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Overview
Within MQTT Transmission, a record is a collection of tags under an Ignition folder which are treated as a single entity and published on demand. They are usually used for , but not restricted to, sending flow computer records such as events, alarms and history datasending a record of information such as a batch data entry form or flow computer event/alarm record.
Records are published via an MQTT client using a Sparkplug-like topic format with a JSON protobuf payload.
Records received at MQTT Engine are passed to MQTT Recorder which automatically generates database tables and populates the rows within the tables with records as they are received.
This tutorial shows how to configure the MQTT modules to generate and publish records to be stored in an MySQL database .including:
Table of Contents minLevel 3 exclude Additional Resources
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| The topology of this example shows MQTT Distributor, MQTT Engine, Record MQTT Recorder Store, and MQTT Transmission all running in the same Ignition instance. This is done for simplicity of the tutorial, but this isn't required or even intended to be a real use case. In a more realistic scenario MQTT Transmission and MQTT Engine would be located on separate machines. |
Install the four MQTT modules listed in the pre-requisites onto your Ignition system following the Cirrus Link Module Installation guide.
By default, both MQTT Engine and MQTT Transmission are configured to connect to MQTT Distributor on tcp://localhost:1883 and will show as Connected under their respective Servers configuration setting in the Ignition UI. MQTT Transmission will also have an Example Transmitter configured pointing to a set of tags that are configured in the Ignition "default" tag provider.
| Tip |
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| Review the MQTT Transmission Transmitters and Tag Trees tutorial for additional information on how Transmitter configurations interact with Ignition tag trees to create the Sparkplug IDs required. |
This allows the three modules to automatically connect and provide a starting base for the tutorial.
Follow the Ignition Connecting to MySQL guide to configure a database connection to your SQL database.
Within MQTT Transmission, a record is a collection of tags under an Ignition folder which are treated as a single entity and published on demand. The next step is to create the Ignition folders representing the Records within Ignition.
Use the Design Launcher to launch a Designer connection to the Ignition Gateway and create a new project. In the 'default' tag provider, import the recorder_tutorial_tags.json to build a set of Ignition folders to represent the records.
| Note |
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| Note the set of tags under the MQTT Tags folder that were automatically configured when the MQTT Transmission module was installed |
The imported tags will create three records as shown below:
Now we can configure the MQTT Transmission module to publish records using the existing MQTT client created by the Example Transmitter. Navigate to the MQTT Transmitter Transmission > Settings in the left side bar of the Ignition Gateway UI and select the Transmitters tab. Note Make note of the Sparkplug IDs configured for your transmitter.
For our example we have the Group ID as My MQTT Group and the Edge Node ID as Edge Node 994161
Now we can setup three configurations each of which points to a record folder and also configs the boolean tag which controls the on demand publish of the record.
| Note |
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| For this tutorial we will manually trigger the record publishes however these tag changes can easily be scripted at the Edge or managed through control writes from MQTT Engine |
| Tip |
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| Review the MQTT Transmission Configuration guide for more details on the MQTT Transmission Records module |
Select the Records tab and then click the Create new Records.. link. Use the following configuration settings:
Select Create New Record and you will see the Publish boolean in the tag browser
Repeat the steps to add a second record configuration using the following configuration settings:
Select Create New Record and you will see the MyTriggerTag boolean in the MyRecords/Record_Two folder
Repeat the steps to add a third record configuration using the following configuration settings:
Select Create New Record and you will see the RecordThreeTriggerTag created in a new PublishControl folder
Now we can configure the MQTT Recorder module to receive the published records and store in a database. Navigate Navigate to the MQTT Recorder > Settings in the left side bar of the Ignition Gateway UI and select the General tab.
Select the Datasource as the database connection configured in Step 2.
Select a Partition Period - in this tutorial we will use "Hourly
Select the Tables tab. By default, a single table will be defined for MQTT Recorder with a table name of rs_${type}. With this single table definition, a separate table will be created for each unique record type.
| Tip |
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Review the MQTT Recorder Configuration guide for more details on the MQTT Recorder modulethe MQTT Recorder module including the filters available for configuring dynamic custom table names using tokens |
Now we are ready to publish records where the following process will occur:
MQTT Transmission constructs a Record containing Fields representing the Tags in the Record Tag Folder Path folder along with their current values.
MQTT Transmission publishes the Record
MQTT Engine receives the Record and delivers it to the MQTT Recorder module
MQTT Recorder stores the Record in the database
Let's start by publishing Record_One. To do this, in Designer click the [default]MyRecords/Record_One/Publish tag - it will automatically become unchecked once the publish has occurred.
Browse to your database configured in Step 2. You will see a new table created with the table name of rs_event_YYYY_MM_DD_hh - this is because we configured the Record Type as Event for the Record_One folder path.
Query the database table and you will see the DB schema created as follows:
rs_id
Record id
rs_type
Record type
rs_group
Sparkplug group ID
rs_edge_node
Sparkplug edge node ID
rs_device
Sparkplug device ID
rs_record_time
Timestamp for record creation at Edge
rs_recoder_time
Timestamp for record insert into database
rs_fields
Pipe delimited description for record field and data type
Note that this is for internal Cirrus Link module use and should not be edited
Fields for each of the tags contained in the folder
Status
Value
Description
Change the [default]MyRecords/Record_One/Value tag to a new value and re-trigger the Publish tag. Query the database table to see the second record in the database.
Repeat the process for the other two records by selecting the [default]MyRecords/Record_Two/MyTriggerTag and [default]MyRecords/PublishControl/RecordThreeTriggerTag tags.
In the database you will see two additional tables named rs_alarm_YYYY_MM_DD_hh and rs_sample_YYYY_MM_DD_hh
Querying the DB will show the two records:
The records published from MQTT Transmission can be be viewed in the Ignition Gateway logs by setting the com.cirruslink.mqtt.engine.gateway.sparkplug.SparkplugPayloadHandler logger to TRACE.
| Tip |
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| Review the Gateway Loggers from Ignition for details on how to do this. |
Managing records with MQTT Transmission and MQTT Recorder.mp4
Extra Activities
At this point you have a fully functional system which can be expanded or modified as required. Below are some activities that you may want to try on your own:
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