We're a group of students that is gonna set up communication between a S7-1200 PLC and a cloud (probably gonna be MS Azure), to upload measured data (e.g. temperature, pressure).
In what ways is it possible to achieve this, and what communication protocols is recommended for this?
We dont wanna use a second device like Rasperry Pi or Simatic IoT2000...
If you have the hand on your cloud server, it's great because then you could build an OpenTCP communication between your PLC and your server and exchange data buffers.
But, in a security point of view, I don't know if Microsoft Azure can authorize that. Because you won't be able to manage authentication or encryption on the PLC.
The protocol would be based on simple TCP socket (standard) then you must create the buffer on the PLC and decode it in your Azure instance, with your own protocol and data definitions.
Hope it helps ;-)