MicroDCS: An Open-Standards-Based Framework for Distributed Sequence Control Applications.
MicroDCS is a Python framework for building distributed sequence control applications for OT and manufacturing. It uses MQTT v5, CloudEvents, JSON Schema, OPC UA companion specifications, and OpenTelemetry to support event-driven control flows with typed data models, protocol abstraction, and open-standard interoperability.
Get the framework installed, run the unit tests, and start the example application:
# Install dependencies
uv sync
# Run unit tests
uv run pytest tests/unit
# Run the example app
# Requires a reachable MQTT broker and Redis server.
uv run python -m app- Open-standards foundation built around MQTT v5, CloudEvents, JSON Schema, OPC UA companion specifications, and OpenTelemetry
- Protocol abstraction for MQTT v5 and MessagePack-RPC transports with a shared event-processing model
- Outgoing CloudEvents over MessagePack-RPC via server-to-client notification frames
- Typed application models generated from JSON Schema and serialized to JSON or MessagePack
- Event-driven processor architecture for handling commands, data, events, and metadata
- Distributed operation features including MQTT shared subscriptions, deduplication, and message expiry handling
- Redis-backed persistence for job state, responses, and delivery coordination
- Built-in support for OPC UA Machinery Job Management patterns, including hierarchical state-machine execution
- Observability support through OpenTelemetry auto-instrumentation and internal tracing and metrics hooks
Create a new MicroDCS application with the init command. It scaffolds the project structure, pins Python 3.14, and prepares the dependencies needed to build a distributed sequence control application.
# Initialize in the current directory
uvx --from git+https://github.com/aschamberger/microdcs microdcs init
# Initialize in a new directory
uvx --from git+https://github.com/aschamberger/microdcs microdcs init my-appThe generated project includes:
- A
uvproject pinned to Python ≥ 3.14 - The
microdcspackage and core development dependencies - A starter project structure:
app/ __init__.py __main__.py # wiring of handlers, bindings and processors models/ # place for generated and hand-written model mixins processors/ # place for CloudEventProcessor implementations schemas/ # JSON Schema input files for dataclassgen deploy/ k8s.yaml # Kubernetes deployment manifest tests/ .vscode/ settings.json tasks.json .github/ copilot-instructions.md Dockerfile - Build-system and pytest configuration in
pyproject.toml
After initialization, generate typed application models from your JSON Schema files:
uv run microdcs dataclassgen dataclasses my-schema.schema.jsonMicroDCS is pre-1.0 (version 0.1.0): interfaces can still change between releases. It is maintained by a single maintainer on a best-effort basis, without a service-level agreement. Questions and bug reports go to the GitHub issue tracker. Security problems follow SECURITY.md. The code is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 (see LICENSE).