Ignition Makes Data from Multiple Sites Available in One Place

Gente Oil’s SCADA system is a centrally managed system of the oil process from extraction to transportation. The SCADA allows users to visualize and interact with the different instrumentation and actuators involved in the process.

Ignition is the platform that permits users to acquire the data from the devices and centralize it in just one site. It stores the data in databases and serves to multiple clients to monitor the process. One of the important features used for the application is the way the trends are used. We took the characteristics of Ignition to customize the trends using drag and drop, but we added the possibility of grouping the pens naming those groups dynamically in order to see the data more clearly.

Additionally, Ignition is used like a link between Modbus equipment and a third-party device. It was required for the device to acquire the data through a database. Ignition monitors the Modbus device and uses transaction groups to create a customized table for the third-party device to read the data. The current architecture is Standard. Nevertheless, the project is still growing.

Ignition was the perfect tool to integrate the data from two different geographically distant locations in one server in order for both sites to monitor the data — even from sites outside the oil facilities. Ignition permits users to take the data from different devices and to store it in the databases in the most transparent way. Now the client has reliable data from the field. It can visualize the process in real time, anytime and anywhere. Before, its users had to wait for the field report to know if there was a problem in the production. The future plans are to keep growing. It is required to add the monitoring of more facilities, and then make the architecture even more reliable. It will be implemented with a hub-and-spoke architecture with Ignition Gateway redundancy.