About Intelligent Mud Solutions

Intelligent Mud Solutions AS of Norway (IMS) provides continuous real-time analysis of drilling fluids primarily for the oil and gas drilling industry. Their RheoSense© equipment is installed at-line to the main drilling fluid process to analyse the drilling fluid being pumped into and out of the well. The patented technology is able to convert pressure measurements to rheological data "on the fly" and produce timestamped data into an OPC UA server for their clients to access locally or remotely.

Making local data globally accessible

For IMS customers who do not have the capability to access the OPC UA server, we implemented a solution for publishing OPC UA values to Microsoft Azure and present the data visually using Power Bi. This has enabled IMS to offer a real-time visual presentation of the trended data that can be accessed by their customers via a web browser from anywhere in the world.

Cloud-based solutions made easy

To achieve these goals, we needed to set up a cloud-based solution in which variable values from the on-site OPC UA server are monitored and transferred to Azure. Using Azure cloud services such as IoT Hub and App Service along with Microsoft Power Bi for visualisations, we were able to transfer and display values from the OPC UA server with low costs and relative ease.

Connecting OPC UA to the cloud

Using the OPC UA publisher module provided by Microsoft, OPC UA servers were connected to Azure with minimal configurations. Along with ease of setup, the publisher module allows manipulation of the datapoint format and other configurations, such as publishing and heartbeat intervals.

All in all, Azure, along with OPC Publisher, allowed us to meet the demands of our customer quickly. The system implementation using Azure App Services offers flexibility on how measurement data can be consumed and not restricted to PowerBi, were it to be the case that more complex visualisations were necessary.