OPC Client Driver

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Introduction

The OPC Foundation defines open standard interfaces for industrial automation. The interface standards allow industrial software from different vendors to work together without the need for custom software interfaces.

The OPC Foundation defines two types of interface:

The Fernhill SCADA OPC Client driver acts as an OPC client application. The driver supports OPC UA Servers and OPC Classic Servers. Using the driver you can map Fernhill SCADA tags to items in an external OPC Server. Tag values can be read at a fixed interval, or on demand, or both.

Fernhill SCADA OPC Client Tags

The OPC Client driver provides these tag types:

Icon Tag Type Version Description
Server Icon OPC Classic Connection 1.3 A connection to an external OPC Classic Data Access Server.
Server Icon OPC UA Connection 3.69 A connection to an external OPC UA Server.

To configure a connection to an OPC Server, do the following:

  1. Create and configure one of these OPC Connection tags:
  2. Create I/O Data Point Tags to represent items in the OPC Server. For each I/O Data Point Tag you create:

I/O Data Point Tags

You can use these I/O Data Point Tags to represent individual data points in the OPC Server:

Icon Tag Type Version Description
Analog Data Point Tag I/O Analog Data Point Tag 3.12 Maps an Analog Data Point Tag to an external data source.
Digital Data Point Tag I/O Digital Data Point Tag 3.12 Maps a Digital Data Point Tag to an external data source.
String Data Point Tag I/O String Data Point Tag 3.12 Maps a String Data Point Tag to an external data source.
Word Data Point Tag I/O Word Data Point Tag 3.12 Maps a 16-bit Word Data Point Tag to an external data source.
Double Word Data Point Tag I/O Double Word Data Point Tag 3.12 Maps a 32-bit Double Word Data Point Tag to an external data source.
Long Word Data Point Tag I/O Long Word Data Point Tag 3.48 Maps a 64-bit Long Word Data Point Tag to an external data source.

OPC Interfaces Used

To maximize interoperability, the OPC Client Driver uses a minimal subset of the OPC Interfaces:

Server InterfacesGroup Interfaces
IOPCServerIOPCItemMgt,
IOPCSyncRead

Further Information

Fernhill SCADA Drivers

For information about other drivers available in Fernhill SCADA.

Glossary

For the meaning of terms used in Fernhill SCADA.