Unfortunately, there is not a lot of content/messages here about using python on the groov devices, so I thought I’d share my experiences with that and how my solutions have performed on groov using strictly Python controls.
First, I’ve been a control system designer/architect most of my career and have been fortunately to design many systems level and communication based multi-device controllers. Doing these in the last few years on the Opto22 groov devices has been amazing. We start with shell access setup, upgrade/setup python and then deploy our core control edge platform. These are production solutions for hydraulic frac and related control systems on mobile field equipment.
We have a tremendous about of configurability built into our solution that python uses, manages and broadcasts via an MQTT based API like command set. These configurations are protected with user account, access rights, API tokens and so we can build or extend it in any way from other systems as well (which we do from HMI interfaces, remote HMI web apps and cloud solutions).
I build pretty capable web UIs and host them in the groov with nginx, so then we have both a web interface, mqtt broker and core python running all the controls.
The control systems I do in oil and gas have a lot of protocol capabilities, so we handle inputs and outputs with the groov modules, serial RTU, serial TCP, modbus RTU/TCP, canbus, MQTT, profibus, OPC UA, whatever exists and bring that into our system and republish or convert back for cloud consumption.
Anyway, python has been amazing for building these systems, I’ve kept it very modular, plug-in based, added licensing tools, encryption, formula rules, physical model/equipment simulators, alerts/notifications and many other components.
I guess I don’t see as many capabilities with the same ease of development in codesys, although it has advantages for speed and determinism that python doesn’t, but for general control applications that have a lot of communication and variations, its been an amazing way to build the products on groov.
Very interested in where or what others are doing for system level controls on groov systems?
Thanks!