/aas-hackaschool

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AAS Hackaschool - example 2

This repository contains the cloud infrastructure used in the hackathon. Additionally, it contains the IoT example configured by the Asset Interface Description discussed during session. This repository is self-contained, meaning that you should be able to recreate the exercise at home after the event.

Overview

Schematic overview In this example we configure a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) tool, i.e. Thingsboard, with information from one or several AASs. For this purpose a small controller was written in Python, which continuously compares the Asset Interface Description with the running configuration in the thingsboard-gateway. Upon changes the gateway configuration files are adjusted and the gateway software is restarted to activate the updated configuration. Hereafter, the gateway software connects directly to the MQTT topics of the asset.

Setup

This deployment uses multiple docker-compose files to somewhat separate the various products and concepts used. If you are unfamiliar with Docker, please stick to the suggested commands and ask for help early.

Docker

1. Install docker and docker compose

2. Create our docker backend network

  • Run docker network create -d bridge ah-backend

Basyx

1. PUBLIC_IP / default.env

  • Please change the PUBLIC_IP variable in the default.env file to your public IP address. The AAS registry will advertise this IP-address later to clients, hence localhost does not work.

2. Bring up the BaSyx services

  • Run docker compose -f docker-compose.basyx.yml --env-file default.env up -d

IoT Example

1. Bring up the IoT services

  • Run docker compose -f docker-compose.iot.yml --env-file default.env up -d

2. Setup the gateway in Thingsboard

  1. Open the Thingsboard web UI on http://{PUBLIC_IP}:8888, use username tenant@thingsboard.org and password tenant.
  2. Navigate Entities -> Devices
  3. Add a new device by clicking on the + in the top-right corner
  4. Use name hackaschool-gateway and toggle the Is gateway to 'on'.
  5. Click Next: Credentials (NOT Add yet)
  6. Use access token 1234
  7. Click Add and then Close

Note: If you open the device (by clicking on it) then you can inspect the Last telemetry, which is the telemetry of the gateway software. After the gateway software starts there should be some entries shown here. Similarly, when thingsboard adds the asset (after connection) there will be a new device with similar tabs.

Postman

  • Install the Postman tool to work with REST+JSON.
  • A so-called Postman collection (AAS.postman_collection.json) is supplied for your convenience to work with AASs. Basically it lists a few basic AAS REST calls with parameters and parses JSON return values.
  • Import the collection into Postman.
  • Please change the IP_ADDR variable to the same IP-address as PUBLIC_IP in the Basyx section.

Running the example

Most of the configuration has already been done during the setup or has been pre-configured in the automation scripts. The last remaining step is to upload the AASX describing the asset.

  1. Open Postman
  2. Select the Upload AASX POST call
  3. Navigate to the Body tab
  4. Select form-data and add a new key-value pair. For the key write file, select File from the dropdown and select the supplied AASX file Spruik_AID.aasx which can be found in the aasx folder.
  5. Click Send and you should get true in the Response box. A blank response or 40X response usually points to trouble, please ask for help.

Please check if the AAS and Submodels have been added correctly in the registries and if they can be accessed. Hint: Use the Postman collection and navigate in the JSON response.

Update the ip-address in AID submodel

The AID specifies where the mqtt broker can be found, but this needs the public ip address used earlier. Since the AAS is created using a static file the address still needs to be added.

  1. Open the Basyx AAS UI on http://localhost:8080, Here you can inspect all you AASes availble.
  2. Click in the left column on SpruikPackMLSimulator
  3. Click in the second column on the arrow in frond of AssetInterfaceDescription.
  4. Follow the tree down untill you can click on at AssetInterfaceDescription/MQTT/EndpointMetadata/base
  5. In the third colomn change localhost:1884 to {PUBLIC_IP}:1884 and click the blue upload button to the right.
  6. Refresh the page and verify that the value remains {PUBLIC_IP}:1884

In the end this step should be automatic. Can you think of a good way to achieve this?

View new device on Thingsboard

Now data from the asset should be collected by the gateway and transferred to Thingsboard. Open the Thingsboard web UI again and navigate to the devices to see if a new device was added. Does the device also have telemetry data?

To restart the PackML simulator you need to install mosquitto and can use the following commands:

  1. Reset with mosquitto (MQTT client) mosquitto_pub -h localhost -p 1884 -t "Site/Area/Line/Command/Reset" -m 1
  2. Start (after reset) with mosquitto_pub -h localhost -p 1884 -t "Site/Area/Line/Command/Start" -m 1

Note: You might need to change the -h parameter to point to the broker.

Acknowledgements