Hongke FLEX Dispatch integrates powerful tools such as OPC UA data aggregation, simulation, firewall traversal, etc., which can greatly reduce your equipment and data management and operation and maintenance costs!
Practical meaning
General OPC UA connection requires a separate connection between each client and server. This connection method will greatly increase the management cost when a client connects to multiple servers at the same time. The use of physical devices such as OPC UA gateways can certainly integrate data, but this solution is not so suitable for the situation where multiple OPC UA servers are located in multiple locations, and it will also bring additional equipment installation and maintenance costs.
The data integration function (Federator) of this FLEX Dispatch is realized by general PC software equivalent to OPC UA gateway. It can run directly on the terminal computer, and directly process the data after integration, or it can be distributed again after the data is integrated and processed on the intermediate computer.
Introduction to dispatch
The OPC UA Explorer provided by Hongke is a free OPC UA universal browser client, and a powerful tool for OPC UA related software and hardware debugging. And FLEX Dispatch is a powerful tool that integrates OPC UA data aggregation, simulation, firewall traversal and other functions. These functions depend on the use of OPC UA Explorer for configuration.
If you want to use other advanced functions of FLEX Dispatch, you need to learn to use the most basic data aggregation (Federator) function. Below we will teach you how to get started with the Federator of FLEX Dispatch.
Federator function operation
Practical preparation
Hardware:
an x86 host (win10 is taken as an example in this article, it is recommended to choose win10 64-bit professional or enterprise version, the software supports Linux, and a virtual machine can be used to replace the physical host)
Software:
✔ Hongke Matrikon OPC UA Explorer
✔ Hongke Matrikon FLEX Dispatch for Windows
(all software can be contacted by Guangzhou Hongke for a one-month trial)
Note:
a) When you download and install the Matrikon software for the first time, choose to install all components by default, which will include the environment required for OPC UA communication to avoid unexpected errors.
b) In the Windows system, you need to open the group policy to set a user who can log in as a service.
c) Please remember the instance name and port number set during FLEX Dispatch installation (the default port number is 55000).
Practical steps
Matrikon FLEX Dispatch is the core software for data aggregation and simulation in this experiment, but the software itself does not have an interactive interface. The browsing and configuration of specific data needs to be implemented in Matrikon OPC UA Explorer, so we can open it directly after the installation is complete OPC UA Explorer, the following interface will be displayed.
Click Add New Server in the upper left corner, and a panel for adding a server will appear on the right side of the main interface. We will select the FLEX Dispatch server in this panel and connect to it.
Under normal circumstances, the installed FLEX Dispatch server will be automatically displayed in Local Discovery. If it does not appear, it does not matter. You can enter the IP address of 127.0.0.1 and the port number set during installation to search. After finding it, choose a security scheme. Select User Details in the Authentication tab, the default account is admin, and the password is blank. .
The first connection may prompt that the certificate is not trusted. At this time, you need to cut all the certificates in C:\ProgramData\Matrikon\FLEXDispatch<your FLEX Dispatch instance name>
\pki\DefaultApplicationGroup\rejected\certs
to
C:\ProgramData\ Matrikon\FLEXDispatch<your FLEX Dispatch instance name>
\pki\DefaultApplicationGroup\ trusted \certs
folder.
If it prompts Connection for …… failed due to BadLicenseLimitsExceeded: The server has limits on number of allowed operations / objects, based on installed licenses, and these limits where exceeded. (0x810F0000).
You need to restart the computer and try to connect again.
After connecting, you will enter the data view. The data source will contain a simulation data source by default. Browse the file tree
Root> Objects> DispatchConfiguration> DataSources> SimulatedData> Data> 2_Dynamic, here will list some simulation data tags, such as Boolean, Int16, String, etc., right-click on any of the labels and select Monitor Item to view the current simulation value.
In the connected state, we can also add and edit other simulation data sources and real OPC UA data sources in the Dispatch Configuration view (the third button from the top left, click to enter) (adding a data source actually uses FLEX Dispatch data integration function): In the Dispatch Configuration view, select the Dispatch Federator Data Sources tab, if you need to add a simulation data source, select Simulation DataSource, and enter the data source alias in the text box on the right, and click the plus sign to add it. Set up
If you add a real OPC UA data source, select UA DataSource and add it after entering the alias. The real data source needs to be further set after adding.
After clicking the Settings button, the following interface appears. At this time, we need to enter the link of the OPC UA server in the Endpoint Url of Connection Point, and then select the security policy supported by the server below, choose anonymous login or enter the account password according to the actual situation, and tick Select Enable and click Apply. If the server is already on and waiting for connection, then OPC UA Explorer can already connect to the server at this time.
After the configuration is complete, you can immediately find the new data source folder in the file tree Root> Object> DispatchConfiguration> DataSources folder of the data view (the second button from the top left), and wait for the background automatic configuration to complete. You can browse the data of the real OPC UA data source.
At this time, other computers in the LAN where the client host is located, or other OPC UA clients on the client host connecting to the FLEX Dispatch server, can also access the same results.
Conclusion
At this point, we have been able to aggregate data from multiple OPC UA data sources to a FLEX Dispatch server through FLEX Dispatch's data integration function (Federator).
After this, the OPC UA application on this machine or even on other computers in the local area network can easily establish a connection with multiple data sources that have been aggregated by connecting to the Url provided by the server.
Benefiting from this, developers can transfer their precious energy from the issue of how to maintain multi-party data connections to the development of application functions.
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