IDEC MicroSmart FC6A Plus PLC MQTT support

IDEC Corporation has released a firmware upgrade enabling its MicroSmart FC6A Plus PLC CPUs to support the industry-standard MQTT protocol. The upgrade can be downloaded to the FC6A CPU, so it is easy for users to connect all types of field data to onsite and cloud-based brokers and make the information readily available for users and analytical applications. Users can also send commands to the FC6A using MQTT.

The FC6A with MQTT capability is suitable for new automation system designs or for adding IIoT connectivity to existing systems. MQTT is supported on Ethernet port 1, so the FC6A can use existing wired, Wi-Fi or mobile data wireless networking to connect with onsite or cloud-based brokers. A typical application would publish machine data from many machines to the cloud, where it would be historised and could be transmitted to subscribing mobile applications.

No additional hardware is needed. Users can take advantage of the traditional PLC control logic and I/O functionality, or they can use the FC6A as an IIoT data concentrator for many other PLCs and intelligent devices. The FC6A with MQTT supports Amazon Web Services AWS IoT Core, with future support planned for Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.