Collectors

what is a collector? a collector is a software component that connects to your industrial equipment (like plcs, sensors, or scada systems) and sends their data to factry historian think of it as the bridge between your equipment on the shop floor and the factry historian data platform why does it matter? without collectors, factry historian has nothing to store they ensure that real time measurements from machines and processes arrive in the database, where they can be visualized, analyzed, and used for decision making how does it fit in the system? collectors are the starting point of the data flow a collector is configured to talk to specific devices using industrial protocols (like opc ua, modbus, etc ) and deliver measurements into the historian the specific data that is collected are called measurements docid\ xqwlemdcnfff3 0h gmms , which may also feed calculations docid\ opiodkgnngyjedx6zkg d and events docid 0ith2zlcais5yywhsdtje measurements can be attached to assets docid\ c4opdlucirj0draexrisp as asset properties docid\ cr6hbrdsl8fsuvlvm20if , and can be selectively forwarded using sinks & forwarders docid\ xcoj5kic2xmxsz4inas collectors work according to a store and forward mechanism collectors will buffer data on disk when they do not receive an acknowledgement by factry historian that the data is successfully stored e g because of network issues example you have a packaging line with a plc that records conveyor speed and temperature you configure a collector to connect to this plc over opc ua the collector sends 2 measurements conveyor speed 1 4 m/s temperature 72°c every second, into factry historian when you use it a functional factry historian will always have at least 1 collector you’ll interact with collectors when setting up the historian for a new site or production line adding a new datasource (e g a new plc) to your monitoring troubleshooting missing or inconsistent data from a specific device typically, once configured correctly, collectors run in the background without much intervention common misconceptions a collector is not meant to store data itself, with the exception of its buffering capabilities in case of any network issues a collectors only forwards data to the historian you don’t need one collector per measurement; one collector connects to one data source (e g an opc ua server) and can retrieve many measurements from it if data is missing, it’s not always the collector at fault it could be the device, the network, or historian configuration best practices in the case of client server protocols (e g opc ua, opc da), run the collectors as close to the data source of possible from a network point of view, in order to reduce the risk of data loss due to network issues always respect security guidelines setup monitoring and automatic alerts for collectors using the portal more information installing a collector docid\ weu9c6zltdllvn206mkhm configuring a collector docid 3cgx5coihke44zeboefyc