I would like to request a feature to allow all OPC-UA tags from the Ignition Edge to be automatically populated and continuously updated on the Variable tags for use within PAC control. OPC-UA is very powerful in being able to serve as communication bridge between controllers. If it natively worked, I would be able to design my architecture to seamlessly update tags between a groov epic and a third party PLC (such as an Allen Bradley Contollogix or CompactLogix) to be able to migrate over IO to the groov epic.
This may not be a new feature since both Opto and Ignition support OPCUA.
The bit we need to untangle is that it seems you are looking to connect two servers together.
Clearly some middle-ware will be needed as a client.
Are you connecting with SNAP as well or just EPIC?
Hello! Thanks for the response. I am new here and am excited to learn more about this system!
I am working with just the EPIC for now. From my understanding, I was told that PAC control was only able to use tags through Ignition Edge’s OPC-UA server if I manually entered the tag into the variable database in PAC Control.
Just a little more about my specific use-case. I am trying to communicate the EPIC to a Rockwell Compactlogix controller. I have a tag database of about 500 or so tags (including data arrays) in the rockwell controller and I would like to have access to all of them in PAC Control. While I may or may not use all of them in PAC control, I would like to have live,direct, access to them. I was told the only way to use them was by enabling ignition edge and creating a variable in the variable database in PAC Control, one-by-one. As you can see, this is very inconvenient to have to do for 500 tags, and not scalable whatsoever.
I was told Codesys may be an option for this, but I would really like it Pac Control was able to do this.
TLDR; I want to read the entire live tag database from a Rockwell controller, in Pac control and then use those tags in my PAC control project.
The Ignition method is best used for just gathering and exchanging data, not for live, direct control. One other note on this, this would only allow for communications to Rockwell PLCs. This does not allow for direct access to say VFDs or remote I/O.
You are correct in that Codesys is the best option for this, as they have an ethernet/ip scanner module.
This method would allow you to connect to PLCs and devices such as VFDs and remote I/O.
Last to your TLDR, you can use the Rockwell Modbus TCP AOI(First link in search). It can be used as both a client and server. Then you can use the Opto 22 Modbus Integration toolkit for PAC Control to get your data from the Rockwell PLC into the EPIC.
For what its worth, we have utilized Ignition to pass data between AB and Opto22 on several system using expression tags. Tags have been used for both control and monitoring (bi-directional).
While some work is involved linking between the 2 systems (as it would be on any linking setup) the results is an independent interface that resides in the EPIC verses utilizing an external device ( PC / Server) and OPC linking software.
@kevino you mentioned having live access to the tags. Ignition give you live access to your tags, but no matter which approach you use, at some point you will need to link tags for control / monitoring purposes between the 2 systems.
