How To Demonstrate Eight MTConnect Simulators To One MTConnect Agent

I was asked to update a set of MTConnect Hands-On Training Lab slides I did for a visit to Taiwan back in 2012.  Part of the update was making the MTConnect Simulator more interesting than just the single part being created that has been out at agent.mtconnect.org for a long time.  Don't get me wrong, it is a nice and simple simulator, with the binaries, data files and instruction out at github.com/MTConnect, but it was time for an update for those who want to dig into the details of MTConnect a little more and provide a little more sizzle as well.

This 12 minute video shows how to demonstrate eight MTConnect simulators to one MTConnect agent.

HUGE thanks to the great folks at NIST's Smart Manufacturing Systems (SMS) Testbed at National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for making this data available at github.com.This is tremendously helpful for those of us in the MTConnect Community that NIST would do this.  Manufacturing is very fortunate to have thought leaders at NIST driving important ​test ​resources and data.  

I reference all of the info on how to run the simulator is out at github.com/MTConnect in the video.  You want to download MTConnect agent and simulator first, before you go through this modified version of the standard simulator demo.  You should take your time and go through the README after you download the above.  I also reference MEMEX's OPTime, which is free, and you can download it here.

Moving it to a Unix or Linux system would be trivial -- for you Unix folks.  Here is the link on my DropBox for the batch and config files to run the Eight MTConnect Simulators To One Agent.  Please note that I did modify the data to get the machine tools to start creating parts immediately.  What I specifically mean is that NIST started gathering data at 5am, but the machine tools were not making parts until 7am.  I simply removed the 2 hours of machine tools sitting idle for the purpose of this demo. 
 
Below is the 12 minute webinar I put together to show how to run this on your own Windows system.  



 

Any questions or comments, please use the comment section of my blog and I will be happy to help you out!