Overview

The TwinCAT Function TC3 IoT Data Agent provides bi-directional connectivity to different cloud services. It is a gateway application that can be installed either on the controller or on a gateway computer. The TC3 IoT Data Agent can be configured to connect different data sources with each other, e.g. a TwinCAT 3 PLC (ADS) and a MQTT Message Broker. In addition, public cloud services can be used, for example AWS IoT and Microsoft Azure IoT Hub. TC3 IoT Data Agent includes an integrated OPC UA client, which allows to connect third-party devices to the cloud. Legacy applications running TwinCAT 2 can be connected by running TC3 IoT Data Agent on a gateway computer and by using ADS or OPC UA connectivity to the TwinCAT 2 system.

When sending or receiving data, users can select from a variety of different data formats, ranging from efficient binary formats to ASCII-based JSON formats. This allows the use of the TC3 IoT Data Agent in different scenarios, e.g. to connect devices to TwinCAT Analytics.

Different communication patterns can be configured to optimize traffic congestion, e.g. polling or on-change patterns.

Overview 1:

Components

TC3 IoT Data Agent consists of the following components:

  • Core application: background service that provides the logic
  • Configurator: graphical tool to create/edit and deploy a configuration for the core application

TwinCAT 3 IoT Data Agent can be installed and used in different setup scenarios, e.g. directly on the controller or on a gateway computer (see Setup scenarios).