OPC Router includes a wide range of features that you may already be taking advantage of. The product is regularly updated to add additional useful features and tools, and to resolve any known issues, as part of its continuous improvement process.
In this post, I will cover new features and enhancements available in OPC Router V4.28 including:
- New MQTT Sparkplug A & B Plug-in
- MQTT V5 support
- Support for Oracle Cloud Databases & Wago IoT Cloud
- Expanded Database and Variable Triggers
Going further than just the list of features you'll find in the release history for OPC Router, I'd like to cover the key features in more detail to help you understand where and how they might benefit you with your OPC Router projects.
MQTT SparkplugB & MQTT 5 Support
A new MQTT plug-in is now available in OPC Router that supports Sparkplug A&B. OPC Router can be a SparkplugB application or node and can publish or subscribe to data. The visual workflow capabilities & ERP connectivity of OPC Router enable many unique applications.
Flexible connection settings supporting MQTT Version 3.1 to 5 provide for multiple levels of TLS security, client IDs, credentials, certificate manage, QoS and more. Dedicated profiles for Azure IoT, Amazon AWS, and others make connection setup easier.
Any data that you can get into OPC Router through it's various plug-ins can be published to MQTT brokers. OPC Router can also subscribe to MQTT data and when received trigger workflows to use that data in transforms, calculations, and then send it to any OPC Router connection type. This includes OPC DA servers, OPC UA clients & servers, information models, SQL databases, SAP & other ERP systems, RESTful web services, and more.
The MQTT SparkPlug plug-in can be added to any OPC Router license and is also included in the cost-effective standard subscription offering. The plug-in also works with OPC Router's Docker support for edge device deployment on Linux.
Learn More About OPC Router MQTT Support
Expanded Cloud & Database Destinations
The MQTT plug-in profiles now include a dedicated profile for the Wago IoT cloud. With Google's announcement about the end-of-life of Google IoT, OPC Router is ready to help you migrate to another cloud system with it's visual configuration capabilities.
For users of Oracle Databases, OPC Router offers a native connector that now also works with the Oracle Cloud Database using the Oracle Cloud Wallet for authentication. Connect OPC Classic, OPC UA, UA Pub-SUb, UA Methods, Information models, other databases and more to make integrating OT and IT data with Oracle easy. Download a trial of OPCRouter to try these connections.
New Triggers Enhance Performance & Provide More Options without using Scripting
OPC Router's modular functionality empowers you to license and only pay for the functionality you need. A key part of that modularity are triggers. Triggers are how things get done in OPC Router. the various plug-ins often include triggers that are used to kick off visual workflows when data is received through that plug-in. Built in triggers include time & schedule based, script and file triggers.
The 4.28 adds three new triggers that reduce configuration time, add scalability, and improve performance
Database Triggers
OPC Router provides connections to multiple types of databases to do more than just read and write data. Many OT/IT integration applications require monitoring of databases for changes and then taking action, and then writing data back to the database to perform a sort of handshaking with other applications using the database. These new database triggers make this easier and more performant in OPC Router than ever before, and eliminate the need for any polling of the database.
- Data Change Trigger - specify a database and table and columns to watch. When changes occur in those column(s), OPC Router will fire a trigger that you can use in your visual workflows
- Transfer State Trigger - specify a status column to watch in a database table. If changes happen in 1 to N rows, the rows with the changes will be retrieved by OPC Router, and then once transferred, OPC Router will write back to the status column indicating it has received the data. This is an excellent tool for when you want to make sure data moves, and moves efficiently, and you have the ability to have the application causing the changes in the database set the status column.
Global Variable Triggers
Sometimes you want to have a trigger that you can use in multiple places. OPC Router has several ways to accomplish this, but this new trigger type in Version 4.28 enabled you to take the output of one data connection and set a global variable. The you use a Global Variable Trigger to set conditions that then can trigger other workflow actions in OPC Router.
Other Enhancements
- Docker support improvements
- Option to automatically deploy a Docker Portainer Management container when deploying OPC Router runtime containers
- Hardware TPM 2.0 module licensing support for edge devices that do not have Internet access.
- REST plug-in can now transfer files in binary format
- In expert-mode, the configuration UI can now export projects in YAML format for use with version control systems
- OPC UA Triggers and Transfer Objects can be used with the OPC UA Server plug-in license without having to also buy the OPC UA client license, making it easier to use OPC Router as an OPC UA Server, including OPC UA methods
Upgrading for Existing Users
Users on active support & maintenance agreements can upgrade to this new version free of charge unless you want to license new features that you have not already licensed. If you're upgrading from a version prior to V4.25, be sure and review the upgrading best practices. If you need to add any features or have questions, contact us.
These updates, as always, are aimed at enhancing our experience and expanding functionality when using OPC Router to integrate the variety of data sources and destinations on your projects. Don't forget to subscribe to our blog to find out about the latest updates to OPC Router and for how-to videos and other resources on using OPC Router.
Ready to try these new OPC Router features and enhancements with your own systems?
