Manufacturing Apps reading data from MQTT

[md'ambrosio]

Hi,

I have a project coming up that will require to connect Manufacturing Apps with some sensors physically connected to a Raspberry PI (GPIO).

Data from sensors are published to a MQTT broker (using Node-Red).

I'm new with Manufacturing Apps, I would like to know which is the way to do the connection between the Manufacturing Apps and the MQTT server.

If you have some suggestions I would appreciate that.  Many Thanks

Regards,

Martina

[SebB]

Hey Martina,

the best and easiest way it to use the MQTT connector in KepServerEX.

KepServerEx provides with an MQTT client to connect to MQTT broker and to subscribe to topics: https://www.kepware.com/en-us/products/kepserverex/drivers/mqtt-client/

The beauty is that you can use the MFG apps ootb and the configuration is straight forwarded like explained in the guides in our developer portal: https://developer.thingworx.com/en/apps/manufacturing

Seb

[md'ambrosio]

Hi Seb,

many thanks for your reply.

Are there some alternatives to KepServerEX , even if less useful?

Many Thanks, regards Martina

[SebB · Accepted solution]

Martina,

there are two other options to connect Thingworx with an MQTT broker.

There is an extension in the market place but from my experience it is not very performant and i haven not tested it since a few releases: https://marketplace.ptc.com/apps/193516/mq-telemetry-transport-mqtt#!overview

The other option that i more performant is the Protocol Adapter Toolkit that allows you to create micro services for the transformation of other protocols to the Thingworx native Always On protocol: https://marketplace.ptc.com/apps/217100/protocol-adapter-toolkit#!overview

Here is an example and guide for MQTT: https://community.ptc.com/t5/IoT-Tech-Tips/Protocol-Adapter-Toolkit-PAT-overview/m-p/534599

Both options require customization in the MFG Apps and are not officially supported if you want to use them as data source for the apps. I would recommend the KepServerEx MQTT client.

Seb

[md'ambrosio]

Many Thanks Seb, I will go through the links