Ingesting MQTT Data into AWS IoT SiteWise Edge on Siemens Industrial Edge

Customers can use Siemens Industrial Edge (IE) to collect industrial data from different protocols or devices. AWS IoT SiteWise Edge running on Siemens IE enables cloud connectivity to AWS IoT SiteWise and many other AWS services for further aggregation, processing and visualization across locations. Siemens IE provides connectors to collect data from different systems or via different protocols such as SIMATIC S7, Ethernet IP, Modbus TCP IP or OPC UA.

This article explains how you can ingest data into Siemens IE with MQTT clients and send the data to the AWS cloud.

To ingest data with MQTT into AWS IoT SiteWise Edge on Siemens Industrial Edge you need the following resources:

Siemens Industrial Edge Application Databus is a message broker inside a Siemens Industrial Edge Device (IED). Data is ingested with connectors into the Industrial Databus. AWS IoT SiteWise Edge consumes data from the bus and transfers it to the AWS Cloud.

To ingest data into SiteWise Edge, use the Databus. The External Databus allows you to connect remote clients to the IED over MQTT. The data published to the External Databus is published to the Databus on the configured topics and is available to be consumed by other apps within the IED. Your MQTT-enabled devices will publish data to the External Databus using a well defined MQTT payload and topic structure. This topic payload and topic structure is used in the Databus. In the Databus Configuration you must enable the bridge between External Databus and Databus. This configuration enables to forward messages from Databus to External Databus connector and vice versa.

AWS IoT SiteWise Edge running on the same IE platform will subscribe to topics on the Databus to collect and forward data to the AWS IoT SiteWise data store it on the AWS Cloud.

You can find instructions to setup a Siemens Industrial Edge environment and configure users and topics for the Databus and the External Databus at the Siemens Industrial Edge documentation.

When you start publishing data, publish a metadata message first in retained mode. Metadata includes information about subsequent data point messages like the data point definitions, topic names to publish and subscribe to, and acquisition settings. You publish this metadata to a well-defined topic on the Databus.

After the metadata has been published, ingest your data points. You data points include an id, a timestamp (ts) and a quality value (qc). The id refers to the data point definition in your metadata.

Below you find a particular example of MQTT messages. With these messages you publish power output, rpm and temperature for two assets, generator-1 and generator-2. The example messages are similar to the asset structure in the AWS IoT SiteWise workshop.

Publish the metadata payload to the topic ie/m/j/simatic/v1/swe/dp in retained mode.

Under dataPointDefinitions you see the definition of your datapoints for power, rpm, and temperature.

Below is an example to publish data for the asset generator-1. The data is published to the topic ie/d/j/simatic/v1/swe/dp/r/generator-1/default. This topic is defined in the metadata message in the dataPoints list. The id is a reference to the id properties of the datapoint definition in the metadata. You are free to create your ids within the MQTT payload definition.

To publish data for the asset generator-2, use the topic ie/d/j/simatic/v1/swe/dp/r/generator-2/default. As ids use GEN2T, GEN2R and GEN2P.

AWS IoT SiteWise Edge subscribes and consumes the data from the Databus. The data is then ingested as data streams into the AWS IoT SiteWise data store on the AWS Cloud. The data streams for rpm, temperature and power for the asset generator-1 in AWS IoT SiteWise have the following format:

You associate these data streams with measurements in your assets. Based on your measurments you can create transforms and metrics. Then you consume the data for example to build visualizations with services like AWS IoT SiteWise Monitor or Amazon Grafana.

When you use Siemens Connectors for the Industrial Edge you don’t need to take care about the message payload. The connectors, for example the OPC UA connector convert the data automatically to the required payload format when ingesting data into the Databus. From there AWS IoT SiteWise Edge consumes the data.

Siemens Industrial Edge documentation explains the details about Siemens IE, how to deploy and operate it. The AWS IoT SiteWise user guide describes how you can collect, store, organize and monitor data from industrial equipment at scale and how to deploy AWS IoT SiteWise Edge on Siemens Industrial Edge.

By leveraging the Siemens External Databus, you can seamlessly integrate your MQTT-based industrial devices with AWS IoT SiteWise Edge, allowing you to collect and store industrial data in the AWS Cloud, when your assets are running on Siemens powered environment. This approach provides a flexible and scalable solution for bridging your on-premises Siemens environment with the powerful analytics and monitoring capabilities of AWS IoT SiteWise.