joel-cody emulate opc-ua server setup

Joel, 7:19 AM
hey cody, what's the opc ua rockwell program you use? is it factorytalk linx opc ua connector???

Cody, 7:19 AM
Yeah FactoryTalk Linx 6.0

Cody, 7:19 AM
I've got a copy on the drive here if you want it

Cody, 7:20 AM
and some notes I scratched down about setting it up

Joel, 7:20 AM
ahh okay yeah i'll probably just get that

Joel, 7:20 AM
sweet

Joel, 7:20 AM
yeah even just for the emulator on my local machine, should boost performance loads

Cody, 7:21 AM
yeah absolutely. It's a little bit of a pain to set up, kind of like FTView with the topics and stuff

Cody, 7:21 AM
but not too bad. Way more reliable

Joel, 7:21 AM
yeah, worth it

Joel, 7:50 AM
i got that image for you too so i can pluck it in the drive if we don't connect this evening

Cody, 7:51 AM
yeah that'll be perfect. Then Hang can build me some NUCs Friday

Joel, 7:51 AM
nice. hang preppin for that NUClear warfare

Cody, 7:52 AM
it'll be like the Manhattan project up in here

Joel, 7:52 AM
hahahahahahaha

Joel, 8:08 AM
hey that whole file directory is 1.24 gb. the internet is pretty fast here so i can probably upload that in like an hour tops

Joel, 8:08 AM
onto dropbox, if you wanted it any earlier

Cody, 8:11 AM
I think I can wait. It'll take you all day to upload it from Gooding I imagine

Cody, 8:11 AM
We're commissioning like Tuesday next week so we can build the NUCs either Friday or Monday

Joel, 8:11 AM
haha maybe, ic ould be underestimating the upload speed here

Joel, 8:11 AM
but they must have done some bandwidth expansion for our guest acct, it has sped up considerably

Cody, 8:12 AM
oh really?

Joel, 8:12 AM
yeah we can actually download stuff

Cody, 8:12 AM
well if that's the case I can throw FTLinx on there if you need it

Joel, 8:12 AM
haha oh ya nice

Joel, 8:12 AM
i'll try the upload as well and see if it works out

Joel, 8:28 AM
upload went pretty quick - it's at projects\tamaki general\nuc client image

Cody, 8:29 AM
man you beat mine

Joel, 8:29 AM
haha really? that's surprising

Joel, 8:29 AM
unless FTLinx is like 3 gb or something

Cody, 8:33 AM
it's like 1.5GB

Cody, 8:34 AM
I think it's dropbox being slow... I'll put it on AWS

Cody, 9:38 AM
https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/files.tamakicontrol.com/FTLinx_Gateway.zip

Joel, 9:39 AM
nice,let me see if i can download this

Joel, 12:19 PM
i got the installer, thanks

Joel, 12:19 PM
do i need to apply any of the patches??

Cody, 12:19 PM
no I don't think so

Cody, 12:19 PM
they just came with it

Cody, 12:19 PM
yeah after you install hit me up and I'll give you instructions to set it up

Joel, 12:19 PM
oh ok, so just run the ft linx gateway installer and that's it?

Joel, 12:19 PM
alright

Cody, 12:19 PM
right. and it's not a terrible install - maybe 10 minutes

Joel, 12:34 PM
ok looks like i got it installed

Cody, 12:34 PM
ok so from my notes, you're going to want to set up your FTView directory

Cody, 12:34 PM
I think just open the start menu and type "Directory Config" or something and it should com eup

Joel, 12:34 PM
ah okay

Joel, 12:35 PM
yep i have a wizard loaded now

Joel, 12:35 PM
two checkboxes - network & local

Joel, 12:35 PM
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Cody, 12:35 PM
yeah do both

Joel, 12:39 PM
ok got that going

Cody, 12:39 PM
ok, now you want to open FT Administration Console

Joel, 12:40 PM
ok. network or local?

Cody, 12:40 PM
network

Cody, 12:40 PM
it's weird, because it's networked to local but I think you have to do everything through network for FTView to recognize it

Joel, 12:40 PM
hahah. good ol rockwell. never intuitive!

Joel, 12:41 PM
so in networks and devices it looks like my rslinx profile is in there

Cody, 1:00 PM
sorry I just got this

Joel, 1:01 PM
np np

Cody, 1:01 PM
yup so in Administration console, I think you need to right click in the tree and make a new "Application"

Cody, 1:01 PM
I called mine emulators

Cody, 1:01 PM
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Joel, 1:01 PM
ok perfect

Joel, 1:02 PM
yep got that, no dropdown though

Joel, 1:02 PM
supposing i need to add osmething to the emulators application?

Cody, 1:02 PM
yeah just add an FTLinx object

Cody, 1:02 PM
it's under new server

Joel, 1:02 PM
ah ok, found it

Cody, 1:02 PM
and not OPC-UA, just FTLinx

Joel, 1:03 PM
rockwell automaion device server (ftlinx) or something along those lines?

Joel, 1:12 PM
ok so i just added it, figured i didn't need any redundancy or alarms/events configured

Cody, 1:13 PM
yup perfect

Cody, 1:13 PM
ok now there's an OPC-UA Config thing. I think they have a button on top of your little tree pane there

Cody, 1:13 PM
the little blue OPC with a chain

Joel, 1:13 PM
yep ok

Joel, 1:14 PM
server config and ua server endpoints are boxed red

Cody, 1:14 PM
for scope, select your emulators application

Cody, 1:14 PM
then go to the UA Server Endpoints

Cody, 1:14 PM
make a new one and name it emulators or something. I don't think the name matters

Joel, 1:15 PM
ok. defaulting to port 4990 ok?

Cody, 1:15 PM
yup that's fine

Cody, 1:15 PM
and from there, you should be able to point a new Ignition OPC-UA server at that and connect

Joel, 1:15 PM
oh wow ok nice

Cody, 1:15 PM
now, you have to set up topics on the FTView Administration consold

Cody, 1:16 PM
and the PLC strings should follow a pattern: ns=3s=[{RSLinx Topic Name}]{Tag Name}

Cody, 1:16 PM
so you can find/replace all of your tags in Ignition to match that

Joel, 1:16 PM
ok cool

Joel, 1:17 PM
where are topics set up?

Cody, 1:18 PM
in Administration console under FTLinx > Communication Setup

Cody, 1:18 PM
it's just like in FTView

Joel, 1:19 PM
oh is it that pane that says device shortcuts?

Joel, 1:19 PM
you just add your topic names there and point them to desired devices?

Joel, 1:19 PM
yep it looks like it

Cody, 1:20 PM
yessir

Joel, 1:20 PM
that's pretty sweet

Cody, 1:20 PM
and I think once you make a topic and download a PLC to an emulator, Ignition should be able to browse to it from designer and you can pull a tag in the tree to make sure it works

Cody, 1:20 PM
I have had to restart the FTLinx OPC-UA service like 50 times to make it rebrowse PLCs but it only takes 5-10s to restart

Cody, 1:20 PM
still less flakey than emulator I think

Cody, 1:21 PM
or old emulator I should say

Joel, 1:21 PM
ok yeah. looking forward to seeing how that goes

Joel, 1:22 PM
thanks cody!

Cody, 1:22 PM
no prob. Hit me up if it's not working

Joel, 1:33 PM
when you say restart opc-ua, is that ignition side or ft linx side?

Cody, 1:33 PM
FTLinx

Cody, 1:33 PM
just like restarting IGS, you open up windows services and find it

Cody, 1:33 PM
were you able to drag in a tag?

Joel, 1:33 PM
ahh ok

Joel, 1:33 PM
no, the opc browser doesn't show anything

Joel, 1:34 PM
just the FactoryTalkLinxGateway folder but no devices

Cody, 1:34 PM
hmm did it show your Linx topic with notrhing under it?

Joel, 1:34 PM
no not even the topics

Cody, 1:34 PM
ah ok. yeah restart that and see it pops up

Cody, 1:34 PM
this is their first shot at OPC-UA so I think their implementation is still a little buggy

Joel, 1:34 PM
ah okay okay

Cody, 1:34 PM
and it's Rockwell, so it'll probably stay that way haha

Joel, 1:35 PM
still excited and hopeful with it. opc da com is blegh

Joel, 1:35 PM
FactoryTalk Linx Gateway OPC UA Server is the service i'm guessing?

Cody, 1:37 PM
yessir

Cody, 1:37 PM
sorry I'm helping Hang at the same time

Joel, 1:37 PM
haha oh yeah np and no rush

Joel, 1:38 PM
good thing you had the presence of mind to keep restarting

Joel, 1:38 PM
i probably would have just said, this doesn't work

Cody, 1:52 PM
working?

Joel, 1:53 PM
i've been stuck at that point, tried about 20 restarts but haven't seen anything different

Cody, 1:53 PM
ok so double check your RSLinx topic

Cody, 1:53 PM
you're clicking on it and it's going straight to the emulator?

Cody, 1:53 PM
they have a little hidden apply button on the bottom right

Joel, 1:53 PM
yeah each topic highlights the controller i've pointed it to

Joel, 1:53 PM
verify?

Cody, 1:54 PM
no I think the ok button is down there

Cody, 1:54 PM
but first you have to hit apply on the top left lol

Joel, 1:54 PM
yep i did that

Cody, 1:54 PM
if that doesn't work still, try a 2nd topic maybe

Joel, 1:54 PM
do yoiu have to press the OK button?

Cody, 1:55 PM
yeah I think so

Cody, 1:55 PM
after Apply

Joel, 1:58 PM
ah HA!

Joel, 1:58 PM
the OK i believe did it

Joel, 1:58 PM
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Joel, 1:58 PM
sweet!

Cody, 1:58 PM
haha RSLinx is such a flakey piece of shit

Joel, 2:00 PM
want to test the performance but got pulled on a small request from glanbia engineering

Joel, 2:17 PM
nice i think we have a winner. looks like ignition really needs the ns=3;s= there so i guess i'll have to do a [{Node, ns=3;s=[{Node F&R

Joel, 2:18 PM
on the datatypes

Cody, 2:18 PM
yeah and you'll have to get rid of the Global. too

Cody, 2:18 PM
but that's not soo bad

Cody, 2:18 PM
we had to do that with old emulator anyway I guess

Joel, 2:18 PM
ya that one was already gone

Joel, 2:18 PM
but ya i imagine it's Global. to blank

Cody, 2:18 PM
oh gotcha. Yeah and for strings, you don't need .STRING any more

Cody, 2:18 PM
or .DATA,SC82 on linx

Joel, 2:18 PM
ohh okay

Cody, 2:18 PM
and arrays don't need {Tag Name}.{Tag Name}

Cody, 2:19 PM
so those are the 3 changes you have to F&R

Joel, 2:19 PM
hahaha that's always a fun one

Joel, 2:19 PM
nice, rockwell cleaning up their tagging structure i guess

Cody, 2:19 PM
yeah a little bit

Cody, 2:19 PM
the two tagnames for arrays is an Ignition thing but I think they fixed that for the v21+ driver

Joel, 2:20 PM
oh i see

Joel, 3:45 PM
have you ever seen config error on tags' quality?

Joel, 3:46 PM
for some reason none of my tags are reading, i was able to get individual members to read at some point, but when i did a mass F&R on a tag export, reimporting them seemed to mess it up

Joel, 3:46 PM
but i can read the opc tags fine when i run them through the script console, so i know the data is there

Cody, 3:56 PM
yeah I think it's a service restart for OPC-UA and it'll work

Cody, 3:56 PM
mass imports seem to bug it

Cody, 3:56 PM
I honestly do have to restart that service a lot...

Joel, 3:58 PM
ahh okay

Cody, 3:58 PM
that fixed it?

Joel, 3:58 PM
hahaha i should have just tried that

Joel, 3:58 PM
well, no, i'm about to try it now

Joel, 4:20 PM
yeah i'mnot sure what's going on. there are a few okay ones but most of em are bad.

Joel, 4:20 PM
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Cody, 4:21 PM
hmm. You're sure the syntax is correct for strings?

Cody, 4:21 PM
that looks like the common thing that's wrong from that screenshot

Cody, 4:21 PM
I guess onHold and InfoAlm are also bad eh?

Joel, 4:21 PM
i'd have to check for selections

Joel, 4:21 PM
but yeah all the booleans for valves are wrong

Cody, 4:21 PM
but even others it's like 50% working?

Cody, 4:21 PM
hmmm

Joel, 4:22 PM
and if i put in the exact OPC path (without refs to {Node}), it still doesn't read

Joel, 4:22 PM
although in python it does

Cody, 4:22 PM
yeah that's ood

Joel, 4:22 PM
but before i was able to read it with the exact OPC path

Joel, 4:22 PM
before i'd made the mass changes that is

Cody, 4:23 PM
hmm and it's not coming back after restarting that service?

Joel, 4:23 PM
yeah, same errors keep arising

Joel, 4:23 PM
half good selectoins

Cody, 4:23 PM
very interesting

Joel, 4:23 PM
maybe the selectoins are okay

Joel, 4:23 PM
just have bad strings

Joel, 4:23 PM
but no devices are good

Cody, 4:24 PM
I might have to look at it in person. Are you here tomorrow or working from Gooding?

Joel, 4:24 PM
i'm in gooding again, but ya, it's just something i wanted to set up but not particularly pressing. so we can always look at it next week

Joel, 4:25 PM
haha i'm thinking about just starting from scratch and not making so many changes at once

Joel, 4:25 PM
i'd changed all the data types and then every tag in gooding (instead of one area at a time)

Cody, 4:25 PM
how many PLCs did you have loaded?

Joel, 4:26 PM
5 atm

Joel, 4:26 PM
maybe i'll just delete the other 4 topics

Cody, 4:26 PM
TBH you might try fixing those selection tags because the bad tags could be gumming it up

Cody, 4:26 PM
mmm I'd try fixing those datatypes first

Joel, 4:26 PM
oh okay

Cody, 4:26 PM
I think that could just cause it to throw more errors

Joel, 4:30 PM
hmm every member in the DT is just {Tag Name}.member

Joel, 4:30 PM
strings, bools, and ints

Joel, 4:30 PM
which is whwat the OPC shows for each member

Joel, 4:30 PM
so i'd guess the DT is ok

Cody, 4:31 PM
damn...

Joel, 4:32 PM
haha x.x i think i'm done looking at this for today

Joel, 4:32 PM
but ya not sure what bugged it, the good news is that i know it worked properly at one point, so i can always backtrack and try again

Cody, 4:32 PM
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Joel, 4:32 PM
yep taht's exactly how i have it, brackets and curly braces

Joel, 4:33 PM
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Cody, 4:33 PM
mother fecker

Cody, 4:33 PM
yeah idk...

Joel, 4:33 PM
haha so strange

Cody, 4:33 PM
we have about 5-6 PLCs loaded but maybe they aren't as big

Joel, 4:33 PM
okay

Joel, 4:34 PM
yeah i was about to ask how hard you loaded it

Cody, 4:34 PM
Permeate, CIC, Twin Odenberg, Lactose and WPC I think

Joel, 4:34 PM
hmm

Cody, 4:34 PM
CIC and Twin Odenberg are tiny though

Joel, 4:34 PM
sounds of similar size

Cody, 4:34 PM
and all other tags were removed from that Gooding gateway

Cody, 4:34 PM
and Twin

Joel, 4:34 PM
yeah. i can't be much bigger if i am at all

Joel, 4:34 PM
lacto and refrig are small

Joel, 4:35 PM
membrane, permeate, and wpc, two of which you have

Cody, 4:35 PM
so membrane is the only difference

Joel, 4:37 PM
anyway thanks for helping with the troubleshoot. i'll have to try again some other time

Joel, 8:08 AM
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Joel, 8:08 AM
haha i'm finding this behavior particularly interesting

Cody, 8:08 AM
hmm that is...

Cody, 8:09 AM
same datatype, so they're on the same scanclass

Cody, 8:09 AM
man I'm actually leaning towards that being a performance issue :/

Joel, 8:09 AM
that would make sense

Joel, 8:09 AM
but you got yours working which is good news

Joel, 8:10 AM
maybe doing it on the server hardware makes it perform betteR?

Cody, 8:11 AM
mmm possibly. I gave our emulator VM 8GB RAM and 8 Cores

Cody, 8:11 AM
but it doesn't seem to be using all of that

Cody, 8:11 AM
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Joel, 8:11 AM
hmmm yeah, my cpu < 50% and ram is 19/32

Cody, 8:12 AM
we've got about 40k tags we're pulling from the various emulators right now

Joel, 8:12 AM
yeah that's a fair amount

Cody, 8:12 AM
so not too many. I'll bet you have more if you have 4 gooding PLCs loaded

Joel, 8:12 AM
i've reduced my topics down to LF only

Cody, 8:13 AM
and it's still flakey?

Joel, 8:13 AM
yeah. i did only change one datatype though

Joel, 8:13 AM
which were devices

Joel, 8:13 AM
didn't want to do a mass sweep again

Cody, 8:13 AM
are the other tags still in the system?

Joel, 8:14 AM
in ignition i left everything as they were

Joel, 8:14 AM
so basically all of gooding but most of them are going nowhere

Cody, 8:14 AM
I hate to say it but maybe delete some of those other tag folders

Cody, 8:14 AM
as long as they're pointing to the RSLinx OPC server it'll be bogging it down with errors I bet

Joel, 8:15 AM
ah ok

Joel, 8:15 AM
i'll do that then

Joel, 8:16 AM
oh wow

Joel, 8:16 AM
yeah that seems to have made all of the devices happy

Joel, 8:16 AM
note taken

Cody, 8:16 AM
ok good. Yeah maybe just build it up one device at a time with complete datatypes

Cody, 8:17 AM
I think if you re-import a device folder you'll have to restart that service again

Cody, 8:17 AM
but oh well. Still better than DA maybe

Joel, 8:17 AM
haha yeah. nice

Joel, 8:17 AM
thanks!