Omega provides several software tools to configure and manage Layer N devices. I will go through the available options and configure the components I need for my project

1. Sync

SYNC by Omega is a device configuration and management software platform for qualifying Omega Smart devices. It allows users to configure device runtime parameters, view process values, export data, and allows you to efficiently set your devices to operate under your preferred preferences. SYNC does not support long-term process value storage. We recommend Omega Enterprise Gateway (OEG) software for long-term data logging and analytics. OEG web client is platform independent.

SYNC can be downloaded from this link

https://www.omega.com/en-us/data-acquisition/software/sync-software/p/SYNC-by-Omega

SYNC is an easy-to-use tool that can be used to configure Smart Probes and Smart Sensors.

SYNC tool can be launched by double-clicking the Omega.DeviceManager.exe file in the folder you selected during the SYNC setup procedure. A minor issue is that link to SYNC tool does not appear in the Windows' Start menu

Let's see how the SP-005 Smart Probe and the SS-002 Smart Sensor can be configured.

1.1 Configuring the SP-005 Smart Probe

Even if I am not going to use the SP-005 Smart Probe in my project, I made some tests driven mainly by the curiosity to explore the Layer N ecosystem.

SYNC automatically detects the Smart Probe connected to the PC by means of the IF-001 USB interface

There are basically two main sections in the SYNC software: "Configure device" and "Capture data"

In the "Configure device" section, Smart Probe's inputs and outputs behavior can be selected. Regarding inputs, several configurations are possible

Single TC
Dual TC
RTD
Single TC, DIO
Dual TC, DIO
RTD, DIO

For thermocouple inputs, the thermocouple type can be selected and whether or not the "open" condition has to be detected

For RTD inputs, type and number of wires can be configured

For digital IOs, the active state for each of the two digital inputs can be chosen

For every input (either connected to TC, RTD or DIO), alarms can be configured so that a notification is sent to the Smart Sensor or Smart Gateway or a Smart Probe's output is driven

Outputs can be configured as ON/OFF or PWM. For ON/OFF outputs, the active state can be selected

Finally, "Device settings" tab includes settings that are specific to the device, like for example the data transmission interval and the data logging policy

NOTE: I was not able to find any specification about the number of samples that can be stored in the log. I will make some experiments to determine this value later in this challenge, after I will have collected enough data

The second section is "Capture Data", which shows live data from the Smart Probe

1.2 Configuring the SS-002 Smart Sensor

Again, SYNC automatically detects the Smart Sensor connected to the PC. I used a standard micro USB cable that is used to power and to communicate with the device.

In the "Configure device" section, Smart Sensor's inputs combination can be selected. The SS-002-1-NA variant has four built-in sensors for temperature, humidity, barometric pressure and light and any combination of three of these four sensor can be activated. Additionally, an external RTD or TC can be connected to the 3-pins connector

For my project, I will use temperature, humidity and light. I expect barometric pressure not to influence PV modules efficiency. Temperature and humidity sensor have almost no configuration options, but the light sensor has a couple of options (GAIN and RED) I could not find any additional information about, so I left default values untouched

2. Omega Enterprise Gateway

OMEGA Enterprise Gateway 2.0 is a bridge between OMEGA sensing devices and industrial applications. It is a standalone IoT sensing software that delivers device provisioning, state and status monitoring, data logging, visualization, and analytics. A variety of OMEGA devices are supported by this Gateway software. Typical application deployment scenarios are shown below:

Integrated with Enterprise Applications. OMEGA Enterprise Gateway can feed sensing data to the OPC UA compliant applications such as SCADA, HMI, MES etc. via OPC US server (licensed). Once the user adds OMEGA devices to the Gateway, the Gateway automatically exposes all sensing data as OPC UA nodes. The Enterprise application can then pull all OPC UA node values and display them on the screen.
Standalone Solution for Sensing, Archiving, and Analytics. In many environment sensing applications such as hotel room temperature monitoring a building temperature/humidity monitoring, OMEGA Enterprise Gateway can provide real-time monitoring, alarms, notifications, archiving, and analytics that are required in these applications.

Omega Enterprise Gateway is a sort of local Cloud N: it runs on your PC as a web application and provides the same look-and-feel of the cloud version

2.1 Configuring the GW-002 Gateway

You can login into the Omega Enterprise Gateway by entering the default credentials (admin and Omega). You will be asked to change the password and then you will be brought to the device management page. Here you can add a new gateway by clicking the big "+" button

The device properties dialog will popup. Select "Layer N" in the "Product family" combobox, "GW-XXX-X" as "Product model" and enter a name that uniquely identifies the gateway. The only selectable "Interface" is "TCP", then enter the IP address of the gateway and 80 or 443 depending on whether or not you enabled the "Secure web" option in the gateway's internal web interface (see below for details about how to access the gateway internal web interface)

2.2 Other features

The OEG has two major features that made me evaluate this software as a possible alternative to the cloud solution

it allows user to create custom dashboards. This could be an effective way to show data in an organized manner
it allows user to define a Modbus device and a customized set of Modbus registers to read. This would probably simplify the implementation of the protocol converter, because I will not have to replicvate the behaviour of one of the Omega devices

On the other hand, using Omega Enterprise Gateway would required a dedicated, always-on PC for collecting data from the gateway and from the protocol converter. This is an heavy constraint from my point of view, and for this reason I decided to use the Cloud N platform for data collection.

3. Cloud N

Cloud N is the cloud version of the Omega Enterprise Gateway. The first thing to do is to create an account (in my case I am going to use a free trial account). With your credentials, you can now access the Cloud N portal and add your gateway by clicking the big "+" button

You will be asked to enter the GID and RID you can read on the label on the back of the gateway

The gateway has been registered and will become active as soon as the gateway will be connected to Internet and switched on

4. Gateway configuration

Next step in this process was to configure the gateway.

First, let's pair the Smart Sensor with the Omega gateway

4.1 Pairing

To "link" a Smart Sensor to the gateway, a pairing process is required. The pairing process is quite straightforward

once the pairing button on the Smart Sensor displays a solid orange LED light in the center of the pairing button, Smart Sensor is ready to be connected to a Layer N Gateway
push the pairing button once and the LED will begin to flash green
quickly push the pairing button on the Gateway once and its LED will also flash green
when the Smart Sensor has been successfully paired, the green LEDs on both devices will stop flashing

From this moment, the Smart Sensor LED will flash orange every time data is transmitted to the gateway

4.2 Adding a new Modbus device

The protocol converter I am going to implement will be polled by the gateway, so I need to add a new device. Unfortunately, the Omega gateway does not behave like a generic Modbus master. Instead, you can select among a finite list of supported Omega devices. As a consequence, the protocol converter will have to adapt and expose the set of Modbus registers the Omega gateway is expecting. If this approach makes sense from a commercial point of view, on the other hand it puts a limitation on the use of the Omega gateway as a platform for integrating a generic 3rd party Modbus device.

The gateway implements a very basic web interface. From the local web interface you can for example update the gateway firmware (which was the solution to the out-of-the-box connectivity issue other challengers and me experienced) and define which devices are connected to the gateway itself

To access the gateway web interface, you have to enter either the IP address or the URL http://omegaiotgatewayXXXX.local where XXXX are the last 4 digits of your Gateway MAC Address. However the latter will only work if your browser/computer has Bonjour Service installed. The default password is printed on the label on the back of the gateway, and you will be asked to change it on the first login.

We need to navigate to the "Connected device" section, where all the device the gateway is monitoring are listed. If pairing was successful, you should see the Smart Sensor device here

Let's proceed and add a new Modbus device. Click the "Add" button in the top right corner. The "Add device" form will popup.

I filled the form with the following information

Product family: This is the category the Omega device we want to integrate belongs to. Options include "Controller", "DAQ", "Meter" and "Probe". I selected "DAQ" because, in this category, there are devices that can be configured to monitor a range of physical quantities
Product model: depending on the selected "Product family", the Omega products that match the category are listed. I selected "OM-240", an embedded data logger with 24 differential analog inputs. More information about the OM-240 can be found here
Name: this is simply a string that you can use to easily identify the device
Interface: I selected "TCP" because I want the protocol converter to be polled over my home Wifi network
IP Address: this is the IP address of the protocol converter
Port: this is the TCP port the protocol converter's Modbus server will be listening on. I left the default value (502)
Device ID: this is the Modbus slave device Id. Any value is fine here, because my protocol converter will answer to all the requests
Reading interval: this is how often the gateway will ask data to the protocol converter. 120 seconds (2 minutes) should be ok
Channel: this table contains the DAQ inputs we want to monitor. For each channel, you can enter a human-readable name, the Modbus register address (for OM240, this is calculated as 16 * <channel numer>), the type (i.e. the physical quantity you are measuring) and the unit of measure (which is automatically selected when you choose the type)

Once completed, the list of devices looks like this

In the Cloud N portal, we see that devices configuration has been successfully propagated

That's all for as far as Omega devices configuration is concerned. In the next posts, I will talk about protocol converter implementation, Smart Sensor installation and, hopefully, I will be able to start collecting data from my PV plant

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