I’m trying to connect via third party OPC client to LCM4 controllers. I’m running Opto.OPCServer.2 on the client computer. But, reads and writes are EXTREMELY slow, on the order of 60 to 90 seconds. I am wondering if the LCM4’s aren’t OPC 2.0 compliant and that’s what’s giving me fits?
I also noticed something strange. I had an LCM4 stop accepting new sessions, so I could not telnet to it, access it using Optoterm, or communicate via Mistc200. But, using my OPC client, albeit slow, I could still connect and read data from it.
These LCM4’s have MSENET 100 cards installed.
Hope someone can shed some light.
thanks
Hello cpirrmann, welcome to the OptoForums!
To answer your specific question, the LCM4s don’t know anything about OPC. The Opto OPC server(s) handle all that OPC communication, then communicate to LCM4s and PACs in a similar way that OptoControl and PAC Control communicate to them.
However, in the PAC firmware, we made significant improvements to how fast that communication occurs, so I’d highly recommend moving at least the more time-critical info from LCM4s to PACs.
In the meantime, your comment about the sessions is interesting. You might do a Wireshark sniff and send the saved data to our product support team to ponder. I’d suspect that the session between the OPC Server and the LCM4 was still open. I’d want to check to make sure that the data appearing there was real/recent if you couldn’t connect to the LCM4 via another method. Why you couldn’t telnet, etc. is another question.
Do you know how you got into that state? Did a reboot of the LCM4 fix it? (Maybe just disconnecting and re-connecting the Ethernet cable, if you don’t want to reboot?)
FYI, there is this “performance” tech note you should check out. It references PACs but the concepts are similar.
Also see this page on migrating your hardware to SNAP PACs (there are options for doing a little at a time, if needed).
Hope that helps!
-OptoMary
HI Mary,
Can you give me a different link or title to the technote? The one you posted takes me to the Documents home page and I don’t know what to search for.
We do have some Pacs in service but I despair that we would replace the LCM4’s when they’re still working well, aside from the OPC issue.
As far as the sessions issue, we postulated that since I had not restarted the computer which was using the OPC client, the connection remained open as you surmised. We believe that had I restarted the computer I would niot have been able to regain connection.
Thanks
Chris
Never mind, I got the technote. Another thought. We’re using Mistc200 as an IO server to the LCM4’s but we’re wanting to upgrade to 64 bit computers in the plant which is driving our move to OPC. Do you have a replacement for Mistc200 that runs on 64 bit computers that could access the LCM4’s?
Not sure why that link is not working, here’s another one (for those following along) this link or search for form 1776. I’m not sure about your Mistic200 question, I’ll forward that to our support team…
MAry, I have a quick question for you. The Opto OPC Server User’s Guide states: “PAC Display (and other OPC-compliant HMIs) can access any PAC Controller or ioControl controller
(Ultimate or LCE) as long as each controller has firmware 7.0 or newer.”
In our LCM$'s we’re running firmware revision R4.1f which I believe is the latest. How does that translate to firmware 7.0 if at all?
Those version numbers are unrelated (if I recall correctly, LCM4s never went above 4.1).
On your “Mistic 200” question, I asked our support team, and we need some clarification. In particular:
The part that we need more detail on is what he means by “Mistic200”. To me, the “Mistic 200” is the G4LC32 controller, but that doesn’t sound like what he means. It sounds like he’s talking about a piece of software.
Perhaps he is referring to the OptoServer component of the FactoryFloor software suite. If so, OptoServer has 2 main subcomponents: One is MDS (Mistic Data Server), which can be used by DDE and OPC clients and the other is OptoCDS, which can be used by OptoDisplay.
If they are using the MDS portion of OptoServer, then we would need to know if they are using the DDE portion or the OPC portion.
We don’t have anything newer that supports DDE.
For OPC, the OptoOPCServer does support Ethernet communication to OptoControl controllers (that have an M4SENET-100 Ethernet daughter card installed). However, OptoOPCServer has no performance optimizations, so each tag is scanned one tag per transaction, which is very slow.
The Mistc200 is an IO server that was put out by Standard Automation. It’s mentioned in a lot of the brochures and spec on LCM4’s here on your web site. It supports DDE which we also don’t want to use because Windows 7 64 bit is not supposed to support it. Or is it NetDDE? I’m not sure now. Anyway, the rest of the info you posted from the support team was very useful. Especially the last bit.
