Software Toolbox Technical Blog

Following on the recent OPC Data Client 2021.1 release a few months ago, the OPC Data Client toolkit has been updated again to further extend it's OPC UA client functionality. 

The new updates provide developers of custom OPC client applications new options to interact with even more OPC UA servers or more richly with existing OPC UA servers. This blog post teaches you how OPC UA PubSub security is different from regular OPC UA security, how to improve JSON/OPC UA PubSub interoperability with a new utility, and why you might care about OPC UA File Transfer. 

If you've been following our ongoing Exploring OPC UA blog series, we've been covering key Software Toolbox solutions and the specifics of configuring OPC UA security and connectivity.

In this seventh post of the series, we will focus on OPC Data Logger, specifically stepping through settings related to security, endpoints and certificate management and connecting OPC Data Logger to OPC UA servers for logging data.

As you may have seen in our recent posts in our ongoing Exploring OPC UA blog series, we've been going into the specifics of OPC UA security configuration in key Software Toolbox solutions that are OPC UA capable.

In this sixth post of the series, we will focus on Cogent DataHub, focusing on stepping through what the settings are in DataHub and how to get connected both for your OPC UA clients and servers.

In our ongoing Exploring OPC UA blog series, we have shifted the focus from general concepts about how OPC UA certificates and security work to looking at practical usage of OPC UA in specific Software Toolbox solutions. Last time, we focused on configuring TOP Server for OPC UA connectivity.

In this fifth post of the series, we will focus on OmniServer, our solution for getting data from non-standard devices into OPC UA and other client applications. We'll step through what the settings are in OmniServer and how to get your OPC UA client applications connected.

So far in our ongoing Exploring OPC UA blog series, we have primarily taken a general look at OPC UA Certificates and security and how they are used by OPC UA clients and OPC UA servers to keep industrial data secure.

In this fourth post of the series, we take the series down a more specific path by starting to look at the settings and configuration of OPC UA for specific Software Toolbox solutions. This post focuses on TOP Server for AVEVA. We'll step through what the settings are in TOP Server and how to get connected both for your OPC UA client and servers.

If you're a TOP Server for AVEVA (formerly Wonderware) user, you've certainly connected to a device configured in TOP Server using a topic name. But did you know you can create custom topics called aliases with any meaningful name you would like to represent your devices?

Continuing our Tech Support Corner blog series, this blog post covers how to easily add define meaningful aliases for your devices in TOP Server for use as topics in your client applications.

Developers of custom OPC client applications have new options, enhanced troubleshooting tools, runtime configuration flexibility, and improved utilities to help them in the recently released 2021.1 (5.60) version of the OPC Data Client Toolkit.

In this technically hot blog post, we will cover the release highlights with links to documentation, and, as always, the full detailed release notes are available in our knowledge base. Also if you did not see the 2020.3 (5.59) release post, that one was packed with technical details.

While the recent winter storm in Texas and its rolling energy shortages has brought the subject of the availability of affordable energy and deregulation of power markets to the forefront of the conversation, this has been a problem in many areas of the world for a long time. This is mainly because of the large fluctuations in the price of energy that both residents and businesses have to endure.

It's ultimately the law of supply and demand driving such issues - when energy supply is eclipsed by extraordinary demand for it, an inconvenience during the best of times becomes a crisis in the case of extreme situations such as unexpected winter weather, devastating storms, hotter than normal summers and other unpredictable situations.

In the case of manufacturing and other industries that rely on energy as an input for operations, the cost of energy can literally determine whether a production run is profitable or not. This post discusses methods for monitoring energy costs in real-time from your HMI, SCADA or MES system using OPC UA or OPC DA, for decision support to prevent avoidable losses.