Home / FactoryTalk Optix / Optix for Edge
Description
FactoryTalk® Optix can be used in tandem with FactoryTalk View Site Edition by using the FactoryTalk Linx OPC UA Connector. In one use case, Optix can aggregate various data sources and become an OPC UA Server to send that data to the FactoryTalk View SE application.
The FactoryTalk Linx OPC UA Connector acts as a proxy between one or more Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) Servers and a FactoryTalk application, providing OPC UA data as tags.
Software used for the demonstration:
FactoryTalk Optix v1.6
FactoryTalk View SE v15
Transcript
(00:01) This video will take a look at a couple of examples where factor talk optics could be used kind of as an enhancement to factor talk view SCE or factor talk view site edition. And site edition of course is the larger um HMI distributed HMI um application from Rockwell Automation. It could be used as a station edition which is just a standalone HMI.
(00:30) Um as aworked station which is a standalone but interfacing withorked um other network devices um or as a distributed where you know it’s a it would be like a HMI server with with multiple clients connecting to those servers. And there are some uh use cases around having optics working kind of um in concert with Vue SC.
(00:56) And one of those use cases is just around um data aggregation which is kind of the example we see here on this screen. So got kind of two simple architectures just to kind of show as an example. Now um both are very similar um in what they’re doing. Uh this first one here is is just u you know we can use optics to kind of aggregate information from various sources such as OPCUA devices directly or you know of course rock wall controllers or third party devices or you know even MQTT and and other types of things like that. you
(01:35) know, we know from working with optics that optics, you know, has a lot of capability um to bring in, you know, various data sources, whereas USC doesn’t really have that capability um without some sort of um you know, middleware such as such as a keware or factor talk um links gateway or in this case we could consider using optics to do that.
(02:01) Um so in in this situation you know optics would be running you know locally somewhere. It could be on the same server. It could be on a skid out there. um gathering information from the various devices and then using OPCUA to send data into VSC and the the little um missing link here is the factor talk links OPCUA connector which comes um with factor talk vsc.
(02:30) The other um architecture is just a similar approach except for you know this is more of a SCADA look or a machine to machine type of situation where we might have um you know multiple skids out there uh gathering information from multiple sources and there may be some use cases where you might want the you know from unit to unit or machine to machine to communicate and you could do that with OPCUA between optics um the optics devices and then each of these optics um applications would be sending OPCU data up through that OBCUA
(03:09) connector and into view. So those are kind of two potential um use cases there. Now um let’s go ahead and uh and take a look at um get the oops got to get out of full screen. So, let’s go and take a look at the OPCUA connector and how we use that. It’s really straightforward um and pretty easy to use.
(03:33) If you’re looking for any kind of documentation around it, it would be found in the factory talk services um platform um help file. So, if you opened up uh touches like factory talk um if you opened up the um factor talk administration console, hit help, you get this right here. And there is a full section here on the OPCUA connector with um a lot of details and some examples on how to um how to use it and some you know particular use cases and even some diagrams as to how you might connect things.
(04:13) So always you know reference the u the help file. So to get this going um two pieces right we’re going to use optics first just to be an OBCUA server. So, we’re going to generate some data here inside of the optics application. And we’re going to use um the same thing I’ve used a few times where I’ve just used the the variable simulator that comes in the template library.
(04:37) So, there’s a um a variable simulator that will create a sine wave, cosine wave, and a ramp um you know, waveform. Um and I created two instances of that simulator. So I got simulator 1 and simulator 2. Then I uh took that data and I mapped it into my model folder. So I created a sim one in a sim 2 folder and I put you know sign one s two ramp one s2 cosine 2 ramp two.
(05:08) So all I did was took that data from the simulator and um organized it in the model folder or contextualized it um but basically put it into my own structure that will now get sent out over opcua. You can of course structure that data however you however you want. And the next piece to this is to set up the OPCUA server.
(05:36) So to set up the OPCUA server, we would essentially rightclick on OPCUA and we would say new server and that’ll give us uh our OPC UA server that we see here. And uh we just have a few things to set up. Uh the endpoint which in this case um is showing as local host with a port 5910 0. Um we’re going to keep that as is.
(06:05) And the other thing you have to create at this point is the nodes. Um you would have to uh hit the plus symbol and um add the uh you know the node that we’re going to publish. Essentially we’re going to publish the model folder. So whatever is inside this model folder this sim 1 sim 2 this structure this is what’s going to get um sent out on OPC UA.
(06:31) Um, and for example purposes, I’m going to go with the anonymous user and I’m going to go with um, pretty much all the security and certificates turned off just to kind of keep this simple for just testing and demonstrating. Um, the other thing that you can set up here are the number of connections that you allow um, to the OPCUA server.
(06:51) I’m going to set mine to two and um just so I can have, you know, a little OPCUA client also kind of connected to see what’s going on. And then the maximum number of subscriptions per session will be set to 10. That’s default, but you can change that setting if you want. And that’s all there is to do to set up the the the OPCUA server and optics.
(07:18) um point to the reference where the data is going to come from and set up some of these um you know basic um you know just some some of these basic properties around um number of connections and security and certificates. So let’s go ahead and start the uh the emulator so I get my OPCUA server up and running.
(07:42) So again the uh all optics is going to do it’s going to generate a sine cosine and ramp wave and I have two instances of it. So I have you know again simulator one simulator 2. I just tried to offset it a little bit just to see that the numbers are are different. All right. So that’s our OPCUA server essentially now running in the background.
(08:02) And like I said a minute ago I could use a little test client. Um, so I have the softings OPCUA client also installed in here. And if I wanted to, I could just verify and test that I am getting some information. Um, so kind of have it already set up and saved. All I’m doing is pointing to the uh opc.tcplohost col5910 0.
(08:33) That’s the exact same link um that was inside of optics there. Everything is local to this same machine. So we’re going to we could use local host here for these examples. Otherwise you would just put the IP address of the uh OPCUA server. And point of this was just to show that you know here’s our sign one cosine one ramp one and then two uh you know simulator 2 values as well.
(08:59) And we are getting data updating from the uh from the uh OPCUA server. If you know just to show if I were to stop simulator 2, we see here that simulator 2 data is basically now frozen, not updating where simulator 1 still is. So we’ll go ahead and start it back up again. And there it goes. Right. So just proving that we can make that connection. Now on to uh fire USC.
(09:27) So, just to save a few minutes, I’ve got a VSC project already created and open here, but nothing has been done to this. It’s just the the beginning shell of the project. Um, no screens have been developed, no communication data servers have been developed. So, um again the what we want to see here is we want to use the the factory talk links OPCUA connector and how do we use that? So, so in uh another thing to note is I did go ahead and create mine as a local station edition.
(10:04) So, I’m just using this as a station and again everything’s on the same machine. So, I’m making everything local uh just to kind of keep it somewhat simple. So, to use the OPCUA connector, we’re going to uh come up here to the project names. The project is called view SC station. going to rightclick and I’m going to say add a new server and we’re going to say opcua server which is going to be the factor talk links opcua connector.
(10:34) Now note our other options here is we can create a device server for rock wall devices. So it’s a factor talk links connection. We could set up an opcda server. Um, but we want to use the OPC UA server because that’s what uh Optics is going to uh use. If I could, you know, Optics is using an OPC uh UA or is an OPCUA server. So, we click on that.
(11:03) Um, this will open up the connector properties. You can give your connector a unique name. It defaults to connector one. Um I will leave it at that. And um we have this uh you know where’s the uh server where’s the computer that’s that’s uh hosting the server. And again since I’m using the uh the local station edition this is grayed out.
(11:30) So it’s going to be looking for something here on the local host. Uh next we come to the OPCUA servers tab. And now this is where we will define our server information. So um you the server name it’s OP it’s UA server01. We can give it a description. You can of course change the name as well.
(11:52) Um I could call it optics you know or whatever it’s coming from. I’m going to leave it default. Um and then the next piece is the endpoint URL. So once again that is going to be our um right here. That’s our end point URL. I could type it in or if I wanted to I can come back here to optics and I can copy it and we’ll come to um our endpoint URL and we will paste it.
(12:25) Um again I’m not using security for anything here but you do have the ability to to add u all the the different security levels encryption methods. Um, I’m going to use the anonymous user, but you could of course create uh a username and password to require you to to uh you know get connected into the OPCA server. That would have been back there in optic if we would have defined um the username and password.
(12:51) The data update rate we can use um you know either we could define our own or just use what the uh you know what’s coming from the server. Um and then um the other thing you could consider doing here is enabling the alarm and event support. So if you check this box and then then the priorities box essentially this will um place the uh will feed the um you know the alarms if you lose connection to the OPC UA server it’ll put this into the VSC alarm uh summary um as an alarm coming in.
(13:31) And that’s pretty much uh all you got to do to configure it. Go ahead and hit apply. And when I do that, we’re going to see that we’re going to get a little um dot here. And it starts out red, but then it quickly goes to green. So green means that we are connected. So USC is now connected to the optics opcua server.
(13:59) And I could say okay. Now when that happened, we uh we got this uh connector one got added right here. And there’s my UA server01. So if I wanted to double click on that, I can get back to the configuration that I just had. If I need to change something um and look at some of the other tabs here, which we don’t really need to uh to look at right now to configure anything, but if you need to kind of do some troubleshooting and looking at stuff, you could get to it right here.
(14:29) And notice that the green dot is there. So we still got our connection. So now to uh to use you know those tags that are coming from uh optics uh if I were to go ahead and create some sort of display here and if I were to you know put some uh some device on the screen such as a numeric display. Well, if I go to tags, um, and maybe I’ll do a refresh here real quick.
(15:02) So, here’s connector 01. Oops. Uh, sorry. Let me uh cancel that. Do this again. Go to tags. I didn’t mean to hit the plus symbol. I wanted to uh double click. I wanted to click on connector one. Here’s uh OP. Here’s the UA server01. And now we have our OPCUA server. We see our model folder.
(15:36) And there’s our SIM one and our SIM 2 folder. Um could click over here as well. So SIM one, there’s cosine one, ramp one, sine one. And if I go to the SIM 2 folder, cosine 2, ramp two, sine two. All right. So if I wanted to uh you know if I want to display the sign value in this numerical display. So there’s my my basically my string of how to you know route to that tag.
(16:05) I’m going to hit apply and hit okay. And then now if I were to actually fire up um USC the uh the client u we would be reading live data uh from that sine wave. Now one other little thing to show is that um something that comes along uh when you install factor talk vsc is you do get a little factor talk live data test client.
(16:34) So just like we had a um a test client here u with opc you know with the softing opcua test client which I’m going to go ahead and shut down. I’m going to go to the um I’m gonna choose local because I made this a local um you know local uh station edition. So here’s our um view SCE station. That was the name of my application.
(16:58) Going to say okay. It says you know create a group. I’m going to go ahead and leave it all default at group one right now. And then we can see here connector one UA server01. Uh go to the OPCUA server. There’s my model folder. Here’s my SIM one. There’s my cosigns uh cosine one ramp one sine one. So, I could go ahead and add these devices and say okay.
(17:39) And then uh right here is our value updating from optics. So um so Rockwell does give you a little test client that you can actually open up and just see data you know the data moving or you could of course use a uh third party OPCUA test client such as soft things or you know there are several other opcua ones out there that you could work with.
(18:09) So again just wanted to show that uh you know how we go about using the OPCUA connector. uh basically in factor talk USC we’re just going to come up here and create a uh add a new OPC way server. Now we could come back to connector one and um if you know we we could actually add an additional server uh if we wanted to a server too.
(18:34) So, you know, we can add more than one UA server. Um, if you want to and then we’ll go and delete this guy. Um, so, so we’re not just bound to just one um coming, you know, from one optics. And that kind of gets us back to, you know, when we go back and look at our picture here, you know, here we have three, you know, three separate optics applications each acting as an opcua server.
(19:02) So you know this fer togglings opcua connector would have you know one connection here uh another server connection here and a third server connection here. So we can do multiple or we can aggregate into one uh single.