Weintek connectivity components employ AWS tools to impart IoT functionality

Weintek USA industrial-connectivity components support the use of Amazon Web Services (AWS). For the uninitiated, Amazon Web Services Inc. provides cloud-based data and application storage as well as on-demand computational power and IT resources for industrial operations.

More specifically, Weintek gateways and smart HMIs interface with AWS’s application programming interface (API) gateway; the latter lets designers create and host APIs for gateway-to-Cloud connectivity. Then data can aggregate in:

Amazon DynamoDB — a managed database service that provides data analytics
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) buckets — Cloud-based data storage

Weintek IT programmed the AWS-based infrastructure for its EasyAccess 2.0 software with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). Amazon EC2 environments (called instances) maintain reliability for web and access functions. Historical data is stored on Amazon S3.

Weintek imparts IoT capabilities to its components using AWS IoT Core — a managed Cloud service that also simplifies use of other AWS services.

Now consider how Weintek cMT gateways as well as smart HMIs include built-in support for MQTT with provisions for AWS. That lets Weintek components work for connected enterprises using AWS. In fact, the AWS IoT Core MQTT connectivity protocol is lightweight, so can collect many machines’ data using minimal bandwidth. Unlike MQTT protocols of other service providers, the AWS IoT Core MQTT protocol is also generalized; that saves Weintek time and effort during development.

Thanks to the AWS IoT Core and MQTT integration on Weintek HMIs in particular, end users can leverage machine data for predictive maintenance schedules. This is a vast improvement over approaches that require technicians to physically access a machine (or many machines) to get such information. The HMIs continuously send information to the Cloud based on user-defined parameters.

Now consider the inclusion of the AWS Lambda on Weintek components. In short, this service supports Python, Java, Node.js, and C# to let designs run Cloud-based code without servers provisioned for it. Weintek components using AWS Lambda (as well as the Amazon API Gateway) plus chatbot software lets EasyAccess 2.0 software trigger AWS Lambda calls through the API gateway — and alert Weintek’s engineers when they have incoming messages (and requests for help) from end users. This vastly improves response time and uptime for Weintek end users.

What prompted all this IoT and Cloud-based connectivity?

Consider how legacy HMIs don’t network to larger systems, so require technician access for reconfiguration. Often that means the technician must take some kind of portable storage to the machine for data collection, and then plug that into a PC for analysis and sharing with operations. The whole process is slow and rife with security issues.

The latter contrasts sharply with how AWS provides data encryption options for end users to tailor security policies to the machine installation or setting.

That’s why Weintek began expanding the connectivity of its HMIs and other offerings several years ago — to give end users remote access and the ability to effectively use data to improve operations. The Cloud-based solution (available today as EasyAccess 2.0) imparts connectivity sans management overhead. Plus, AWS lets Weintek offer their own services globally. For more information, visit weintekusa.com.