OPC Toolbox

Note: this project may not proceed because what little may be added to existing packages will probably be bundled into pctools.utility

The recent availability of the OpenOPC software designed for use with python has initiated the idea of creating an OPC toolbox for python, that is user tools rather than programmer tools. This page contains the project information for this toolbox.

• OpenOPC can be found at http://openopc.sourceforge.net/

• This project hasn't started yet!

Objectives

Provide utilities that use OPC that can help a process control engineer (can OpenOPC already do this?):

• find and connect to OPC servers
• explore an OPC server
• configure variables of interest
• monitor values
• log values to a data file (not memory-based) (although the OpenOPC command-line version can already do this!)

• provide easy access to the server for DynSim2 (for real-time control prototype execution)

Methods

• pure python
• optionally provide a UI or GUI for ease of use
• look to documentation on the Matlab OPC toolbox for additional ideas

Issues

• OpenOPC doesn't seem to provide a server; only pyOPC does both server and client, but is OPC XML-DA rather than OPC DA. Perhaps both can be provided in the package somehow, so that XML-DA can be used when a closed system (server and clients) is being created that doesn't need outside compatibility, but use normal DA when only needing client functionality to an externally provided server.
• If a free OPC server is used (e.g. Matrikon), then both client and (what would have been the) server could communicate through the OPC server. Perhaps we don't need OPC server functionality at all!

Links

• http://www.matrikonopc.com/downloads/178/software/index.aspx - Matrikons OPC simulation server + OPC explorer (free for non-production use)

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