360 --> 00:45:22,880 You could have sent this in to an 1317 00:45:22,880 --> 00:45:26,659 OSI pi or Exactly. Somebody else's historian. Right? 1318 00:45:26,795 --> 00:45:28,394 Can you name some of the historians you 1319 00:45:28,394 --> 00:45:30,335 work with? I know OSI pie. 1320 00:45:30,715 --> 00:45:31,695 Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. 1321 00:45:32,474 --> 00:45:34,474 So there's quite a few different ones. As 1322 00:45:34,474 --> 00:45:35,914 far as what we support in the Data 1323 00:45:35,914 --> 00:45:36,655 Hub natively, 1324 00:45:37,275 --> 00:45:39,914 Amazon Kinesis, the cloud hosted historian that we 1325 00:45:39,914 --> 00:45:41,594 can also do the same things from here 1326 00:45:41,594 --> 00:45:44,170 as well. Aviva Historian, Aviva Insight, 1327 00:45:44,789 --> 00:45:45,769 Apache Kafka. 1328 00:45:46,230 --> 00:45:47,909 This is a a kind of a a 1329 00:45:47,909 --> 00:45:49,269 newer one as well that used to be 1330 00:45:49,269 --> 00:45:52,309 a very IT oriented solution, now getting into 1331 00:45:52,309 --> 00:45:52,809 OT. 1332 00:45:53,349 --> 00:45:54,569 It's kind of a similar 1333 00:45:55,224 --> 00:45:57,464 database structure where things are stored in different 1334 00:45:57,464 --> 00:45:59,164 topics that we can stream to. 1335 00:45:59,864 --> 00:46:02,525 On top of that, just regular old ODBC 1336 00:46:02,744 --> 00:46:03,244 connections. 1337 00:46:03,784 --> 00:46:05,784 That opens up a lot of different ways 1338 00:46:05,784 --> 00:46:08,344 you can do it, or even, the old 1339 00:46:08,344 --> 00:46:09,324 classic OPC, 1340 00:46:10,195 --> 00:46:12,420 HDA. So if you have any, 1341 00:46:13,039 --> 00:46:15,539 historians that that can act as an OPC 1342 00:46:15,599 --> 00:46:16,099 HDA, 1343 00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:18,640 connection, we we can also stream it through 1344 00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:20,980 there. Excellent. That's a great list. 1345 00:46:21,280 --> 00:46:22,640 The other thing I wanna show while we 1346 00:46:22,640 --> 00:46:24,579 still have some time here is that MQTT 1347 00:46:25,039 --> 00:46:25,539 component. 1348 00:46:26,655 --> 00:46:29,454 This is really growing and, it's gonna continue 1349 00:46:29,454 --> 00:46:31,635 to be a part of the industrial automation 1350 00:46:31,695 --> 00:46:34,914 technology stack and conversations moving forward, 1351 00:46:35,295 --> 00:46:38,015 for streaming data, you know, from devices, edge 1352 00:46:38,015 --> 00:46:38,515 devices, 1353 00:46:39,210 --> 00:46:40,510 up into different layers, 1354 00:46:40,809 --> 00:46:42,969 both now into the OT, and then maybe 1355 00:46:42,969 --> 00:46:44,429 out to, IT, 1356 00:46:44,809 --> 00:46:46,889 in our business levels as well, and definitely 1357 00:46:46,889 --> 00:46:48,570 into the cloud as we're seeing a lot 1358 00:46:48,570 --> 00:46:49,630 of growth into it. 1359 00:46:50,090 --> 00:46:52,010 Like I mentioned with Data Hub, the big 1360 00:46:52,010 --> 00:46:52,510 benefit 1361 00:46:52,835 --> 00:46:54,835 is I have all these different connections. I 1362 00:46:54,835 --> 00:46:57,234 can consume all this data. Well, I can 1363 00:46:57,234 --> 00:46:59,474 also act as an MQTT broker. And what 1364 00:46:59,474 --> 00:47:01,474 what a broker typically does in MQTT is 1365 00:47:01,474 --> 00:47:04,275 just route data and share data. It's kind 1366 00:47:04,275 --> 00:47:05,954 of that central point where things come to 1367 00:47:05,954 --> 00:47:08,000 it to either say, hey. I'm giving you 1368 00:47:08,000 --> 00:47:09,679 some new values. Share it with someone else. 1369 00:47:09,679 --> 00:47:11,359 Or, hey. I need these values. Can you 1370 00:47:11,359 --> 00:47:12,179 give me that? 1371 00:47:12,559 --> 00:47:14,400 It really fits in super well with what 1372 00:47:14,400 --> 00:47:16,019 this product is at its core. 1373 00:47:16,639 --> 00:47:18,320 So all I have to do here is 1374 00:47:18,320 --> 00:47:19,539 just enable it. 1375 00:47:20,079 --> 00:47:22,094 What that now allows is I have an 1376 00:47:22,094 --> 00:47:22,594 example, 1377 00:47:22,974 --> 00:47:25,614 MQTT Explorer. If anyone has worked with MQTT, 1378 00:47:25,614 --> 00:47:27,074 you're probably familiar with this. 1379 00:47:28,094 --> 00:47:30,675 There's nothing else I configured beyond just enabling 1380 00:47:30,735 --> 00:47:32,655 the broker. And you can see within this 1381 00:47:32,655 --> 00:47:33,155 structure, 1382 00:47:33,454 --> 00:47:35,135 I have all the same data that was 1383 00:47:35,135 --> 00:47:37,199 in my Data Hub already. The same things 1384 00:47:37,199 --> 00:47:39,599 I were collecting from my PLCs and top 1385 00:47:39,599 --> 00:47:40,099 server. 1386 00:47:40,400 --> 00:47:42,179 Now I've embedded these as 1387 00:47:42,559 --> 00:47:44,719 MPPT points and now I have them in 1388 00:47:44,719 --> 00:47:47,359 JSON format with the value, their timestamp. You 1389 00:47:47,359 --> 00:47:49,119 can even see, like, a little trend here 1390 00:47:49,119 --> 00:47:50,820 kind of matching what we saw in Influx. 1391 00:47:51,565 --> 00:47:53,324 And and now this enables all those different 1392 00:47:53,324 --> 00:47:55,804 cloud connectors that wanna speak this language to 1393 00:47:55,804 --> 00:47:56,625 do it seamlessly. 1394 00:47:57,485 --> 00:47:58,925 So you didn't have to set up the 1395 00:47:58,925 --> 00:48:01,485 PLCs a second time to do this? Nope. 1396 00:48:01,485 --> 00:48:03,885 Not at all. You just enabled this, and 1397 00:48:03,885 --> 00:48:05,905 now the data's going this way as well. 1398 00:48:06,045 --> 00:48:06,545 Exactly. 1399 00:48:06,950 --> 00:48:08,630 Yeah. That's a really strong point of the 1400 00:48:08,630 --> 00:48:10,890 Cogent Data Hub is once you have everything 1401 00:48:10,950 --> 00:48:13,210 into its structure and model, 1402 00:48:14,070 --> 00:48:15,750 you just enable it to use any of 1403 00:48:15,750 --> 00:48:16,890 these different connections. 1404 00:48:17,349 --> 00:48:19,269 You can get really, really creative with these 1405 00:48:19,269 --> 00:48:21,450 different things. Like we talked about with the 1406 00:48:21,545 --> 00:48:24,105 the bridging aspect and getting into different systems, 1407 00:48:24,105 --> 00:48:25,485 even writing down the PLCs. 1408 00:48:25,945 --> 00:48:27,965 You can make crust, custom notifications 1409 00:48:28,265 --> 00:48:29,565 and email alerts, 1410 00:48:30,025 --> 00:48:31,485 based on any of these values. 1411 00:48:32,025 --> 00:48:34,445 You could even take something like this MTT 1412 00:48:34,585 --> 00:48:35,085 connection, 1413 00:48:35,849 --> 00:48:37,769 tunnel it across to another data hub as 1414 00:48:37,769 --> 00:48:40,030 well, maybe then convert it to OPC DA. 1415 00:48:40,090 --> 00:48:41,470 And now you've made a a 1416 00:48:42,250 --> 00:48:44,570 a new connection over to something that's very 1417 00:48:44,570 --> 00:48:45,869 legacy as well. 1418 00:48:47,635 --> 00:48:49,795 Yeah. That, I mean, the options here are 1419 00:48:49,795 --> 00:48:51,795 just pretty amazing, all the different things that 1420 00:48:51,795 --> 00:48:52,614 can be done. 1421 00:48:53,235 --> 00:48:53,735 Absolutely. 1422 00:48:54,355 --> 00:48:56,114 Well, I, you know, I wanna jump back 1423 00:48:56,114 --> 00:48:58,434 into some of our presentation here while we 1424 00:48:58,434 --> 00:49:00,195 still got the time. And now after we're 1425 00:49:00,195 --> 00:49:02,159 kinda done with our demo, there's so many 1426 00:49:02,159 --> 00:49:04,000 different ways that you can use these different 1427 00:49:04,000 --> 00:49:05,940 tools. This is just a really simple, 1428 00:49:06,800 --> 00:49:09,440 kind of view of the, something that used 1429 00:49:09,440 --> 00:49:10,179 to be very 1430 00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:12,960 simple, just connecting OpenSea servers to a variety 1431 00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:13,940 of different connections, 1432 00:49:14,400 --> 00:49:16,559 kind of expanding onto with that that's store 1433 00:49:16,559 --> 00:49:17,219 and forward, 1434 00:49:17,894 --> 00:49:20,454 the local influx usage, getting out to things 1435 00:49:20,454 --> 00:49:22,215 like MTT as well. But there's a lot 1436 00:49:22,215 --> 00:49:23,815 more you can do with these solutions. So 1437 00:49:23,815 --> 00:49:25,894 like Sean said, reach out to us. We're 1438 00:49:25,894 --> 00:49:26,954 happy to engage 1439 00:49:27,255 --> 00:49:28,795 and see what we can help you with. 1440 00:49:29,255 --> 00:49:30,775 I have a few other things before we 1441 00:49:30,775 --> 00:49:31,515 wrap up. 1442 00:49:32,150 --> 00:49:35,110 Just overall, it we've worked across nearly every 1443 00:49:35,110 --> 00:49:35,590 industry. 1444 00:49:36,309 --> 00:49:38,950 We have installations across the globe on all 1445 00:49:38,950 --> 00:49:40,869 continents. And like I said, we've been around 1446 00:49:40,869 --> 00:49:43,750 for pushing thirty years next year. So we've 1447 00:49:43,750 --> 00:49:45,030 seen a lot of different things, 1448 00:49:45,644 --> 00:49:47,405 and we really wanna talk to anyone out 1449 00:49:47,405 --> 00:49:49,324 there that maybe has some struggles that are 1450 00:49:49,324 --> 00:49:50,784 going on with just connectivity, 1451 00:49:51,164 --> 00:49:52,945 or you have any ongoing projects. 1452 00:49:53,244 --> 00:49:55,085 If you work in these different industries or 1453 00:49:55,085 --> 00:49:57,164 if there's nothing marked here and you have 1454 00:49:57,164 --> 00:49:58,769 anything going on that you need help with, 1455 00:49:59,250 --> 00:50:00,690 we're very happy to sit down and let 1456 00:50:00,690 --> 00:50:02,130 you know if there's there's something we can 1457 00:50:02,130 --> 00:50:02,789 do there. 1458 00:50:03,090 --> 00:50:05,650 Yeah. For those who are, listening, I mean, 1459 00:50:05,650 --> 00:50:07,349 we see most of the big energy 1460 00:50:08,130 --> 00:50:09,349 and consumer product, 1461 00:50:10,050 --> 00:50:12,614 companies on that slide. So I'm not gonna 1462 00:50:12,614 --> 00:50:14,855 read them off, but, it's just a lot 1463 00:50:14,855 --> 00:50:17,175 of car manufacturers. You know, these are these 1464 00:50:17,175 --> 00:50:19,655 are these, the household name brands that everybody 1465 00:50:19,655 --> 00:50:21,974 knows and loves. So kind of wrap some 1466 00:50:21,974 --> 00:50:24,375 things up here. We talked about all the 1467 00:50:24,375 --> 00:50:26,054 different ways that we've kind of helped solve 1468 00:50:26,054 --> 00:50:27,994 things in the past, but I wanna highlight 1469 00:50:28,190 --> 00:50:30,670 some of the unique ones, that we've also 1470 00:50:30,670 --> 00:50:33,390 gone do some, case studies on and and 1471 00:50:33,390 --> 00:50:34,369 success stories. 1472 00:50:34,910 --> 00:50:36,829 So this one I actually got to work 1473 00:50:36,829 --> 00:50:37,329 on, 1474 00:50:37,630 --> 00:50:40,050 within the last few years that, a plastic 1475 00:50:40,110 --> 00:50:40,610 packaging, 1476 00:50:41,150 --> 00:50:41,650 manufacturer 1477 00:50:42,355 --> 00:50:44,994 was looking to track uptime and downtime across 1478 00:50:44,994 --> 00:50:47,315 multiple different lines, and they had a new 1479 00:50:47,315 --> 00:50:49,735 cloud solution that they were already evaluating. 1480 00:50:50,515 --> 00:50:52,675 They're really excited to get into play. They 1481 00:50:52,675 --> 00:50:54,535 they had a lot of upside to, 1482 00:50:54,914 --> 00:50:56,914 getting things connected to this and start using 1483 00:50:56,914 --> 00:50:58,989 it. Well, what they had was a lot 1484 00:50:58,989 --> 00:50:59,889 of different PLCs, 1485 00:51:00,429 --> 00:51:02,529 a lot of different brands, different areas, 1486 00:51:02,909 --> 00:51:03,389 different, 1487 00:51:03,710 --> 00:51:06,029 you know, areas of operation that they need 1488 00:51:06,029 --> 00:51:06,929 to connect to. 1489 00:51:07,389 --> 00:51:09,150 So what they used was to first get 1490 00:51:09,150 --> 00:51:11,069 that into our top server, kind of similar 1491 00:51:11,069 --> 00:51:12,349 to how they showed them use in their 1492 00:51:12,429 --> 00:51:14,474 in our demo. We just need to get 1493 00:51:14,474 --> 00:51:17,054 all the data into a centralized platform first, 1494 00:51:17,114 --> 00:51:18,494 get that data accessible. 1495 00:51:19,434 --> 00:51:21,514 Then from there, once they had all that 1496 00:51:21,514 --> 00:51:22,014 information 1497 00:51:22,315 --> 00:51:25,034 into a centralized area, they used the Cogent 1498 00:51:25,034 --> 00:51:27,114 Data Hub as well to help aggregate that 1499 00:51:27,114 --> 00:51:29,539 information and transform it to be sent to 1500 00:51:29,539 --> 00:51:31,079 the cloud through MQTT. 1501 00:51:31,460 --> 00:51:33,940 So very similar to the demo here, this 1502 00:51:33,940 --> 00:51:34,519 is actually 1503 00:51:35,219 --> 00:51:37,800 a real use case of that. Getting information 1504 00:51:37,860 --> 00:51:38,599 from PLCs, 1505 00:51:39,140 --> 00:51:41,300 structuring it into that how that cloud system 1506 00:51:41,300 --> 00:51:42,519 needed it for MQTT, 1507 00:51:42,994 --> 00:51:45,474 and streamlining that data connection to now where 1508 00:51:45,474 --> 00:51:46,934 it's just running in operation. 1509 00:51:47,315 --> 00:51:50,275 They constantly have updates about where their lines 1510 00:51:50,275 --> 00:51:51,175 are in operation, 1511 00:51:52,035 --> 00:51:53,094 tracking their downtime, 1512 00:51:53,554 --> 00:51:55,394 tracking their uptime as well, and then being 1513 00:51:55,394 --> 00:51:57,155 able to do some predictive analytics in that 1514 00:51:57,155 --> 00:51:59,219 cloud solution based on their history. 1515 00:51:59,599 --> 00:52:01,780 So this really enabled them to kind of 1516 00:52:02,640 --> 00:52:04,640 build from what they had existing. It was 1517 00:52:04,640 --> 00:52:07,039 doing a lot of manual tracking, into an 1518 00:52:07,039 --> 00:52:09,619 entirely automated system with management 1519 00:52:09,920 --> 00:52:12,235 able to see real views of what's going 1520 00:52:12,235 --> 00:52:13,695 on at this operation level. 1521 00:52:15,434 --> 00:52:17,514 Another one I wanna talk about was we 1522 00:52:17,514 --> 00:52:19,434 we were able to do this success story 1523 00:52:19,434 --> 00:52:19,755 with, 1524 00:52:20,315 --> 00:52:20,974 Ace Automation. 1525 00:52:21,914 --> 00:52:24,255 They worked with a pharmaceutical company. 1526 00:52:24,635 --> 00:52:27,090 Ace Automation is a SI and they were 1527 00:52:27,090 --> 00:52:28,690 brought in and doing a lot of work 1528 00:52:28,690 --> 00:52:31,269 with some some old DDE connections, 1529 00:52:32,050 --> 00:52:33,430 doing some custom 1530 00:52:33,809 --> 00:52:36,610 Excel macros, and we're just having a hard 1531 00:52:36,610 --> 00:52:39,329 time maintaining some legacy systems that were just 1532 00:52:39,329 --> 00:52:40,710 a pain to deal with. 1533 00:52:41,090 --> 00:52:42,470 They were working with these 1534 00:52:42,984 --> 00:52:43,804 older files, 1535 00:52:44,264 --> 00:52:47,085 from some old InTouch histor HMIs, 1536 00:52:47,385 --> 00:52:49,304 and what they needed to do was get 1537 00:52:49,304 --> 00:52:51,144 something that was not just based on Excel 1538 00:52:51,144 --> 00:52:53,864 and doing custom macros. So one product we 1539 00:52:53,864 --> 00:52:55,304 didn't get to talk about yet, but we 1540 00:52:55,304 --> 00:52:57,405 also carry is our LGH file inspector. 1541 00:52:57,864 --> 00:52:59,539 It's able to take these files, 1542 00:52:59,920 --> 00:53:02,559 put them out into a standardized format like 1543 00:53:02,559 --> 00:53:03,059 CSV, 1544 00:53:03,680 --> 00:53:05,460 and also do a lot of that automation 1545 00:53:05,599 --> 00:53:07,599 of when when should these files be queried? 1546 00:53:07,599 --> 00:53:10,079 Should they be, queried for different lengths? Should 1547 00:53:10,079 --> 00:53:12,079 they be output to different areas? Can I 1548 00:53:12,079 --> 00:53:14,315 set these up in a scheduled task so 1549 00:53:14,315 --> 00:53:16,315 it can be done automatically rather than someone 1550 00:53:16,315 --> 00:53:18,315 having to sit down and do it manually 1551 00:53:18,315 --> 00:53:20,875 in Excel? So they will able to, 1552 00:53:21,275 --> 00:53:24,155 recover over fifty hours of engineering time with 1553 00:53:24,155 --> 00:53:24,815 the solution 1554 00:53:25,355 --> 00:53:27,840 from having to do late night calls to 1555 00:53:28,000 --> 00:53:28,500 troubleshoot 1556 00:53:28,800 --> 00:53:30,960 a, Excel macro that stopped working, 1557 00:53:31,280 --> 00:53:33,760 from crashing machines, because they were running a 1558 00:53:33,760 --> 00:53:35,760 legacy systems to still support some of the 1559 00:53:35,760 --> 00:53:36,660 DDE servers, 1560 00:53:37,360 --> 00:53:40,335 into saving them, you know, almost two hundred 1561 00:53:40,335 --> 00:53:41,554 plus hours of productivity. 1562 00:53:42,655 --> 00:53:44,815 Another example, if we're able to work with 1563 00:53:44,815 --> 00:53:45,315 a 1564 00:53:45,775 --> 00:53:46,275 renewable, 1565 00:53:47,054 --> 00:53:48,195 energy customer 1566 00:53:48,574 --> 00:53:50,835 that's doing a lot of innovative things across 1567 00:53:50,974 --> 00:53:51,795 North America, 1568 00:53:52,349 --> 00:53:54,590 They had a very ambitious plan to double 1569 00:53:54,590 --> 00:53:56,610 their footprint in the next two years. 1570 00:53:56,910 --> 00:53:58,670 And with that, they had to really look 1571 00:53:58,670 --> 00:54:01,390 back at their assets and see where they 1572 00:54:01,390 --> 00:54:02,289 currently stand, 1573 00:54:02,590 --> 00:54:04,990 how do we make new standards to support 1574 00:54:04,990 --> 00:54:07,005 us growing into what we want to be. 1575 00:54:07,565 --> 00:54:09,484 So with this, they had a lot of 1576 00:54:09,484 --> 00:54:11,344 different data sources currently. 1577 00:54:12,045 --> 00:54:14,525 They're all kind of siloed at the specific 1578 00:54:14,525 --> 00:54:17,565 areas. Nothing was really connected commonly to a 1579 00:54:17,565 --> 00:54:19,585 corporate level area of historization, 1580 00:54:20,789 --> 00:54:22,250 or control and security. 1581 00:54:22,789 --> 00:54:24,949 So again, they they were able to use 1582 00:54:24,949 --> 00:54:26,010 our top server 1583 00:54:26,309 --> 00:54:29,190 and put out a standard connectivity platform, bring 1584 00:54:29,190 --> 00:54:31,349 in the DataHub as an aggregation tool. So 1585 00:54:31,349 --> 00:54:32,949 each of these sites would have a top 1586 00:54:32,949 --> 00:54:35,965 server that was individually collecting data from different 1587 00:54:35,965 --> 00:54:36,465 devices, 1588 00:54:36,765 --> 00:54:38,125 and then that was able to send it 1589 00:54:38,125 --> 00:54:40,284 into a single DataHub. So now their corporate 1590 00:54:40,284 --> 00:54:42,284 level had an entire view of all the 1591 00:54:42,284 --> 00:54:44,605 information from these different plants in one single 1592 00:54:44,605 --> 00:54:45,105 application. 1593 00:54:46,204 --> 00:54:48,385 That then enabled them to connect their historian 1594 00:54:48,525 --> 00:54:49,025 applications 1595 00:54:49,619 --> 00:54:51,539 to that data hub and have a perfect 1596 00:54:51,539 --> 00:54:52,920 view and make visualizations 1597 00:54:53,219 --> 00:54:54,679 off of their entire operations. 1598 00:54:55,940 --> 00:54:57,779 What this allowed them to do was grow 1599 00:54:57,779 --> 00:54:59,159 without replacing everything. 1600 00:54:59,460 --> 00:55:00,819 And that's a big thing that we try 1601 00:55:00,819 --> 00:55:01,960 to strive on is 1602 00:55:02,315 --> 00:55:05,055 replacing and ripping out all your existing technologies. 1603 00:55:05,595 --> 00:55:06,974 It's not something you can do overnight. 1604 00:55:07,434 --> 00:55:09,055 But how do we provide value 1605 00:55:09,355 --> 00:55:10,414 and gain efficiency 1606 00:55:11,115 --> 00:55:12,974 with what's in place and providing 1607 00:55:13,275 --> 00:55:15,775 newer technologies on top of that without disrupting 1608 00:55:15,994 --> 00:55:18,269 the actual operation as well? So this was 1609 00:55:18,269 --> 00:55:19,329 really, really successful. 1610 00:55:20,190 --> 00:55:21,309 And at the end, 1611 00:55:21,630 --> 00:55:23,710 I just wanna kind of provide some other 1612 00:55:23,710 --> 00:55:26,530 contacts and information people can learn more. 1613 00:55:26,989 --> 00:55:28,829 We have a blog that goes out every 1614 00:55:28,829 --> 00:55:29,890 week on Thursdays. 1615 00:55:30,510 --> 00:55:32,804 A lot of good technical content out there. 1616 00:55:33,045 --> 00:55:34,885 A lot of recast of the the awesome 1617 00:55:34,885 --> 00:55:37,045 things we get to do here, the success 1618 00:55:37,045 --> 00:55:39,204 stories as well, and you can always find 1619 00:55:39,204 --> 00:55:42,905 that at justblog.softwaretoolbox.com. 1620 00:55:43,844 --> 00:55:48,170 And again, our main website is justsoftwaretoolbox.com. 1621 00:55:48,230 --> 00:55:49,609 You can get product information, 1622 00:55:50,150 --> 00:55:50,650 downloads, 1623 00:55:51,269 --> 00:55:52,969 reach out to anyone on our team. 1624 00:55:53,269 --> 00:55:55,510 Let's discuss what what issues you have going 1625 00:55:55,510 --> 00:55:57,750 on, any new projects, we'll be happy to 1626 00:55:57,750 --> 00:55:58,250 listen. 1627 00:55:59,030 --> 00:56:01,155 Well, Connor, I wanna thank you very much 1628 00:56:01,155 --> 00:56:03,074 for coming on the show and bringing us 1629 00:56:03,074 --> 00:56:05,335 up to speed on not only software toolbox, 1630 00:56:05,954 --> 00:56:07,715 but also to, you know, bring us up 1631 00:56:07,715 --> 00:56:09,394 to speed on top server and doing that 1632 00:56:09,394 --> 00:56:11,414 demo with top server and data hub. 1633 00:56:12,275 --> 00:56:13,735 Really appreciate that. 1634 00:56:14,139 --> 00:56:14,639 And, 1635 00:56:14,940 --> 00:56:16,940 I think, you know, like you just said, 1636 00:56:16,940 --> 00:56:17,599 if anybody, 1637 00:56:18,059 --> 00:56:19,039 has any projects 1638 00:56:19,739 --> 00:56:21,980 that you think these solutions may be able 1639 00:56:21,980 --> 00:56:23,659 to solve, please give them a give them 1640 00:56:23,659 --> 00:56:25,420 a call. And if you've already done something 1641 00:56:25,420 --> 00:56:27,914 with them, leave a comment. You know? To 1642 00:56:27,914 --> 00:56:29,595 leave a comment, no matter where you're watching 1643 00:56:29,595 --> 00:56:31,675 or listening to this, let us know what 1644 00:56:31,675 --> 00:56:33,195 you did. What did you use? Like me, 1645 00:56:33,195 --> 00:56:35,595 I used OmniServer all those many years ago, 1646 00:56:35,595 --> 00:56:37,434 and, of course, Top Server as an OPC 1647 00:56:37,434 --> 00:56:39,559 server. But if you guys have already used 1648 00:56:39,559 --> 00:56:41,960 Software Toolbox and, of course, Symbol Factory, I 1649 00:56:41,960 --> 00:56:43,099 use that all the time. 1650 00:56:43,400 --> 00:56:45,400 But if you guys are using it, let 1651 00:56:45,400 --> 00:56:47,320 us know in the comments. It's always great 1652 00:56:47,320 --> 00:56:48,699 to hear from people out there. 1653 00:56:49,320 --> 00:56:50,760 I know, you know, with thousands of you 1654 00:56:50,760 --> 00:56:53,045 guys listening every week, but I'd love to 1655 00:56:53,045 --> 00:56:55,025 hear, you know, are you using these products? 1656 00:56:55,244 --> 00:56:56,844 Or if you have questions, I'll funnel them 1657 00:56:56,844 --> 00:56:58,525 over to Connor if you put them in 1658 00:56:58,525 --> 00:57:00,284 the comments. So with that, Connor, did you 1659 00:57:00,284 --> 00:57:02,045 have anything else you wanted to cover before 1660 00:57:02,045 --> 00:57:04,045 we close out today's show? I think that 1661 00:57:04,045 --> 00:57:05,724 was it, Sean. Thanks again for having us 1662 00:57:05,724 --> 00:57:07,569 on. It was really fun. I hope you 1663 00:57:07,569 --> 00:57:09,409 enjoyed that episode, and I wanna thank Connor 1664 00:57:09,409 --> 00:57:11,250 for taking time out of his busy schedule 1665 00:57:11,250 --> 00:57:12,929 to come on the show and bring us 1666 00:57:12,929 --> 00:57:15,250 up to speed on software toolbox and their 1667 00:57:15,250 --> 00:57:17,730 suite of products. Really appreciated that demo at 1668 00:57:17,730 --> 00:57:19,089 the end too, so we actually got a 1669 00:57:19,089 --> 00:57:21,005 look at if you're watching. Gotta look at 1670 00:57:21,005 --> 00:57:23,405 their products and how they work. And, just 1671 00:57:23,405 --> 00:57:25,505 really appreciate them taking all of my questions. 1672 00:57:25,885 --> 00:57:28,785 I also appreciate the fact that Software Toolbox 1673 00:57:29,405 --> 00:57:31,885 sponsored this episode, meaning we were able to 1674 00:57:31,885 --> 00:57:33,940 release it to you without any ads. So 1675 00:57:33,940 --> 00:57:35,619 I really appreciate them. If you're doing any 1676 00:57:35,619 --> 00:57:37,000 business with Software Toolbox, 1677 00:57:37,300 --> 00:57:40,179 please thank them for sponsoring this episode. And 1678 00:57:40,179 --> 00:57:41,860 with that, I just wanna wish you all 1679 00:57:41,860 --> 00:57:44,099 good health and happiness. And until next time, 1680 00:57:44,099 --> 00:57:44,760 my friends, 1681 00:57:45,699 --> 00:57:46,199 peace.