I2R’s Jacob Mills has recently achieved Gold Certification in Ignition from Inductive Automation’s Inductive University. Jacob’s certification elevates I2R to Gold Integrator status.
I2R continues to see the benefits from using Ignition SCADA. It gives our team the ability to create and deploy an Ignition server in a matter of minutes or being able to connect to most of the common automation devices seamlessly. Ignition treatment of SQL databases as a first-class citizen rather than an afterthought has been a game-changer within our industry; its ability to easily capture, filter and display any data in real-time for troubleshooting, analysis and reporting purposes is unmatched.
The development environment in Ignition is highly adaptable and offers a wide range of functionality in both the Vision or Perspective module. Finally, features such as the ability for multiple users to be able to work on the same project simultaneously or have any changes to the project be instantly reflected in the running system allows rapid development and integration into customers processes, resulting in less downtime for the customer and more efficiency for the integrator. Find out more about how we use Ignition at I2R.
Knowing that we can offer our clients such an in-depth knowledge of Ignition is incredibly valuable: Jacob’s newly (gold)-minted skills include advanced architectures, tag historian and compression, redundancy, SQL databases, troubleshooting error messages, and more. The tests for Gold Certification through the Inductive University generally take about 8 hours to complete, so it’s a considerable investment of time and effort from Jacob.
We have an extract from a quick Q&A session with Jacob about his achievement:
How long have you been working with ignition?
About 10 months now, when I first started with the I2R in July. I don’t know if this is too relevant, but I can actually remember the exact date, Monday 13 July 2020.
What do you like about the Ignition platform?
How you can customise just about any sort of property or attribute using the binding tools, which makes it really versatile, as opposed to some other HMI/SCADA platforms where you’re a bit limited as to exactly what you can manipulate and customise.
Also, how well it integrates with scripting tools (Python, SQL, the internal expressions functionality) to further extend the potential of what you can achieve with the platform.
The scripting with Python and SQL is also nice because it directly integrates with previous learning and experience in past years.
What did you learn through the training program?
I learnt the intricacies of each of the components of the Ignition, e.g., Perspective, Vision, named queries, trending and how the components all work with each other and have a role in building one big comprehensive system.
In particular, from the tests, I learned that it’s crucial to pay very close attention to the details that are put in the prompts, or you may miss certain minor details in what they’re asking you (requiring you to fix your submission for the test). So definitely attention to detail.
What type of projects have you worked on with I2R?
I have contributed to projects for monitoring systems and interfaces for a unique range of customers, mainly in the food & beverage industry, e.g., JBS, Voyager Malt.