OPC – «Open Platform Communications» – is a set of standards and specifications for manufacturing telecommunication. OPC specifies the transfer of real-time plant data between control devices from various producers. OPC was designed to process control hardware and support a common bridge for Windows-based software applications. OPC was aimed to reduce the number of duplicated effort performed by hardware manufacturers and their software partners.
The most typical OPC specification, OPC Data Access (OPC DA), is supported by Tibbo OPC Server. Any device compatible with the Tibbo AggreGate protocol can be a data source. AggreGate is a white-label IoT integration platform using up-to-date network technologies to control, configure, monitor and support electronic devices, along with distributed networks of such electronic devices. It also helps you collect device data in the cloud, where you can slice and dice it in alignment with your needs. In addition, the platform lets other enterprise applications transparently access this data via the AggreGate server.
Tibbo OPC server has embedded AggreGate network protocol. It can both interact with any Tibbo devices via AggreGate agent protocol and connect to AggreGate server. The AggreGate agent protocol open-source solution is published for Java, C#, and C++ programming languages, so your connection scheme is not restricted to AggreGate server or Tibbo devices only.
Examples
A simple example: TPS reads Tibbit #29 (Ambient temperature meter) and forwards data to OPC server via AggreGate agent protocol.
A more complex example: we have a Windows-based PC controlling a wood processing machine by means of AggreGate server through the Modbus protocol. If Tibbo OPC server is linked with AggreGate server, the data from the machine is sent to Tibbo OPC server, and therefore, we can operate and monitor the machine via any OPC client.
Technical Specification
-
Compatibility with Windows XP/2003 or later (Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 redistributable is required - installed automatically)
-
Support of DA Asynchronous I/O 2.0 and Synchronous I/O with COM/DCOM technology
Tibbo OPC Server transmits the information on the Value, Quality and Timestamp of an item (tag) to the OPC Client applications. These fields are read from the AggreGate variables.
The process values are set to Bad [Configuration Error] quality if OPC Server loses communication with its data source (AggreGate Agent or AggreGate Server). The quality is set to Uncertain [Non-Specific] if the AggreGate variable value is empty.
In the following chart below you can see a concordance table of the AggreGate variables and the OPC data types:
| AggreGate Data Type | OPC Data Type |
|---|---|
| INTEGER | VT_I4 |
| STRING | VT_BSTR |
| BOOLEAN | VT_BOOL |
| LONG | VT_I8 |
| FLOAT | VT_R4 |
| DOUBLE | VT_R8 |
| DATE | VT_DATE |
| DATATABLE | OPC VT_BSTR (by default) |
| COLOR | VT_I4 |
| DATA | VT_BSTR |
To learn more about Tibbo OPC server, click here
