I have a customer with Kepware running on a PC with the Ethernet IP driver. They want to be able to read and write to our Opto system using the Kepware.
On the Opto side of things there are several possibilities. There is an S1 running a strategy that has two R2 racks with IO Modules. We are adding an Epic PR2, connecting it to the S1, that will be running full Ignition 8 Gateway.
Do I have any options for connecting to the Kepware Ethernet IP driver?
First, a question: Is the Ethernet IP driver you’re referring to the ODVA EtherNet/IP driver (common on Rockwell platforms)?
Assuming the above is correct, then:
If you only need I/O data, then a connection directly to the R2 brain using EtherNet/IP would work, assuming the Kepware PC has an ethernet connection directly to the R2s.
If you need controller data, in particular, PAC Control variables and tags, this isn’t currently possible as the PAC Control strategy doesn’t support EtherNet/IP “adapter” functionality (aka “EIP slave”).
If you are adding an EPIC PR2, then the cleanest approach would be to use CODESYS on the EPIC, and the available EIP Adapter library for CODESYS (available from the CODESYS Store). Then, Kepware would connect to the CODESYS application running on EPIC over EtherNet/IP, which of course is connected to the R2 racks as remote I/O.
Another approach would be to use EPIC plus your choice of controller runtime (PAC Control or CODESYS) and connect from Kepware to the controller runtime via OPC UA. This would use the OPC UA Client capability in Kepware connected to either the groov Manage Data Service OPC UA Server, or the embedded OPC UA Server included with CODESYS.
Hope that helps. Cheers, -Benson
Thanks Benson.
I will have to find out more details on the Kepware, but we were told that it was not the Industrial Suite and that it is as minimal package as possible to save cost. But I suspect its the ODVA Ethernet/IP driver.
The Kepware needs 6 analog 4/20 ma inputs, which could potentially come from the R1 directly, but the IO racks are all full, so I have a 4/20 ma card in the new Epic. The Kepware also needs to write several control strategy variables into the S1 or the Epic (not using CodeSys).
I’ll give the OPC UA Server approach a shot and report back.
The Kepware connects to the Epic OPC UA Server wonderfully.
I watched Terry’s Quick Start video and set the Epic up as a server in minutes and had the Kepware connected and working in a few more minutes. https://blog.opto22.com/optoblog/groov-rio-now-with-opc-ua