Elab: A Lightweight Scada System For Control Engineering Research And Education

This paper presents a lightweight SCADA system eLab that is based on open-source and affordable hardware/software technologies. The primary purpose of eLab is to provide an easy means for researchers and students to perform laboratory experiments, without requirements for extensive configuration on the side of the user. The architecture of the system consists of several functional parts. I/O nodes are hardware devices that directly connect and electrically control sensors and actuators of laboratory equipment. For this purpose, an implementer can either use a dedicated MCU, such as Arduino board, a single-board computer like Raspberry Pi, or any device with UART communication capabilities. The central part of eLab is a SCADA master, i.e., the computer that serves all the functionalities required by a SCADA system. The SCADA software is implemented in server-side JavaScript (Node.js). The communication between I/O nodes and SCADA master is served via XBee radio modules. The master computer acts as a communication gateway between I/O nodes and other parts of the system. The gateway provides a dedicated RESTful API that is used for the front-end connection to control software or HMI. Additionally, the system uses an internal database for configuration of experiments, tags, and data sessions. The eLab also provides a novel integration with DCore blockchain technology so that the users can store the data either in private or public blockchain network. The use of blockchain ensures the preservation, immutability, and verifiability of measured data. Copyright (C) 2020 The Authors.