Feature Request/Suggestion: Monitoring Gateway Health and Reporting via MTConnect Agent

[Pranay265]

Hello @PatrickRitchie

We’re currently working on an IoT use case involving an AWS Greengrass gateway paired with a machine running the MTConnect Agent. Occasionally, the gateway may become unresponsive or enter an unhealthy state due to various issues. We’d like to monitor the gateway’s health from the machine side and report its availability via the MTConnect Agent. This would allow us to display the gateway's status on the machine UI and take necessary actions proactively.

Questions & Suggestions:

• Do you have any recommendations or best practices for implementing such a solution efficiently?
• Would it be feasible to integrate gateway health monitoring as a built-in feature in future MTConnect Agent versions? For example, the agent could periodically check the health of connected gateways and report their status as part of the data stream.
• Are there any existing features or extensions in the MTConnect Agent that could help simplify this implementation?

Looking forward to your insights. Thank you for your time and support!

[PatrickRitchie]

My suggestion would be to create a custom Agent Module that monitors the gateway and reports as a Device in the MTConnect Agent. The machine UI could then read the status of the gateway using MTConnect. Below is an example:

Agent Module

using MTConnect.Agents;
using MTConnect.Applications;
using MTConnect.Configurations;
using MTConnect.Devices;
using MTConnect.Devices.DataItems;
using MTConnect.Observations.Events;


// Run Agent Application
var app = new MTConnectAgentApplication();
app.Run(args, true);


public class ModuleConfiguration
{
    public string GatewayAddress { get; set; }
}

public class GatewayMonitorModule : MTConnectInputAgentModule
{
    public const string ConfigurationTypeId = "gateway-monitor"; // This must match the module section in the 'agent.config.yaml' file
    public const string DefaultId = "Gateway Monitor Module"; // The ID is mainly just used for logging.
    private readonly ModuleConfiguration _configuration;


    public GatewayMonitorModule(IMTConnectAgentBroker agent, object configuration) : base(agent)
    {
        Id = DefaultId;

        _configuration = AgentApplicationConfiguration.GetConfiguration<ModuleConfiguration>(configuration);
    }

    protected override IDevice OnAddDevice()
    {
        var device = new Device();
        device.Uuid = $"gateway-{_configuration.GatewayAddress}"; // A UUID of the gateway. IP/MAC address?
        device.Id = "gateway";
        device.Name = "gateway";

        // Add an Availability DataItem to report the status of the Gateway
        device.AddDataItem<AvailabilityDataItem>();

        return device;
    }

    protected override void OnRead()
    {
        Log(MTConnect.Logging.MTConnectLogLevel.Information, "Read Gateway Data");


        bool reachable;
        reachable = true; // This is where I would ping/test the gateway of _configuration.GatewayAddress

        if (reachable)
        {
            // Gateway is reachable so report AVAILABLE
            AddValueObservation<AvailabilityDataItem>(Availability.AVAILABLE);
        }
        else
        { 
            // Gateway is NOT reachable so report UNAVAILABLE
            AddValueObservation<AvailabilityDataItem>(Availability.UNAVAILABLE);
        }
    }
}

Agent Configuration

modules:
  
- gateway-monitor:
    gatewayAddress: 192.168.1.1
    readInterval: 5000

- http-server:
    port: 5001

[Pranay265]

Thanks for the suggestion! We’ll explore this approach and let you know if we encounter any limitations.

[Pranay265]

Hello @PatrickRitchie

I have a couple of follow-up questions to better understand how this solution would work in practice:

Periodic Updates to Adapter:
In the proposed solution, the GatewayMonitorModule updates the agent with the gateway's availability status using AddValueObservation. However, I’m unclear on how the adapter would be notified of these updates periodically.

Would the adapter need to actively poll the agent to retrieve the gateway's availability status?

Or is there a mechanism within the agent to push updates to the adapter automatically?

Future Plans for This Feature:

Are there any plans to implement this gateway monitoring feature as a built-in capability in the MTConnect Agent in an upcoming release? I believe integrating gateway monitoring as a built-in capability in the MTConnect Agent would be highly beneficial for the end-users.

Thanks