How to Add and Configure Machines
  • 14 Feb 2024
  • 4 Minutes to read
  • Contributors

How to Add and Configure Machines


Article Summary

This guide will help you set up individual machines in Tulip via the Machines page and see their history.

In this article, you will learn:

  • How to add individual machines to Tulip and map their data via attributes
  • How to view the history of these machines without using an app or analytics

How to Create a Machine

In order to monitor machines in Tulip, you must first establish a connection to your data source:

Then, you should set up machine types and attributes to categorize the data coming off the machine.

To start adding individual machines, head to the Machines tab under Shop Floor.

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Create a Machine

To add your first machine to Tulip, use the Create Machine button.

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  1. Give your machine a name.
  2. Select your Machine Type.
  3. [Optionally] map your machine to a Station.
    1. Mapping to a station will allow you to use at this station trigger actions to share applications across your fleet of machines.

Mapping Machine Attributes to Your Datasource

Our machine has been created, now we need to map its attributes to the topics or nodes on our machine data source.

  1. Navigate to the Configuration tab.
    Notice that this tab has a yellow warning icon indicating that some machine attributes are not currently mapped to machine data sources
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  2. Select an attribute. Depending on your desired data source type, mapping will differ.

Map to MQTT

  1. Select your broker.
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  2. If no topics have been mapped on this machine select "Map to a new topic".
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  3. Enter the topic path where your machine is outputting data.
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Note

We don't currently support single or multilevel wildcards in MQTT topics.

Get Latest Message

Select the Get Latest Message button to pull the last message (or the retain message) for the entered topic.
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Latest vs. Retained Message

If another machine attribute is mapped to this topic, we will return the latest message, even if the retained flag was not enabled on that message. This avoids interruptions in this data streaming to those other machine attributes. If the topic is unused by other machines, the retained message will be returned.

JSON Payloads

If the data being passed as a json payload, JSON can be selected from the payload type and a selector can be added to identify what part of the JSON blob to map to the machine attribute, or a key:value pair can be selected in the latest message and a selector will automatically be generated. Tulip implements the JSON-Query format for all JSON extractors.

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Select Map to Attribute.

Map to OPC-Ua

  1. Select your OPC-UA Data Source.

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  1. Navigate to the OPC-UA Node associated with this machine attribute.

  2. Click the map icon.
    Note: Only machine attributes of the same type can be mapped to OPC-Ua nodes
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Map to Tulip API

To pass data into a Tulip machine from any other hardware, you can leverage the machines API.

  1. Select Tulip API from the machine data source selector.

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  1. Select the Map icon to map this machine attribute to a Tulip API endpoint.

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Viewing History of The Machine

Using Machine Triggers, you will want to map these Attributes to states so that you can accurately track the status of the machine on a second by second basis.

After you set up those triggers, you can see a history of the past machine states using the Activity History tab within each individual machine.

Here's how to access the history:

And here's an example of the history:

Each row in the history is defined by the amount of time that the machine spent in a certain state.

Here are the columns in this view with data type:

  • State (enum)
  • Start Time (datetime)
  • End Time (datetime)
  • Duration (interval)
  • Downtime Reason (enum)
  • Program (text)
  • Ideal Run Rate (number)
  • Defect Count (number)
  • Part Count (number)

Machine triggers can update the columns for each state based on attributes that you have mapped.

Ingestion Limits

The following rate limits are enforced for machine data sources:

ProtocolRate LimitNote
MQTT1hz per machine attributeEvents reported immedately
OPC UA1hz per machine attributeTags polled ever 1000ms
APINo Limit
Overall500hz per instanceWhen combining all types across all machines

Further Reading


Did you find what you were looking for?

You can also head to community.tulip.co to post your question or see if others have faced a similar question!


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