Unpack SIA Connect and power it up with a 12V or 24V supply.

The software version comes in two variants.

• Docker
• Linux installation script

Where Docker runs SIA Connect as a virtualization and the installation scripts installs it natively on the Linux OS.

For Windows and MacOS only Docker is supported.

Click here to follow the instruction on how to install natively on Linux 

Click here for Docker instructions 

1. Connect your computers ethernet port to the units X1 ethernet port using a ethernet cable. Check Wiring & peripherals ‍for locating ethernet port X1.
2. Configure your computers network to in the same subnet as SIA by following Network configuration of client computer‍. We recommend to set your IP to 10.20.30.100 in order to access the unit on 10.20.30.40.
3. Validate your network configuration and that you can access the unit

The portal requires a user to login. Therefore you will need to create an user before being able to access the portal.

1. Navigate to the portal at http://10.20.30.40.
2. Create a user by following Add a user to the platform‍ 
3. You are automatically logged in with the created user 

A Connector defines how to interface and communicate to an instance such as a physical device or a virtual device as a cloud. You will therefore needs to know what you need to connect to in order to identify what Connectors you need. For examples if you have a Siemens S7 PLC you want to publish data to Azure you will need the Connectors for Siemens S7 and Azure IoT Hub as you have two instances with different communication interface. On the other hand if you only need to log data from the Siemens S7 locally on the unit you only need the one Connector.

1. Install the Connector by follow Install Connectors‍ 
   1. Under the Connectors menu you can find a link to the download page
2. (Opt.) Upload any required files such as certificates and public/private keys

Now we need to add the very first instance to communicate with along with items. That could for example be a Siemens S7 PLC or the Azure IoT Hub together with PLC tags. The instance on SIA Connect is a virtual representation of the connection and instance while the items is a representation of a variable (PLC) or communication tunnel (Cloud).

1. Add a instance by following Add Instances‍ 
2. Add a item to the instance by following Add Items‍ 
3. Redo step 1 & 2 to continue add as many items and instances as you need
4. Check out its data by View historical stored data in graph if you configured it to log the data

To make SIA Connect acts as a gateway or protocol router we need to setup and configure a mapping between two items.
Mappings is a tunnel and link between two items where data can be connected such as from a PLC to a Cloud or from a PLC to another PLC.

You can create a mapping between any instances and items and you can further more use the flexibility of customization your own payloads & messages. Customizing the messages is very useful when interfacing clouds and database where you often wrap the data values into JSON/XML payload or SQL commands.

To create a mapping do the following:

1. Create the instances and items which you want to tunnel & map the data between. Check Step 5 if you haven't done this by now.
2. Make a mapping between the two items from the different instances by following Add Mapping‍ 
   1. Customize the payload or message if necessary. Check out View historical stored data in graph

After successful configuration of the unit it is recommended to make a backup and export its configuration.

By generating a backup of the units configuration you can always replicate the exact same setup. This is very useful in case of an accident or if you need to replicate the configuration to other similar systems.

To create a backup of the configuration do the following:

1. Follow the export steps in the Export & Import configuration ‍article.