API connection GeoSCADA database

[Fernando84]

Hello, I need to get information from a website and put this data into the geo SCADA, this information is from residential flow meters. These devices send the data to the cloud server and the idea is to integrate those data to the geo SCADA data base. Does anybody has any suggestion?

[du5tin]

This is not a particularly user friendly solution but you could use the Driver Development Kit. This would allow you to create a driver for this API and any standard data it provides using C#. The data would get stored in points on a regular basis, plus you get access to all the features points have (alarms, alarm redirections, history, etc.) and you would have ability to control how often the driver scans or polls the API for new data. 

https://community.se.com/t5/Geo-SCADA-Knowledge-Base/Driver-Development-Kit-DDK/ba-p/279081

I have done some proof of concept things with this driver DDK for reading data from different API's, like the TCP API on a bitcoin miner, or a RESTful API on a web site. Might work for this. 

[Fernando84]

Hi @du5tin. I read about the DDK driver and honesty that is a very difficult way for me.  I read that the best way to connect is to use the pythonnet library to connect to the Geo SCADA .Net client, do you have tried this before?

[du5tin]

Another option would be to use a vbscript on a mimic to populate the display or push data to Internal points. Lots of downsides with this one: cannot be regularly polled, can only run when a user visits the mimic or pushes a button, alarming is a lot more difficult or not useful. There are lots of examples of connecting to an API using vbscript online though, and its a little more accessible than using C# and a compiled driver. 

[du5tin]

I have not done this. So this puts all the coding outside Geo SCADA so it would need to get triggered somehow. Not a bad way to go and removes some dependencies and issues with the DDK on upgrades. We haven't done this with Python specifically but have done small C# apps that work outside SCADA to pull/push data to the database. 

[Fernando84]

Can you please, show me any example of c# code to put data into de geo scada database?

[sbeadle · Accepted solution]

Sample in C#

https://github.com/GeoSCADA/Utilities-and-Examples/tree/main/SetInternalPoint

Sample in Python

https://github.com/GeoSCADA/Utilities-and-Examples/blob/main/PythonSamples/SetPointValue.py

Steve

[Fernando84]

Hi Steve, I'll try the two options. Thank you.

[AdamWoodlandToo]

ChatGPT also knows about the Geo SCADA API so can also help you with interfacing if you need more help than the examples posted above

[Fernando84]

Hi everyone, I proved the python code, but I got an error "No module named 'clr'", I already install that module but the error persist.  I thought that could be an compiler error, so I tried with PyCharm and Spyder, but in both of them I get the same error.
Any suggestion?

[sbeadle]

Perhaps you did not install Pythonnet

Use the command line: pip install pythonnet

Note this is not supported by all versions of Python. It is supported by Python 3.8.

Steve

[Jimi]

@AdamWoodlandToo you've just made my day

[sbeadle]

I tried with ChatGPT to ask "how do I use the Geo SCADA client .net API to log in and get object properties?" and I had wrong answers! 😀

@AdamWoodlandToo what magic incantations did you use?

[AdamWoodlandToo]

It struggles with a couple of things, but with a few prompts it gets 90%+ of the way there. See attached for two examples (as markdown).

"ChatGPT_20230323T082555679Z_GeoSCADAMonitoringTool.txt" was my first attempt using GPT-3.5 a while back, I confused the poor thing by later asking about ST in the same thread. Was actually impressed it knew anything of Geo SCADA at this point.

"ChatGPT_20230329T214804045Z_GeoSCADAClientAPISumReport" is from just now as I tried to ask it something a bit more involved using GPT-4. Again a few problems that it had to retry but no real difference to say someone starting new on code for Geo SCADA, but in a timeframe of minutes, not hours and so potentially save a fair bit of time. Realistically though you wouldn't get it to write the full code, at least not yet, more just the functions used and someone pulls it together.

But in general, I try to use ChatGPT now for anything that takes more than a few mins to see if it can just do it. I needed 25 years of data generated for 100 data points written in Python and upload it to an S3 bucket, so it wrote a quick Python script for me that did the job. I don't know Python so would have taken me a lot longer! Obviously nothing sensitive going into ChatGPT, but used as a tool its quite useful.

Edit: https://github.com/esteinmann/chatgpt-convdown is the extension I use to download the ChatGPT chats if it is useful to anyone, assume I haven't reviewed the code or audited it in anyway way so use at your own risk 🙂

[Fernando84]

You were right Steve, now I'm using python 3.9 and works fine. 

[sbeadle]

It's like dealing with a junior member of staff, you need to review GPT's code and tell it what's wrong.

[hcruz]

Hi Steve, i saw the python example and tried to use it but got the following error.

ClearScada.Client.CommunicationsException: The request could not be processed. The server returned an unknown status code 0x80090331.

any suggestions on what should i look into?

best regards

Holger

[AndrewScott]

HRESULT 0x80090331 is SEC_E_ALGORITHM_MISMATCH which is "The client and server cannot communicate, because they do not possess a common algorithm.".

This is an error from Microsoft SCHANNEL (for TLS) so is related to the secure connection between the client and server. I would suggest checking the the TLS settings (on both client and server) and the certificates your using.

[sohankamble]

I want to replace the ODBC connection in Elipse SCADA with a custom API for bidirectional communication with the SQL database. The API should support real-time data logging, retrieval, and control commands, with robust error handling, security, and optimized performance to reduce SCADA workload and improve reliability. Can anyone help me with this?

[sbeadle]

Eclipse SCADA is not Geo SCADA