01
The connection drops
A script without reconnect logic stops quietly and nobody notices, until someone opens an empty chart weeks later.
Industrial data
Logging OPC UA data to a database
Your machines speak OPC UA, but nothing keeps what they say. There is no history, no trend and no evidence after the fact — only a live screen that forgets the moment you look away. This page explains how to write those tags to a database for good, and what goes wrong when you build it yourself.
The problem
An OPC UA server is not an archive
An OPC UA server gives you a tag's current value. What that value was at 03:00 yesterday, it no longer knows. If you want trends, after-the-fact fault analysis or evidence for a customer or auditor, you have to read those values yourself and store them — reliably, including when the network stutters.
OPC UASiemens S7-1500EtherNet/IPModbus TCPMQTTInfluxDB
- Selecting and sampling tagsDon't log everything. Per tag, an interval that suits the signal: a temperature every second, an order number only when it changes.
- Writing to a time-series databaseInfluxDB rather than a relational table: it is built for millions of points a day and keeps queries over months fast.
- Surviving what goes wrongA switch rebooting, a database under maintenance, a PC restarting on its own. Without an on-disk buffer that's a hole in your history you can never fill.
- Making it visibleData nobody looks at yields nothing. Dashboards, alarming and export to CSV or Excel turn it into decisions.
Honest about DIY
A Python script gets you far — until it doesn't
Reading tags and putting them in a database is an afternoon's work. Having it run unattended for two years on a PC in a production hall is the real problem. This is what breaks in practice:
02
The database is briefly gone
Without an on-disk buffer, everything that arrived during the outage is gone for good. Store-and-forward is not a luxury.
03
Passwords in the script
PLC credentials hardcoded in a file on a shared drive is a finding at the first security audit that comes along.
04
Nobody can take it over
It runs on the laptop of whoever wrote it, undocumented. That is not a solution, that is a dependency.
OFF THE SHELF
EdgeForge — built for exactly this
Instead of writing this again for every customer, it became a product: EdgeForge reads OPC UA, EtherNet/IP, S7-1500, Modbus TCP, MQTT and REST and writes to InfluxDB, with crash-safe store-and-forward, dashboards, alarming and encrypted storage of PLC credentials. Runs on a single PC on the floor, no cloud and no mandatory internet connection.
Who builds your software
One experienced engineer, no layers in between
You work directly with Raymond Haan, a software engineer with 9 years of experience and a degree in Mechanical Engineering from TU Delft. No account managers or rotating teams — the same person thinks along, builds and delivers, and stays your point of contact for maintenance.
More about Raymond01 — INTAKE
Intake
We discuss your question, the context and what you actually need.
02 — OFFERTE
Proposal
A clear approach, timeline and price. No surprises afterwards.
03 — ONTWIKKELING
Development
I build, test and keep you informed. There's always room to adjust along the way.
04 — OPLEVERING
Delivery
Delivery, testing and handover — aftercare included.
Let's start
Machine data you want to keep?
Briefly tell me which controllers you have and which values you want to capture, and I'll look at whether the off-the-shelf product fits or whether custom work makes more sense. I usually reply within one business day.
Book a free intro call