Extracting data items not supported by my machine's native adapter?

[Stephanie-Huang0711]

Hello everyone, hope your day is going well, and I appreciate your time and help in advance.
I am working on an internship project where I have to connect to my organization's workshop CNC machines and extract data. I am now using the MTConnect C++ agent and relying on the machine's native adapter. So far, I have successfully established connections to the machines and I am extracting all supported data items (state, motion, program, parts, error) by my machines' native adapter. I can both see SHDR raw data in the command terminal and see real-time data sorted and displayed on my localhost web server.
My question is: if I want to extract a data item that is not supported by the machine’s native adapter—such as common variables (which I don’t see in my SHDR stream)—would building a custom adapter help? Has anyone been able to retrieve such additional data items, or is the set of data items fixed by the machine’s control system? Any guidance or suggestions will be greatly appreciated :))

[neildes2]

If this is a Fanuc controller, then likely you can get with your own adapter. Most other controllers you need to ask them to output variables.

For additional sensors like temp, vibration etc, you could add your own IO device and output shdr or perhaps mqtt payloads. the agent can accept input from multiple adapters.

[Stephanie-Huang0711]

Hi! thank you very much for your reply :)) The machines are mostly DMG MORI machines with CELOS controllers (MAPPS V), and I think I should contact the vender to output additional data items... So a custom agent would not work for extracting common variables? (thanks a lot)

[neildes2]

The agent and MTConnect already can define the tags for Variables. look for VARIABLE in the standard. You just need source tags to populate it.

[Stephanie-Huang0711]

I see! Thank you for your guidance. For now, I do not see any data line related to VARIABLES in my SHDR data stream (only extractable data items show in the data stream). I will try to figure out a way to include the source tag for 'common variable' in my custom adapter set up so it can translate the source tags to meet the MTConnect standard. Thank you!! :))

[hulinning2]

If this is OKUMA machine, we do have output common variable as custom tags.

[Stephanie-Huang0711]

Hello! Thank you for your reply! The machines we are trying to connect are DMG MORI machines...