I have installed "Plantstreamer 1.0 r2" software on standard system. Now I want to connect to DeltaV V 7.3 OPC system. Whenever I try OPC login, it is a success but I'm not able to establish a database connection. Has somebody done a similar thing before? Can somebody provide me with instruction manual for establishing this communication?
Further I would like to know of freely available OPC clients software which can connect with DeltaV OPC and fetch historian data.

 

Hi Topak,

What is the error message you get? Are you trying to connect on the same PC, different PCs, across separate domains?

Do you have an OPC License for the DeltaV, and which flavour of OPC are you using, DA or HDA, as you will need the appropriate type of client to connect?

Presumably you can browse to the OPC server on the DCS but cannot establish a connection - if this is the case investigate your access permissions with regard to the OPC server and the DCOM setup.

If it's DeltaV, have you created a local account on the OPC Client box that is set to DeltaV admin with appropriate password?

Try troubleshooting using some of the white papers from the OPC Training Institute or Software ToolBox.

For free trial OPC clients talk to the guys at Software ToolBox and Matrikon or download from their respective web sites.

Note if you want to fetch historian data from the DCS then you need to get your strategy right, i.e. nature of the historian, embedded PI or Emerson propriety. Do you want to pull historical data, i.e. from the data archive, or real-time data at/prior to entering the data archive? What are you proposing for compression settings? Choice of approach means you chose the appropriate OPC Client, i.e. DA or HDA.

Drop me a line if you would like to discuss in more depth.

Regards,

Burnikell
graham.burnikell at intuitive. uk. com

 

Plantstreamer is our open source solution that can be used to log plant data in a PosgreSQL database. So, you have to install a PostgreSQL instance (http://www.postgresql.org) if you want to store (and not only view) the data. To connect, you provide the IP address/domain name of the database host (the database can obviously be running on the same computer) and a database user name and password. Once the database connection is established, you will be able to start the data logging process.

Please contact plantstreamer-support (at) ciengis.com if you need any assistance. By the way, currently we have 1.0 rc5 on our site.

Regarding the access to data in a historian, I am not sure if you are referring to OPC HDA. Plantstreamer supports OPC DA only.

Best Regards,
Andrey Romanenko
www.ciengis.com

 

Plantstreamer uses OPC DA. MatrikonOPC's OPC Explorer (http://www.matrikonopc.com/products/opc-desktop-tools/opc-explorer.aspx) uses OPC DA and can connect to DeltaV. You didn't mention whether you were connecting locally to the OPC Server or remotely.

In any case, you'll need to run your OPC Client as a user that has permissions to read from the DeltaV OPC Server. More info available at http://www.opcsupport.com

 

Hello,

I'm going to use your plantstreamer solution but I can not connect the plantstreamer client to my OPC server. I have an OPC DA server Matrikon (V1-2-3) on a one PC and my client OPC DA Plantstreamer on a another. The two PCs are on the same network. I have configure the DCOM of the PCs too.

I think I don't fill the form (OPC server Login) correctly when I'm starting Plantstreamer. Could you help me with that OPC server Login? Does it require a specific login, password ?

Thank you.
Pieters Langlois

 

Hello Pieters Langlois,

Plantstreamer will require you to insert a valid login information. Usually the username and password are the same ones as the ones used to login into the windows machine where the OPC server is located.

As for the host and domain you will have to find the <b>ip address</b> and <b>domain</b> for that machine.

This site can help you figure out the ip and domain:

http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/windowsnetworkin1/ht/findaddrwinxp.htm

Just make sure you do this in the machine with the OPC Server.

If this does not work then probably you have to configure <b>DCOM</b>, the <b>opcenum</b> service and/or the <b>firewall</b> in the server.

Best regards,

João Leal

 

Hello !

Thanks you for yours advises. Now it works perfectly!!

Best regards
Pieters Langlois

 

Hello again !

Thank you again for yours advises. I play with you OPC client and it is really great.

But I have just another question...

I have defined labels (R/W) on my OPC server. When I start my OPC client, I import the OPC server's labels. So, I have all these labels on my client screen.

Now, with my OPC client, can I change the values of these Labels or not ? I have read the user manual but I have not seen anything about that.

Best regards.
Pieters Langlois

 

Hello!

Plantstreamer does NOT allow to write to the OPC Server since its main purpose is to save/log data. It is a design decision! The underlying libraries for OPC-DA communication support writing to OPC items, however it could be seen as a security risk to allow a data logger to change values in the OPC server.

Best regards,
Joao Leal

 

Hello

Ok. Thank you very much!

Best regards !
Pieters Langlois

 

Hello,

It is me again ...

Now, I try to use your source code. I have to make an OPC connection without GUI interface or any Panel.

In fact, I would like use a light main where :

** The main open a connection between my client and a server (for the moment, any server)

** The main print out in my shell all the items in the table.

I have looked the source code given and I have found the "main.java". In it, I have seen anything about connection between Client-Server.

Could you give me some functions I have to used?

Thank you very much !

Pieters Langlois

 

Hello,

Creating a headless version (no GUI) of Plantstreamer will not be as straight forward as rewriting the main method. The main method is actually only used to launch the user interface.

We have already created a framework, named <b>PlantstreamerPortal</b>, that uses a headless version of Plantstreamer. It has been successfully running at a very large pretrochemical complex for more than 1 year. However, it does a lot more than just logging data, it also contains a <b>web application</b> that can be used to <b>analyse</b> and <b>display</b> the process data. Additionally, it also handles <b>OPC-AE</b>. In PlantstreamerPortal, all the data is accessible either by exporting to CSV or Excel files, or by a direct connection to the database. If you are interested in more details please contact me at <i>joao dot leal at ciengis dot com</i>.

Best regards,

Joao Leal
www.ciengis.com

 

Hello

Thank you for all your answers. I am going to try to read values of the OPC items.

(I can already connect my OPC client to my OPC server and print the item tree)

This is quite difficult...

Best regards

 

I have plantstreamer program v. 1.2.1 and it work correctly with windows windows server 2003. but when i try connect to windows server 2008, rpc event force windows restart.

OPC server is Matrikon. I configure it according to matrikon rules, and all working properly on windows 2008 server (standard) with matrikon explorer, but total crash with plantsreamer.

What can I do to plantstreamer worked properly with winserver2008?

j.w.

 

Jaroslaw,

As we have found out, it is a known issue/bug in Microsoft Server 2008 that is described here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2518423

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2401588

And it is related to DCOM.

Applying the recommended hotfixes to your MS Server should fix the problem.

Best Regards,
Andrey Romanenko