Scada has been in extensive use for a lot of time now. Its full form is Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. It is being used to control and analyze all types of industrial systems. MMI or man machine interfaces are the widely used scada systems worldwide.
SCADA programs are run on computers and are used to control various devices from there. Many techniques are used to link to the devices that have to be controlled. These include Ethernet, modems and radio links. Sensors are used to access data about various devices in a plant or industrial location.
Various communication interfaces are used due to which the data is transmitted in various forms. Thus converters have to be used for conversion of data. All the information reaches the central unit where it is processed and analyzed regularly.
A database is maintained in the master control unit. All the equipments in the plant or infrastructure location have various parameters that are monitored and real time information about them is stored in the database. Thus any instrument can be controlled by the master unit.
There are two types of parameters used. These are analogue or digital. The SCADA software fetches them continuously and stores them. The program can then makes its calculations based on all those stored parameters.
Then the results obtained after making calculations are interpreted graphically. These are then shown on the computer screen as bars and charts. All this helps SCADA maintain its supervisory control easily.
Some of the parameters received from various equipments are temperature, pressure and liquid level. The scada software can show the measurements and parameters in terms of graphical objects on the computer screen.
Advanced SCADA software also allows administrators to set up some functionality to alert them when any parameter reaches a certain value. Automatic SMS or email alerts can be set up. Thus a plant is controlled from a central location using SCADA systems.
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