Remote access of ISO 11783 process data by using OPC Unified Architecture technology

Abstract

There are various scenarios in which someone might want to remotely access the data of agricultural machinery. In this article, we concentrate on telematics applications, where the manager of a vehicle fleet has an interest in seeing both what the vehicles are doing and where they are in real time. In this article the feasibility of using OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) technology to transfer ISO 11783 related process data between a mobile agricultural vehicle and the Internet is studied. A device containing an ISO 11783 Data Logger, an OPC UA server and a mobile network connection was designed and installed in a vehicle. A capability for downloading and interpreting a ISO 11783 Data Dictionary Object Pool (DDOP) was designed for the OPC UA server application in order to link the ISO 11783 and OPC UA standards together. The system was evaluated by transferring a few process data variables over a 3G connection from a tractor and a connected seed drill. The latency and bandwidth usage of communication were measured and found feasible for telematics. In addition to this, the approach for converting a DDOP to an OPC UA information model was observed to be functional.