WebIQ is an open system and as such only supports the open standard OPC-UA by default. The recommended way is to switch to OPC-UA whenever possible as it also allows you to swap your PLC easily for one by a different manufacturer which might be more cost-effective (and is probably the reason why some PLC manufacturers require high license fees for enabling OPC-UA on their systems to prevent the customer from making it easy to switch to a different supplier).

While other HMI systems offer a huge number of proprietary drivers for PLCs this should not be regarded as a feature but as a lack of openness of the underlying PLC systems.

If your PLC of datasource does not offer OPC-UA here are the alternatives depending on what’s possible for your system:

• ModBus
• MQTT
• Custom IO Handler (written in C++ by you or as a service by Smart HMI)
• Custom Server Extension written in NodeJS (JavaScript) that maps the proprietary protocol to OPC-UA (available on request as a service)