MISC-TN-024: Automated test equipment (ATE) monitoring with SBCSPG gateway and ThingsBoard IoT platform

Info Box Applies to SBCSPG Applies to SBC Lynx Technical Notes Applies to IoT Applies to IoT Services Technical Notes

This technical note was validated against specific versions of hardware and software. It may not work with other versions.

Contents

HistoryEdit

Version	Date	Notes
1.0.0	June 2022	First public release

IntroductionEdit

You can think about this This Technical Note (TN) as an evolution of the article "MISC-TN-021: SBCSPG and ThingsBoard IoT". The use case described here is a real-world application based on the same elements:

• The SBCSPG industrial gateway
• ThingsBoard IoT platform
• ThingsBoard IoT gateway.

The application is to monitor robotized DAVE Embedded Systems' ATEs like the one shown here.

ImplementationEdit

The implementation is suitable for a production environment. Unlike what we did for this TN, in this case the ThingsBoard IoT platform was installed on the cloud, specifically on an AWS EC2 instance running Ubuntu Linux. The following diagram shows the complete solution.

Technically, the gateway can communicate with the ATE using different physical links and protocols. In the example under discussion, the physical link is Ethernet and the protocol is Modbus/TCP. The gateway retrieves periodically some data regarding the robotic arm used to move the device under test (DUT). These data are exposed by the PLC governing the arm and are documented in detail here.

ThingsBoard IoT configurationEdit

To install ThingsBoard IoT platform on an EC2 instance, these instructions were followed.

ThingsBoard IoT gateway configurationEdit

To run this esample, the most important module to configure was the Modbus connector. The following box shows the resulting configuration file needed to poll some variables of the arm's joints (namely temperatures and currents).

armbian@sbcspg:~$ cat /etc/thingsboard-gateway/config/modbus.json
{
    "master": {
      "slaves": [
        {
          "host": "192.168.30.42",
          "port": 502,
          "type": "tcp",
          "method": "socket",
          "timeout": 35,
          "byteOrder": "BIG",
          "retries": true,
          "retryOnEmpty": true,
          "retryOnInvalid": true,
          "pollPeriod": 5000,
          "unitId": 1,
          "deviceName": "UR5",
          "sendDataOnlyOnChange": true,
          "connectAttemptTimeMs": 5000,
          "connectAttemptCount": 5,
          "waitAfterFailedAttemptsMs": 300000,
          "timeseries": [
            {
              "tag": "base_joint_temperature_deg_C",
              "type": "16int",
              "functionCode": 3,
              "objectsCount": 1,
              "address": 300
            },
            {
              "tag": "shoulder_joint_temperature_deg_C",
              "type": "16int",
              "functionCode": 3,
              "objectsCount": 1,
              "address": 301
            },
            {
                "tag": "base_joint_current_mA",
                "type": "16int",
                "functionCode": 3,
                "objectsCount": 1,
                "address": 290
            },
            {
                "tag": "shoulder_joint_current_mA",
                "type": "16int",
                "functionCode": 3,
                "objectsCount": 1,
                "address": 291
            },
            {
                "tag": "elbow_joint_current_mA",
                "type": "16int",
                "functionCode": 3,
                "objectsCount": 1,
                "address": 292
            },
            {
              "tag": "wrist1_joint_current_mA",
              "type": "16int",
              "functionCode": 3,
              "objectsCount": 1,
              "address": 293
            },
            {
                "tag": "wrist2_joint_current_mA",
                "type": "16int",
                "functionCode": 3,
                "objectsCount": 1,
                "address": 294
            },
            {
                "tag": "wrist3_joint_current_mA",
                "type": "16int",
                "functionCode": 3,
                "objectsCount": 1,
                "address": 295
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  }

DashboardsEdit

ThingsBoard IoT allows to create easily custom dashboards to visualize data. At this link such a dashboard is available showing some temperatures and currents of the arm's joints.