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Hands-On Sparkplug B for Industrial Automation
Go Beyond MQTT — Design and Deploy Sparkplug B Solutions For Industrial Systems
Created byEmile Ackbarali
Last updated 4/2026
English
What you'll learn
- Configure a complete Sparkplug B lab environment using HiveMQ, Node-RED, Modsim, Ignition Maker Edition, and MQTT Explorer — all free.
- Build a Sparkplug B Edge Node in Node-RED that publishes NBIRTH, NDATA, and NDEATH and handles incoming NCMD commands.
- Connect Modbus TCP field devices to a Sparkplug B Edge Node and publish their data as DBIRTH, DDATA, and DDEATH messages.
- Implement report by exception with analogue deadband filtering in Node-RED to minimise unnecessary DDATA publishes.
- Send NCMD and DCMD commands from Ignition through HiveMQ to the Edge Node and write setpoint values back to a Modsim register.
- Configure Ignition MQTT Engine to auto-discover Edge Nodes and devices and display live Modbus-sourced data on an Ignition dashboard.
- Build a Node-RED MQTT Application Node that decodes Sparkplug B payloads and displays a live read-only metric feed on a dashboard.
- Configure persistent sessions correctly for Edge Nodes and the Primary Host Application and explain why CleanSession = false is mandatory.
- Buffer metrics locally during a comms outage and replay them with is_historical = true on reconnect to maintain data continuity.
- Validate a complete end-to-end Sparkplug B system covering all four actors using MQTT Explorer and a structured implementation checklist.
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Course content
5 sections • 24 lectures • 2h 2m total length
Requirements
- Industrial automation concepts — SCADA, historians, engineering units, signal scaling, and report by exception.
- MQTT 3.1.1 — brokers, pub/sub, QoS, retained messages, LWT, persistent sessions, and topic structures
- Basic TCP/IP networking — IP addressing, ports, and how TCP client-server connections work.
- Modbus — master/slave model, holding registers, function codes, and Modbus TCP addressing.
Description
If you work in industrial automation and you have heard the buzz around Sparkplug B but are not sure where to start — this course is built for you.
Sparkplug B is rapidly becoming the standard for IIoT data exchange, and for good reason. It solves the problems that plain MQTT leaves wide open — no standardized topic structure, no defined payload format, no reliable session management. Sparkplug B fixes all of that, and this course shows you exactly how, using real tools in a hands-on lab environment you can build on your own machine for free.
In just hours you will go from zero Sparkplug B knowledge to a fully working system — a Modbus field device feeding live data through a Node-RED Edge Node, over HiveMQ, into an Ignition SCADA dashboard, with commands flowing back in the other direction. Every step is practical, every concept is tied to something you will actually build, and every tool used in the course is either free or available on a free trial.
This course assumes you already know MQTT 3.1.1 and have a background in industrial automation. That means no time is wasted explaining the basics — instead you go straight into the architecture, the message types, and the hands-on labs that matter. You will learn how report by exception and deadband filtering reduce unnecessary network traffic, how persistent sessions protect your data during comms outages, how to replay buffered historical data on reconnect, and how to validate your implementation end-to-end with a structured checklist.
By the time you finish you will be able to design and build a Sparkplug B system from scratch — and more importantly, you will understand exactly why it works the way it does.
Who this course is for:
- Electrical Engineers
- Electrical Technicians
- Electrical Tech or Engineering Students
- Process Control Technicians and Engineers
- Process Automation Engineers
- Systems Integrators
- Industrial Automation Engineers
- Industrial Automation Technicians