Supervisory management and information acquisition, or SCADA, techniques sit within the background in industrial settings, performing all types of vital jobs however in an ad-hoc setup, relying on the exact necessities of the set up. Once we take into consideration home automation techniques, they’re just about the identical deal: ad-hoc techniques put collectively from off-the-shelf elements and some customized bits thrown in. [Stefan Schnitzer] clearly has vital data of SCADA in an industrial setting and has carried this over into their home for his or her entry into the Hackaday 2024 Home Candy Home Automation Contest.
Having constructed their very own home from the bottom up, [Stefan] might run wiring and add sensors wherever wanted while engaged on the inside, giving a clear, full customized set up overlaying lights, heating, air flow, even the robotic vacuum cleaner and the cat feeder. No dodgy conduits and visual wiring runs!
SCADA techniques are designed in a hierarchical method, which makes them straightforward to know. On the backside of the hierarchy, which is stage 0, we now have the bodily variables and management mechanisms that embody issues like room temperature management, door lock standing and the cat feeder. Above that is stage 1, the bodily interface between ranges 0 and a couple of. This stage 1 {hardware} is predicated round a set of Arduino UNOs and Mega2560s, maintaining prices low. One additional, fancy addition was a Pixtend I/O board, which connects on to the extent 2 {hardware}, a Raspberry Pi3, which kinds the SCADA supervisor and runs the online server for direct low-level management, in addition to the Modbus TCP driver for the ethernet modules used on the Arduinos. This Pi additionally runs the MQTT dealer and the Codesys software program PLC. Lastly, ranges 3 and 4 are the coordination/manufacturing layers and are applied with one other Raspberry Pi3 that runs NodeRed and Grafana. InfluxDB is used for native information storage. This Pi additionally receives photographs from the IP cameras positioned across the space and any connections to companies outdoors the home.
We don’t get DIY PLC hacks too usually; this one is from 2016, however nonetheless related. In case you’re questioning easy methods to safe all this complexity, we had a hack chat on this topic a couple of years again.