9th February 2025

As information scientists, builders, and machine studying engineers proceed to construct, prepare, and deploy laptop imaginative and prescient functions, it’s essential to make sure these techniques combine seamlessly with a corporation’s infrastructure. On this weblog, we’ll discover learn how to join Roboflow Workflows with Ignition, a sturdy industrial automation answer, utilizing the MQTT (MQ Telemetry Transport) protocol and modules.

We are going to use a custom-trained YOLOv11 mannequin deployed with Roboflow Workflows to trace espresso baggage as they transfer alongside a producing line. This data will then be despatched to Ignition by way of MQTT, the place we are going to show the counts and annotations straight inside a Perspective dashboard in Ignition. By the top of this weblog, we’ll have constructed the next: 



Let’s get began.

Stipulations

Earlier than diving in we’ll want to make sure now we have a number of stipulations in place. 

Create a Roboflow Account

Be sure you’ve signed up for a Roboflow account when you haven’t already. We’ll annotate our information, prepare our mannequin, and construct a workflow that may be deployed anyplace with the Roboflow platform.

Obtain the Ignition Platform and MQTT Modules

Make sure that to have the ignition software program put in in your system or a community connected machine. You may set up Ignition Gateway on any working system by visiting their obtain web page.

We’ll use the Ignition Gateway to configure our settings and set up extra modules for MQTT.

We’ll additionally want to put in the Ignition Designer Launcher to configure tags and our Perspective dashboard. Lastly be sure to’ve put in the MQTT modules referred to as MQTT Distributor Module and the MQTT Engine Module. Each modules could be put in on the strategic companions module web page

Constructing in Roboflow

The Roboflow platform has every part we have to add information, annotate photographs, prepare laptop imaginative and prescient fashions, and deploy them to manufacturing. In case you haven’t expertise constructing with Roboflow but, I encourage you to comply with this information on getting began with the platform.

Espresso Bag Mannequin

For this weblog, we’ll use a small however mighty open supply dataset (utilizing this video) I’ve ready and distributed on Roboflow Universe, the world’s largest assortment of open supply laptop imaginative and prescient datasets and APIs. You may check out the dataset by visiting the publicly obtainable mission.

Construct the Workflow

In case you’re new to workflows be at liberty to fork the workflow for this integration. This may be carried out by visiting this shareable workflow hyperlink and hitting the “Fork Workflow” button.

Roboflow Workflows is an ecosystem that allows customers to create machine studying functions utilizing a variety of pluggable and reusable blocks. New blocks are popping out each week to help new fashions, management circulate, and syncing to exterior information sources. You may learn extra about workflows by visiting the documentation.

Configure Ignition MQTT Module

Now that now we have our mannequin and workflow prepared for our integration, let’s be sure that our Ignition modules are configured accurately. For this, you’ll first have to navigate to the Ignition Gateway with an internet browser. In case you’ve put in Ignition domestically you’ll go to http://localhost:8088. In any other case you’ll want the IP deal with of the machine you put in ignition on. You might also have to reset your path and login.

As soon as logged in, navigate to the Config web page, and click on on MQTT Engine Settings. From right here we are going to click on on Namespaces > Customized > “Create new Customized Namespace…”.

That is the place we are going to configure the MQTT engine to pay attention on a selected subject. Identify your subject, and supply a listing of Subscriptions. Under i’ve set the Subscription to “/location/espresso/#” which implies that ignition will pull in any information I publish below the subject path “/location/espresso/” into a singular tag. 

Combine Roboflow with Ignition

Now that our Ignition is subscribed to our matters, let’s check out the brief script wanted to combine our software. We’ll use python and Roboflow Inference to run our workflow towards our video. Let’s first set up our python packages.

pip set up inference paho-mqtt

Subsequent let’s write our code snippet that can course of our video stream and publish messages to our MQTT matters. Be aware that the default ignition MQTT Distributor dealer has primary authentication enabled by default, so make certain to vary these credentials in manufacturing.

This script established a connection to the Ignition MQTT dealer, and processes our video stream body by body through the use of our Roboflow Workflow ID. We then publish our espresso bag depend and the newest body of the video to our MQTT matters.

from inference import InferencePipeline
import cv2
import paho.mqtt.consumer as mqtt consumer = mqtt.Consumer()
consumer.username_pw_set("admin", "changeme") # Default MQTT module person/cross
consumer.join("localhost", 1883) # Default MQTT dealer hostname/port def my_sink(end result, video_frame):
    depend = end result["counts"]["count_in"]
    base64_latest_frame = end result["output_image"].base64_image
    consumer.publish("/location/espresso/depend", int(depend))
    consumer.publish("/location/espresso/latest_frame", base64_latest_frame)
     pipeline = InferencePipeline.init_with_workflow(
    api_key="YOUR_API_KEY",  
    workspace_name="YOUR_WORKSPACE_ID",
    workflow_id="YOUR_WORKFLOW_ID",
    video_reference="PATH_TO_VIDEO",
    max_fps=30,
    on_prediction=my_sink
) pipeline.begin()
pipeline.be a part of()

Now after we open up the Ignition Designer, you need to have the ability to navigate to your tag browser and look at our tags being up to date straight in our system.

Previous to constructing our dashboard, let’s click on on our depend tag and be certain that now we have Historical past Enabled, and arrange your required Storage Supplier. 

Configure Perspective Dashboard

With information in Ignition, we now have the complete energy of dashboarding, alerting, and storing data in historian. Let’s check out constructing a easy dashboard.

First, let’s open the house web page replace the title and outline to match our use case. Subsequent let’s add an Picture and a SimpleGauge.

We’ll configure the SimpleGauge with a binding to our espresso depend tag as seen beneath.

Subsequent we’ll configure our picture. To be able to show a base64 encoded picture in Perspective we are able to use an Expression to concatenate the string “our base64 worth. Right here’s how that appears within the Expression binding.

When you save your mission you possibly can navigate to your new dashboard by visiting http://localhost:8088/information/perspective/consumer/Roboflow_MQTT the place “Roboflow_MQTT” is the identify of your mission. 

Conclusion

Integrating Roboflow with Ignition utilizing MQTT gives a robust answer for real-time monitoring and information evaluation in industrial settings. By leveraging laptop imaginative and prescient with Roboflow and Ignition, you possibly can improve operational effectivity and achieve precious insights into your processes. 

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