User Manual

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Cellular Networks
Automatic Tag Generation
Active OPC Server Lite and ioLogik series products support “Auto Tag Generation,” which eliminates the
headache of specifying target IP addresses, I/O channels, and data formats one by one, or editing and
importing configuration text files, since Active OPC Server Lite creates the tags for the target ioLogik
automatically. Simply select the channels that you need to update, and the tags are generated and
configured automatically. Generally speaking, tag generation is 50 times faster with Active OPC Server Lite
than with traditional OPC server packages. One of the biggest payoffs is that users will no longer need to be
trained to install and configure your OPC.
Dynamic IP/WAN Connection
Unlike the fixed IP requirements of Ethernet I/O with a traditional OPC server, Active OPC Server Lite and
ioLogik products provide the flexibility of configuring the ioLogik to use dynamic IP addresses. The ioLogik
connects directly to the Active OPC Server Lite instead of being polled, which makes dynamic IP addressing
and WAN Access to the Ethernet I/O device possible, and adds even greater flexibility by allowing
connections across firewalls. I/O devices for traditional data acquisition applications are not capable of
using this approach.
OPC Fundamentals
OPC (OLE for Process Control) is an industry standard created by the collaboration of a number of leading
worldwide automation hardware and software suppliers, working in cooperation with Microsoft. The standard
defines methods for exchanging real-time automation data between PC-based clients using Microsoft
operating systems. “The OPC Specification is a non-proprietary technical specification that defines a set of
standard interfaces based upon Microsoft’s OLE/COM/DCOM platform and .NET technology. The application
of the OPC standard interface makes possible interoperability between automation/control applications, field
systems/devices and business/office applications. Traditionally, each software or application developer was
required to write a custom interface, or server/driver, to exchange data with hardware field devices. OPC
eliminates this requirement by defining a common, high performance interface that permits this work to be
done once, and then easily reused by HMI/SCADA, control and custom applications.
OPC simplifies system integration in a heterogeneous computing environment. However, functions such as
security, batch and historical alarm, and event data access belong to the features that are addressed. OPC
interfaces can be used in many places within an application. At the lowest level they can get raw data from the
physical devices in a SCADA/HMI system, or from the SCADA/HMI system in the application. The architecture
and design makes it possible to construct an OPC Server that allows a client application to access data from
many OPC Servers provided by many different OPC vendors running on different nodes via a single object.
Just 5 seconds to create 20 or more tags
It takes 2.5
minutes to
create only 1 tag
General OPC Server -
Many queries
Active OPC Server -
No queries
ioLogic
5 steps for channel, interface, and protocol definition: take 20 seconds.
13 steps for device, IP address, and other communication parameters: take 30 seconds.
1 step to look up address table: takes 100 seconds
5 seconds to select channels and update configuration by clicking the button