Data Acquisition Hardware

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Hi Guys,

I need some help with the following if perhaps you have a minute to give me a hand, it will be greatly appreciated.
I'm starting a new project consisting of 162 controllers to control the return air temperature on a building with on/off valves.
For this I'm using the controllers RCF-230CD from REGIN (Sweden), creating Modbus RTU networks for each floor wired to modbus RTU to TCP/IP gateways (http://www.icpdas-usa.com/tgw_735.html), gateways wired to a switch (http://www.icpdas-usa.com/ns_205pse.html) and I will like to use a MANGO automation software for data acquisition with DGLux as UI.
So, the question is, which do you believe, based on your experience, will be the best technical specs for the hardware containing MANGO and DGLux, I will like, if possible, that you recommend the pc specs I should buy to not have problems, this PC should be able to use a 42" monitor.

Thanks for the help!
BR
Rodrigo

Hello Rodrigo, that sounds like an interesting project!

So, the question is, which do you believe, based on your experience, will be the best technical specs for the hardware containing MANGO and DGLux, I will like, if possible, that you recommend the pc specs I should buy to not have problems, this PC should be able to use a 42" monitor.

I can really recommend the MangoES appliance that Infinite Automation sell. If you contact Joel I'm sure he can give you all the details.
I found the performance to be fantastic, especially considering its size and price. They have done a lot of work to optimise Mango (and the H2 database) for the embedded hardware, and it really shows.

When you consider that the price for it includes a license for Mango and all modules including DGLux, it's pretty incredible value. For the same price you could put together a very basic, generic PC, using consumer hardware (that would probably fail after being used in a 'server' application) - and then you'd still have to spend the time to set up the software and purchase the licenses. So I'd really encourage you to look into it.

One thing to note is that the current MangoES appliance doesn't use an x86 processor so there is no way to run Flash on it (it doesn't have a desktop installed anyway), so you would need a separate PC to run DGLux. In some cases this may be preferable.

Thanks Jeremy for the recommendation.

I agree that the MangoES is a really impressive device. You can see it here: http://infiniteautomation.com/index.php/hardware you can contact me directly for pricing: joel at infiniteautomation.com. In this case I think it comes down to how many data points in total there will be. You say there are 162 controllers, how many data points per controller? What will the polling rate be for each data source? What kind of logging frequency will you need? The other questions would be if you need to do a lot of server side calculations on the data you gather like Meta Data Points or Scripting Data Sources? Then how many users will be using the system simultaneously?

As a rough rule you will get about 50,000,000 point samples per gigabyte of storage. You can calculate based on your number of data points and your logging rate and how long you need to store the data for how large your database may grow. If you have under 1000 data points total and less than 10 users the MangoES should work fine. As Jeremy said it does not have an HDMI port so you would probably need a small windows or mac computer to drive the display.

If the MangoES isn't enough power or storage then I would go with just a decent modern PC with a i5 or i7 and 8GB of Ram. This is more than what is needed but at this point the cost saving are pretty minimal to go with anything less. On the other end our development / test server is an older quad-core AMD with 4 GB of ram and is running about 6 instances of Mango where one of them has 2000 data points collecting information from remote Modbus devices all across the country. It's also running a bunch of other stuff and is loaded down but still doing it's job.

If you can provide a bit more information I might be able to make more recommendations.

Joel

Hi Joel, Jeremy!
Thanks for the help guys, it's a very basic system it has around 10-15 points per controller, something like 1600-2400 points, the only point to control in "real time" is the return air temperature on the air handling units, so I think a 5min interval should be fine for the polling, there's just one user in the control room monitoring the system, an probably, not even sure yet, a public IP, just to check on the system.
Very basic control system, the controllers can be acted on by the end user or he can call the control room and ask to change the "state" of the air conditioning on his room.
Maybe every 6 months or so the saved data can be overridden.
I was thinking to use something like these, as the MangoES can't support the screen.
http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-3646-small-desktop/pd?oc=fdcwnt7101&model_id=inspiron-3646-small-desktop

Let me know what you think,
Thanks again guys.

This system will be a serious dog and I would not even consider it. Windows 8 alone will be slow. Don't take anything less than a core i3 or an similar AMD with 4 GB or Ram. Noone should even sell a windows 8 PC with a Celeron Dual Core.

Joel.

@Rodrigo said:

I was thinking to use something like these, as the MangoES can't support the screen.
http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-3646-small-desktop/pd?oc=fdcwnt7101&model_id=inspiron-3646-small-desktop
Let me know what you think,

+1 to what Joel said. This is not an appropriate system!

Just to doublecheck, you know that Mango is completely configured and accessed through the browser, right? There is no need to have physical access to the mango server (or MangoES).
If Mango happens to be installed on a system that has a desktop and screen then sure, you can bring up http://localhost and use Mango that way, but the 'usual' way to run mango would be on a server and access it over a network.

Could you just use an existing PC to access Mango?

Hi guys, thanks for the super fast response.
Actually this client requires a computer running the control software, he knows the system our competitor uses (Plant Visor Pro box, from Carel), so what I'm trying to do is to set up a system, that resembles to that one, with a desktop computer, switch, gateways and the controllers. I know mango can be accessed over a network, but this time I will have to set it up locally on kiosk mode, with a couple of user accounts with different access levels.
If I use for this a computer as I shown above, but with a core i3 processor, 4 Gb ram, 500 Gb HD, Windows 7, and a video card to support full HD graphics, do you think this may be on a good path?

In the past I've set up a network of 62 controllers, that time I've use DGBox from DGLogik, and as I'm new in this automation world, I fell short with that device, that's what I'm trying to avoid this time, and it will be the first time I'll set up a mango instance (DGBox I believe is based on mango as it looks much like it)
Any comments are welcome

Thanks again
Regards
Rodrigo

core i3 processor, 4 Gb ram, 500 Gb HD, Windows 7 this will be perfect and you won't have to worry too much. I will say that this will be plenty for Mango. Depending on the HMI screens you are going to use they can consume quite a bit of ram so if you had some extra it would't hurt.

Awesome!
Thanks Joel and thanks Jeremy too!
Should I contact you to your email to buy the Mango and DGLux license?
Do you sell the new DGLux 5? With Project assist, it seems like a good thing to try!

Thanks again guys
Regards
Rodrigo