Why SIGNL4
The integration of SIGNL4 with IO-Link from ifm electronic GmbH enables production staff and service technicians to be alerted quickly and reliably when problems are detected or even before problems arise, no matter where they are.
Production managers have no time to check the dashboards of each and every machine on the shop floor. Therefore it is important to get a notification if some machine needs attention. This gives time to take care of the actual tasks and provided peace of mind, because you are actively alerted when necessary.
IO-Link is a bi-directional, industrial communications networking standard used for connecting digital sensors and actuators to either a type of industrial fieldbus or a type of industrial Ethernet.
How it Works
SIGNL4 alerts teams and on-call teams on their mobile devices when disruptions in production are detected. Persistent notifications and acknowledgement requirements ensure that issues will be handled before it is too late.
The integration of IO-Link with SIGNL4 can be done via different interfaces, for example via MQTT, email or webhooks. Here we show the integration using JSON webhooks and Node-RED.
Integration Capabilities
Scenarios
SIGNL4 retrieves critical information from IO-Link
Event categorization, routing and automated delivery
Persistent Notifications by push, text and voice call with Tracking, Escalation and Confirmation to Staff on Duty
HOW TO INTEGRATE
In order to integrate ifm IO-Link with SIGNL4 we use Node-RED.
We use the device and documentations as listed here: https://www.ifm.com/de/en/product/AL1350?tab=documents
In our example we use a temperature sensor connected to IO-Link. Node-RED polls the temperature at certain intervals and if the temperature exceeds a certain value an alarm is sent to SIGNL4. We use an HTTP request to retrieve the sensor data in JSON format.
The trigger node “Simulate” allows to simulate an event from IO-Link.
You can find the sample flow here: https://flows.nodered.org/flow/9e2dd88fd526b293908b051e3af2292a
ALERT OPTIMIZATION
SIGNL4 can further increase the visibility of alerts through its Signals and Services section. Augmenting the color and icon of alerts will provide more relevant information at a glance without having to open the alert.