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Collector: gateways
When a protocol is not supported natively, expose it as OPC UA or MQTT with products the customer may already own.
The collector reads OPC UA, OPC DA, MQTT, Modbus, SQL, REST, files and, natively, Siemens S7, Rockwell Logix, BACnet, CNC machines through MTConnect, serial and SCPI instruments, CAN, Beckhoff ADS, Kafka, InfluxDB, UDP/TCP and battery-cycler files. When your equipment speaks something else (IEC 60870-5-104, IEC 61850, DNP3, Mitsubishi MC, Omron FINS, PROFINET or EtherCAT devices without a PLC interface), the customer usually already owns, or can cheaply add, a product that turns it into OPC UA or MQTT. Point the matching collector source at that product. No custom code is needed.
How it works
The gateway talks to the equipment with its own drivers and exposes the values on a standard interface. The collector connects to that interface as an ordinary client and does the shaping, encryption and buffering.
- Gateway exposes OPC UA: use a type: opcua source, with a read-only user and a signed, encrypted endpoint, as for any OPC UA server.
- Gateway publishes to an MQTT broker: use a type: mqtt source.
- Gateway exposes Modbus TCP (many protocol converters do): use a type: modbus source.
- Gateway offers a REST API or writes to a database: use rest or sql.
Rule of thumb for a first conversation: Kepware or Ignition Edge for "any PLC", an OPC DA to OPC UA wrapper for the old Windows OPC, and a substation gateway or RTU for "any grid protocol".
Products and rough one-time costs
| Product | What it does and what to point the collector at |
|---|---|
| Kepware Server | About 150 drivers (S7, Logix, Mitsubishi, Omron FINS, DF1, FANUC FOCAS, DNP3, IEC 104 and 61850 suites, BACnet, Modbus) exposed as an OPC UA server; the IoT Gateway plug-in publishes to MQTT or REST. Many customers already own it. Resellers list the Manufacturing Suite at approximately EUR 1,080 (subscription), the Power Suite for DNP3, 104 and 61850 at approximately USD 4,900 to 15,200, and the IoT Gateway plug-in at approximately EUR 600, plus yearly support of about 20%. Type: opcua (or mqtt). |
| Ignition Edge IIoT | Built-in drivers (Modbus, S7, Logix, DNP3, BACnet) to MQTT Sparkplug or OPC UA, with store-and-forward. Approximately USD 945 per device, one time, plus support. Type: mqtt (sparkplug) or opcua. A customer already running full Ignition can read its OPC UA server directly. |
| Matrikon OPC UA Tunneller | OPC DA, HDA and A&E to OPC UA without DCOM across the network. Approximately USD 2,200 (UA and DA), 3,200 (with HDA) or 4,800 (everything), per host; there is a 30-day trial. Type: opcua. |
| Softing dataFEED OPC Suite | PLC protocols and OPC Classic to OPC UA or MQTT. Approximately EUR 1,560 to 2,145 for the Base edition at resellers; the Extended edition adds store-and-forward. Common at Siemens-heavy sites in Europe. Type: opcua or mqtt. |
| HMS Anybus X-gateway IIoT / Edge Gateway | A hardware box: EtherNet/IP, Modbus TCP, DeviceNet and others to an OPC UA server or an MQTT client, one-way from the customer’s OT network to IT. Use it when no software may be installed on the OT side. The price is not published; check with the vendor. Type: opcua or mqtt. |
| Node-RED | Free flow tool with community nodes for S7, Modbus, BACnet, OPC UA and MQTT. Good for small sites and labs; it is not industrial-grade on its own, so plan monitoring and restarts. Type: mqtt (publish the values from a flow). |
| Telegraf | Free agent with inputs for Modbus, OPC UA, SNMP and MQTT, and MQTT or HTTP outputs. Suits IT-minded teams and labs. Type: mqtt. |
| Hardware converters | Moxa MGate, ProSoft, Red Lion and SEL RTAC convert DNP3, IEC 104, IEC 61850 and DF1 to Modbus or OPC UA. Substations, water telemetry and legacy serial lines. Prices vary by model, roughly EUR 500 to 5,000; check with the vendor. Type: modbus or opcua. |
| Siemens S7-1500 OPC UA runtime licence | Switches on the CPU’s built-in OPC UA server, so no gateway is needed. Licensed per CPU in size tiers; check with Siemens for the price. Type: opcua. |
All prices are approximate public figures from 2026 and change with region, reseller and edition. Check with the vendor before you budget. For a customer that needs a gateway, the one-time cost is typically in the range of EUR 1,000 to 5,000, and often the customer already owns one. Larger edge and DataOps platforms (Litmus, HighByte, Cogent DataHub, EMQX Neuron) also publish to MQTT or OPC UA; they are quoted per project.
Old OPC DA servers
The collector reads OPC DA directly (OPC DA (Classic)), installed on the DA host. A wrapper that turns DA into OPC UA is the alternative when:
- the customer already owns one (Kepware with its OPC DA client driver is common in the chemical industry);
- IT policy does not allow installing our Python service on the DA host, but accepts a known vendor's product;
- you want vendor support for the DA side, or plan to retire OPC DA and want the wrapper as the migration path;
- you also need HDA or alarms and events.
Products: Kepware with the OPC DA client driver (resellers list its connectivity suite at approximately USD 680 to 2,100), Matrikon OPC UA Tunneller (above), Softing dataFEED OPC Suite, Integration Objects OPC UA Wrapper and Unified Automation UaGateway (the last three on quote). Run the wrapper on the DA host so COM stays local and DCOM is not needed across the network, then configure the collector as an OPC UA source.
Checklist for a gateway
- Run it on a host inside the customer network, close to the equipment. The collector sits in the DMZ and connects to it, as to any OPC UA server or broker.
- Give the collector a read-only user. Expose only the tags you want in Kymoscope.
- Use OPC UA
SignAndEncryptor MQTT over TLS between the gateway and the collector. - Keep timestamps from the device if the gateway can pass them; otherwise they are the gateway's time, so keep its clock on NTP.
- Check the result with
kymoscope-collector discoverbefore the first run. - The collector stores values at the rate the gateway delivers them, so set the gateway's scan rate to what you need.