Software Toolbox Technical Blog

I’ve heard from users new to the automation profession that it can be overwhelming to learn about the product technologies used in industrial automation alone, while also learning about the concepts, and having to deliver on the job results.  This is the the first post of our Automation 101 blog series which is designed to help professionals that are new to the industrial automation space whether at the start of their careers, or moving into the operations technology (OT) world from an IT or other background.

In this post, I am going to discuss redundancy.  The term is often used broadly, and sometimes it can be a simple application, but it can also quickly unravel into a complex discussion with lots of technical details, more than can be covered in a single blog post.   Whenever a client contacts us to discuss redundancy, there are many questions we ask to understand what redundancy means in their operation.

My focus will be on providing insight to the reasons why redundancy is used, the business factors that drive how far you go with redundancy, the types or levels found in automation systems, and considerations in the implementation of automation software systems.

You've probably either received one of my emails or possibly heard from a colleague about our latest TOP Server release – so you may have a general idea of the key new features in the TOP Server V6.3 release.

In this blog, I'll go through the top 3 key features released in V6.3 in more detail and how they benefit you as a TOP Server user.

In the automation and control world you need to know about problems immediately.  If problems are not recognized early enough, they can cause unexpected downtime, damage to machinery or environmental impacts.  In other words, these problems can cost you a lot of money.

Fortunately, these days most of us have 24/7 access to email or texting through their laptops and smart phones which has made receiving alarms in a timely fashion much easier than in the past.

In this third post of our “I Can Do That?” blog series, we’ll cover how to get alerts to problems ASAP and also share some specific use cases for email/SMS notifications using Cogent DataHub.

Do you need to log specific process data to a database or text file based on some predefined variable or condition? We typically refer to this concept as "conditional" or "condition-based" logging.  It sounds simple enough but without a plan, it can be a tricky task to implement.

In this post, I'll introduce you to the considerations involved with conditional data logging and cover how OPC Data Logger can easily be set up to log data based on a variety of conditions without a lot of headaches.

Do you need to directly connect data points or variables in different equipment, processes, or software? This concept is commonly referred to as ‘point-to-point bridging,’ and the DataHub bridging capability allows multiple data sources to communicate with each other in real time.

In this second post of our “I Can Do That?” blog series, we’ll help users like you get the most out of your DataHub by understanding the bridging feature in detail and how this feature can often be combined with other features to accomplish some very powerful automation tasks.

OPC has been around as an industry standard since 1996.  If you’ve been working in the space very long, you have probably heard all the different acronyms thrown around.  If you’re new, well there are different specifications in the OPC software interoperability standards that are used to meet different information integration needs.

In this first post of our “I Can Do That?” blog series, I’ll explore examples of the connections between different OPC standards we hear about from users, ways to address them using OPC Gateway software, and use cases highlighting solutions we’ve seen other users implement successfully.

There are some nice, time-saving updates available in TOP Server V6.2.  In case you happened to miss it, I did a high-level post shortly after the release giving you an overview of the four biggest features from V6.2 - click here to see that post.

Today, I'd like to go into the latest update to the Siemens S7 Ethernet driver in TOP Server V6.2.  Keep reading to find out about updates to the automatic tag generation functionality in the S7 Ethernet driver for supporting the latest Siemens programming package, TIA Portal.

A Register Number is a time-saving special OmniServer element that allows you to configure one item that is requesting the same type of memory or offset in a device instead of one item for each memory or offset location.

In this video blog, I show you how to get started using registers to more efficiently build an OmniServer protocol without having to manually create an item for every piece of data whenever possible.