Connecting Smart Tools to TW

[AlexK]

Dear TW community

We would like to connect a smart torque wrench, which can send and receive torque values, to thingworx.

If you could can share know how for any of these issues, we would be very grateful:

• What are the options for connecting these tools (Kepware or direct to TW)
• Which products are available?
• Does someone have experience with connecting torque tools?

Best wishes

Alex

[iguerra]

There are many many aspect to arrange ... connection type, data trafic, frequency of data update (sample rate of torque), number of devices to monitor ... robustness/industrialization of the hardware..

there are also many ways to transfer data to thingworx, it's open to many sources.

A small industrialized raspberry may be ok (a Iono Pi for example ?) , don't know of hardware "thingworx ready"

Also a PLC with some networking/ethernet functions.

you can use MQTT protocol if you don't need to fast speed (but you need a thirdy party MQTT broker)
Never tried but also azure IoT hub could be ok, also never used keepware that is more a collector/gateway for many different devices

You could send data also directly to thingworx with native REST API (may be not good for fast changing data, will also add  http overhead, but if you go over LAN/internet not a big problem)

Also a small PLC with OPC protocol may be ok (use OPC aggregator at thingworx side)

there are juts some ideas...

Bye

[VladimirRosu · Accepted solution]

Based on what I've seen, best thing would be the Torque Tool supports one of the protocols from https://www.ptc.com/en/store/kepware/drivers/torque-tool-ethernet . Specifically, this Kepware drivers allows an onsite Kepware server to retrieve data from the tool itself...then push it to wherever you want.

Of course, I would be very happy to then connect that Kepware to ThingWorx directly.

Regardless, I believe overall, from a time spent (=$), using KW as interface is the fastest way to do it.

I worked with this setup in two projects, and sometimes, if the overall response time (from after you press the enable button and when you receive data in ThingWorx) required modifying some timings.

Regarding these timings, my colleagues from Kepware's presales side have a lot of experience, and I advise to discuss with your Kepware sales representative or partner (to make the link with one of them).