Software Toolbox Technical Blog

OPC Router 5.6 introduces a new approach to integration—focused on speed, simplicity, and reusability. At the center of this release is the Solution Gallery, designed to help you move from idea to live system much faster.

Integrating specialized hardware into your control system shouldn't require a computer science degree or a massive budget for custom software development. Yet, many plants struggle with a "Zoo of Automation Hardware:" a collection of non-standard devices like barcode scanners, weigh scales, and sensors that simply don’t speak Modbus or Ethernet/IP.

It was that time of year again, time to prove it at the ProveIt! Conference. I'll be honest, when we attended the premier of the conference last year, I was sceptic. Would this event be different from others and really focus on actually solving customer problems. I was proven wrong to doubt it. And this year it had already doubled in size, there was a definite buzz and excitement. ProveIt! is a User Community led event that we have enjoyed being a part of for the 2nd time this year. A lot of people are talking about the conversations they had at the event. My personal favorite line is from Dylan DuFresne: "The kind of stuff that only happens when people actually trust each other enough to be real." 

While Software Toolbox has been best known for connectivity solutions, we reintroduced ourselves at ProveIt! as a Full Stack Industrial AI company. Why bring AI expertise into a connectivity company? Glad you asked. Because Software Toolbox is undergoing a major transformation and is evolving to deliver connectivity + data platforms + AI readiness services + AI agents all at once. And because Industrial AI is no longer experimental. It is becoming a competitive differentiator. Yet many initiatives stall. Not because the value is unclear, but because the foundation is missing. In industrial environments, AI depends on trusted connectivity, real time data, and infrastructure that performs reliably at the factory and at the edge.

Your organization has a custom developed application that performs important tasks, and you need to provide access to that software from an HMI, SCADA, Historian, MES, or other system acting as an OPC UA Client. Adding an OPC UA server interface to a custom application that either you've developed or that you've taken over from someone else can be a daunting task. This is especially true if you're unfamiliar with the low-level details of the OPC UA specification.

Accelerate OPC UA Server Development with the OPC Wizard Toolkit

The OPC Wizard UA Server Development Toolkit addresses this reality head-on by providing a rapid development framework that handles the underlying OPC UA nuts and bolts for you. In a recent webinar we covered how to add an OPC UA Server interface to a custom .NET software application using OPC Wizard, without having to become an “OPC wizard” yourself.

Rather than spending hours on end diving into the specifications and debugging protocol details, you can utilize simple read, write, and subscribe methods, resulting in less engineering time and faster ROI.

Since 2016, LGH File Inspector has been the trusted tool for AVEVA™ InTouch HMI users who need quick, reliable access to their historical data. Whether it’s pulling files from network drives, automating queries with batch files, or setting up scheduled reports, the Software Toolbox team has helped users integrate LGH File Inspector into a wide range of solutions.

In this post, I have collected and summarized tools and learning material to ease your experience in applying LGH File Inspector and help you get started quickly. Towards the end you will find the highlights of the webinar I hosted covering the new features of LGH File Inspector Version 4, that addressed several issues users previously faced.

Modbus has been the workhorse of industrial communication for decades, and it's not going anywhere. In fact, as manufacturers push deeper into digital transformation, IIoT connectivity, and edge-to-cloud architectures, Modbus devices are more likely than ever to be part of the data pipeline feeding your dashboards, AI models, and enterprise systems.

But reliable Modbus communication depends on a foundation most people overlook: function codes.

Whether you're a system integrator designing a multi-site SCADA architecture or a plant engineer troubleshooting unexpected data values, understanding Modbus function codes is essential for efficient, accurate communication with your devices. This post breaks it all down and shows how TOP Server takes the complexity off your plate.

The TOP Server^® from Software Toolbox and KEPServerEX^® from the Kepware division of PTC^® are well known connectivity solutions for extracting industrial automation data from PLCs and other devices, and integrating that data with virtually any HMI, SCADA, MES, Historian, or database on the market. These products have a global installed base serving sophisticated users across every industry imaginable.

As part of our ongoing Summer of IoT Blog Series, this week we will continue to review the exciting new release of Cogent DataHub Version 11. In a previous post, Cogent DataHub V11 Features to Be Excited About, we covered how Version 11 introduced significant updates, including enhancements to the OPC DA Client Connections and User Interface. In this post, we will deep dive into features aimed at enhancing user experience, increasing application flexibility, increasing configuration scalability, and reducing troubleshooting time.