PrecisionDCMS Field
Edge acquisition & local autonomy
The acquisition runtime that lives closest to plant — polling controllers, sensors and gateways, timestamping at source, and holding local logic when the link to the core is degraded.
Role in the platform
Acquire at source
Polls and subscribes to controllers, meters, sensors and gateways across the site and stamps values with source time on capture.
Normalize signal
Maps vendor points to the shared point model with stable identifiers, engineering units and canonical quality states.
Hold the edge
Buffers, evaluates local rules and preserves the local picture when the path to the core is degraded or severed.
Capabilities
Protocol acquisition
Native drivers for BACnet/IP, Modbus TCP/RTU, SNMP, OPC UA, MQTT and IPMI/Redfish with per-device polling and subscription profiles.
Source timestamping
Captures source time and receipt time independently so downstream systems can reason about latency and staleness.
Quality tagging
Every value carries good / uncertain / bad / stale states derived from device response, range checks and freshness windows.
Store-and-forward
Local durable buffer replays gap-free history to the core after a disruption, preserving order and quality.
Edge rules
Deterministic local rules raise alarms, debounce noise and drive safe local responses without waiting for the core.
Secure transport
Mutually authenticated, encrypted outbound sessions to NX with no inbound management plane exposed to plant networks.
Local autonomy
How this component upholds the shared operating contract.
Operating contract
Field is the boundary between physical plant and the operating contract. It normalizes raw signal into identified, time-stamped, quality-tagged values and keeps monitoring alive during isolation so operators never lose the local picture. Identity, time, quality, authority and evidence travel with every value this component handles, so the behavior stays predictable across the estate.
Acquire at source
Polls and subscribes to controllers, meters, sensors and gateways across the site and stamps values with source time on capture.
Normalize signal
Maps vendor points to the shared point model with stable identifiers, engineering units and canonical quality states.
Hold the edge
Buffers, evaluates local rules and preserves the local picture when the path to the core is degraded or severed.
Runtime characteristics
- Deployment
- Hardened appliance, VM or container at the site or zone
- Protocols
- BACnet, Modbus, SNMP, OPC UA, MQTT, IPMI/Redfish
- Timestamping
- Source + receipt time, sub-second where the source allows
- Buffering
- Durable local store with gap-free forward on reconnect
- Autonomy
- Local rule evaluation and alarming during core isolation
- Transport
- Outbound mTLS to NX; no inbound plant-side management
Scope & boundaries
What this component is — and deliberately is not — responsible for.
- Field acquires and normalizes signal; it does not own the authoritative historian — that lives in NX and the core.
- Command authority is declared separately from read authority; Field enforces the authority matrix issued by the platform.
- Field does not replace safety instrumented systems or vendor safety interlocks.
Technical FAQs
Frequently asked questions
Explore the family
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