Software Toolbox Technical Blog

Do you have a multitude of non-standard devices with unique identifiers such as a Device IDs or Node IDs that must be sent as part of all protocol messages to communicate with each device?  If so, you could certainly accomplish this by hard coding your Device/Node IDs as part of each message in your OmniServer protocol and simply have a separate protocol for each device.

But OmniServer has a better way:  Topic Variables.  In this sixth post in our “OmniServer Did You Know?” blog series, you'll learn how to use Topic Variables to create one flexible protocol that you can use across any number of devices using the same communication protocol.

The Wellsite Information Transfer Specification (WITS) is a communications format used for the transfer of a wide variety of wellsite data from one computer system to another.  This oil/gas industry standard is recognized by a number of companies internationally and is supported by many hardware devices and software applications used at well sites around the globe.

In this video blog, I show you how to get started using our software based communications driver for WITS Level 0 Active protocol to integrate data from your wellsite devices into Wonderware applications. You can install the software on your own computer and it will communicate with multiple devices via multiple serial ports and/or Ethernet convertors. 

There are some great new updates now available with TOP Server V6.2.  In case you missed it, I did a high-level post giving you an overview of the four biggest features from the V6.2 release - click here to see that post.

In this post, I'll give you a more detailed review of the updates to the new CODESYS Ethernet driver in TOP Server V6.2.  Used extensively by controller manufacturers when creating custom firmware isn't scalable, CODESYS continues to grow in usage globally. Keep reading to find out more about specific features of the CODESYS Ethernet driver.

You've probably received one of my emails or possibly heard from a colleague about the latest TOP Server released on June 8 – so you may have a general idea of the key new features in the TOP Server V6.2 release.

In this blog, I'll go through the biggest four features released in V6.2 in more detail and how they benefit you as a TOP Server user.

As you likely already know, OmniServer is primarily used to retrieve information from devices that use ‘non-standard’ protocols to communicate such as weight scales, barcode readers, and printers.

But were you aware that OmniServer, as part of that function, is capable of specifying a default initial value for data items on startup?  In this third post in our "OmniServer Did You Know?" blog series, keep reading to find out how to use initial values for your data items in OmniServer and under what situations that will be important.

There are some powerful new features available with TOP Server V6.1.  In case you missed it, I did a high-level post giving you an overview of the six biggest features from the V6.1 release - click here to see that post.

Today, I'd like to give you a more detailed review of the great improvements made to the Mitsubishi Ethernet driver in TOP Server V6.1.  Keep reading to find out about new device model support and some great increases in read and write performance for communication with your Mitsubishi controllers.

You've potentially already heard about the latest and greatest TOP Server - Version 6.1.  You may have read my blog post about the 6 new features to be most excited about already.

But if you'd like to join me, in the following on-demand video blog, I'll step you through the new features that Wonderware users should care about in TOP Server V6.1 beyond what they are and cover how you can benefit from them, as well as, showing you what you can expect in future releases.

There are some powerful new features now available with TOP Server V6.1.  In case you missed it, I did a high-level post giving you an overview of the six biggest features from the V6.1 release - click here to see that post.

Today, I'd like to give you a more detailed summary of the features of the new CODESYS Ethernet driver now available in TOP Server V6.1.  Typically used by controller manufacturers for whom creating custom firmware isn't scalable, CODESYS has grown in usage globally over the years. Keep reading to find out more about the CODESYS Ethernet driver both now and what's on the horizon for integrating your CODESYS devices.