Category Archives: RTA’s Blog

The RTA Difference: Why Control Engineers Trust RTA as Their Protocol Gateway Supplier

When it comes to moving factory floor data, control engineers choose Real Time Automation (RTA) [...]

How to Move ASCII Data to an Allen-Bradley PLC Without Custom Code

The most efficient way to move ASCII data to a ControlLogix or CompactLogix PLC is [...]

10 Reasons Why Connecting a Database Directly to Your PLC Is a Terrible Idea

Direct connections between PLCs and databases are a fundamentally flawed architecture for production environments. They [...]

Going Beyond Tag Names: The Eight Types of Data Context That Make Plant Data Actually Matter

Raw plant floor data without context is just noise. You cannot trust it, compare it [...]

Untapping the SNMP Data Sitting Inside Your Production Network

Most factories already have hundreds of devices reporting useful health data through SNMP. Switches, UPS [...]

One Control Engineer’s Tedious Fight With Intermittent Modbus RTU Communications Failures And When to Just Give Up

Summary A Control Engineer with a PLC master and a two-slave node Modbus RTU network [...]

How is a Historian Different from an Edge Gateway?

Summary: What is the difference between an industrial Historian and an Edge Gateway? While both [...]

Why Are Industrial Gateways Important to Smart Manufacturing Systems?

Summary: Industrial gateways, a broad term that also includes protocol gateways (aka protocol converters), are [...]

The One Teeny Error That Sabotages Modbus to ControlLogix Integration Projects

Summary: When Modbus data appears incorrect in a ControlLogix or CompactLogix PLC, the cause is [...]

Stop Wasting ControlLogix Slots: A Smarter Way to Ingest ASCII Data

An Efficient and Effective Alternative to the MVI56E-GSC or 5069-SERIAL Summary: To ingest ASCII data [...]