Software Toolbox Technical Blog

So you've been tasked with bringing data from a new device (maybe a weigh scale or barcode scanner or RFID system) into your HMI/SCADA system.  But you just have a protocol document from the manufacturer.  And for this new device, there is no existing, off-the-shelf connectivity driver or server available.

So what now? Do you contact a custom software development house?  That gets very expensive and time-consuming very quickly.

This post, the first of three, goes through what to look for in that protocol document from the manufacturer to know how to begin using OmniServer to integrate your device without requiring custom code in a fast, affordable manner that provides industry-standard client interfaces such as OPC DA and UA.

A Topic Variable is a flexible special OmniServer element that gives you the ability to define a device specific variable such as a Device ID at the OmniServer topic level.  This effectively makes your OmniServer protocol reusable for those devices using the same protocol, since you can now specify the value of the variable when creating the OmniServer topic instead of creating a protocol for each device with the value hard coded.

In this video blog, I show you how to get the most from your OmniServer by using topic variables with your protocol to reduce your engineering time and effort to create an OmniServer protocol.

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.

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.

There are several useful updates 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.

Today, I'd like to give you a more detailed review of the current model support available in the Mitsubishi Ethernet driver in TOP Server V6.2.  Keep reading to find out about new device model support and previous read and write performance enhancements that also apply for these newest models of Mitsubishi controllers.

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.