Industrial Plant Controller: A Design of a Web based Data Acquisition System

With the exploited use of embedded devices the need for web based data acquisition systems is increasing day by day. In this paper we have discussed all the design components needed to build a state of the art web based data acquisition system except the design of the low level data acquisition hardware which is pretty much standardized at present. Client Side, Server Side and the Technical Process side are the three major subsystems which are inter-linked to each other over the internet in any web based data acquisition system. We have presented a standardized design architecture which will be suitable for nearly all the industries/domains requiring such a system. The design for the client side include design of a simple client view station needed to see just the critical alarms and alerts, design of a detailed remote monitoring station for getting an insight of all the key metrics and generating all kind of required reports, and design of a remote control station for getting the adequate control of the technical process for supervisory operations. The server side for the web based data acquisition system can either be designed as a simple data warehouse for logging all the raw data from the technical process or a sophisticated monitoring station fulfilling all the industrial needs for process monitoring and reporting. The design of server side for the supervisory control requires all the components of monitoring station as well as additional subsystems devising its fully featured command and control part. The industrial plant/site can be controlled/monitored through a local on site server which is then connected to the main server and its data can also be collected in the similar fashion or different devices/nodes can be directly connected to the main server over the Internet.