Software Toolbox Technical Blog

Unlike off-the-shelf OPC servers and drivers that talk to specific devices or protocols and no others, OmniServer can be configured to talk to virtually any device or combination of serial, USB, or Ethernet connected devices with some outliers based on the complexity of the protocol. OmniServer helps you bring data that would otherwise be inaccessible into your process and business systems, helping you make more effective decisions. In our experience there are still many software applications that do not have open interfaces such as OPC for data input. This is particularly common in quality control and test stand applications. Operators use a digital device to capture a measurement, and then have to type that into their test stand or QC software. This slows testing rates and can be error prone. There is a better way. 

Welcome to our most popular blog post of the year! Each year we publish this blog post to help you learn, grow, and support empowering you to improve your business.

This post is our 7th annual sharing of references to learning resources including our ever hot Tech Support Corner, popular technical blog posts, and product capabilities that users have told us were the most helpful to them over the course of the last year.

2023 continued the challenges in supply chain, inflation, labor shortages, and exploding customer demand and in many cases technology continues to be a key part of dealing with the challenges.

If you've been keeping up with our previously released Cogent DataHub blogs, you're already aware that Cogent DataHub is renowned for its extensive connectivity. However, it's worth emphasizing that DataHub's connectivity includes MQTT, IoT, OPC DA, OPC UA, OPC UA Alarms & Conditions, OPC Classic Alarms & Events, Modbus, Excel, ODBC & more. These methods of connectivity help users realize that with DataHub, data has the freedom to seamlessly traverse across various platforms. We truly believe that "once the data is in DataHub, it can go anywhere, securely".

In the world of industrial automation and control systems, communication protocols play a crucial role in ensuring seamless data exchange between devices. Modbus started as a protocol used in Modicon, now Schneider Electric, PLCs in the 1970’s. It was adopted across the industry for its clarity and simplicity. With any protocol, including and especially with Modbus, there are areas where the parties to the communication, the client and server, can interpret the bit stream of data differently once exchanged because the Modbus protocol specification does not speak to those interpretations.

To achieve operational and business goals, many industrial automation system architectures are designed to push and pull data from a multitude of sources and destinations that come with a variety of formats. Bridging the gap between systems that use distinct standards and protocols can be challenging if the right tools aren't properly selected, and too often users resort to custom software. This is where users can leverage OPC Router’s ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) Tools—a valuable solution for seamlessly repackaging data across processes that use distinct standards or protocols.

In this article, we will briefly introduce the power of OPC Router’s ETL Tools, exploring a few use cases that highlight their role in structuring data into popular file formats. If you are not already familiar with what OPC Router is and what it can do for your particular process, you can visit the OPC Router website or the OPC Router Technical Guides with a Quick Start for New Users.

Cogent DataHub is primarily known for its extensive connectivity to OPC DA, OPC UA, OPC A&E, Databases, Historians, Excel, ODBC, DDE, Linux, Modbus and more. However, it is worth noting that this platform offers more than just connectivity. In this blog post, we'll cover the capabilities of DataHub’s Alarm & Notification Plug-In, which supports the configuration of custom alarms, events, and notifications. You can enhance your A&E Client applications by adding this feature to any DataHub License Pack, and generate alarms based on any data integrated into the DataHub, or simply send email/SMS alerts.

Developers that have leveraged our OPC Data Client toolkit for their custom OPC client development needs know that we’ve historically supported Python as a COM development language, but that had always come with limitations and a desire from our user base for a more modern option.

In the latest V2023.2 release, OPC Data Client now adds support for Python.NET, while also announcing the deprecation of the older COM approach. The newer Python.NET option offers many advantages including, but not limited to:

• Modern, maintained Python.NET package (pythonnet), instead of the older pypiwin32 package
• Added performance and reliability that comes from using the OPC Data Client .NET API over the COM API
• Access to .NET features, such as generics, methods overloads, and callbacks
• Easier coding

With the added support for Python.NET, we have also added more than 270 Python.NET examples to make it as easy as possible for our users to learn how this works within our product. PyCharm is now listed as one of the primary development environments.

Now that we have a basic understanding of the advantages that Python.NET has over its predecessor, let’s see it in action!

MQTT continues to grow in popularity and implementation within the industrial automation community. For those who are still new and learning about this protocol, MQTT is a light-weight transfer protocol built around a publish/subscribe architecture. In simple terms, MQTT can be compared to a mail envelope, providing structure and a common appearance with a supported delivery system, while the actual content of that envelope can vary widely.

Because of the ambiguity of message content, implementations of MQTT can be utilized for various needs across segments in our industry, though the varying message content presents its own issues that are outside the scope of this article. There are multiple solutions for providing structure and standards around the message content that we will discuss in future posts.

This blog will primarily focus on the reliability of message delivery based on the concept of Quality of Service (QoS). We will be utilizing the Cogent DataHub to showcase these options, as it can act as both the MQTT Broker & Client. It is important to note that this information can be applied to various MQTT implementations, including other Software Toolbox product offerings with MQTT, such as OPC Router or the TOP Server MQTT client driver.