The OPC UA Collector Plugin

This Collector Plugin provides options to connect and subscribe to tags configured in a OPC UA Server.

Example 1 - Multiple Topics in One Subscription

Example 2 - Multiple Subscriptions 

Settings & Security

Subscriptions

Introduction

The Collector config provides a front end editor for the OPC UA Collector. By default, this is found at localhost:4521 or the appropriate port number if you have multiple Collectors.

Select the Config tab.

This quick 5 minute video will cover the basics of setting up your OPC UA logging session.

Multiple Topics in One Subscription

Tags are added to an OPC UA logging session via a subscription. A single subscription should be less than 10,000 tags, and multiple subscriptions are allowed. Each subscription is built based on a defined tag pattern, rather than hand-selecting individual tags.

These patters are called Topics and can be a single pattern or an array of patterns to match the tags in the OPC UA Server. Any tags matching the topic structure will be added automatically.

In this example, all tags prefixed with either Timebase Load Test.PLC 01.000000 or Timebase Load Test.PLC 01.100000 will be added to the subscription:

{
  "Settings": {
    "Url": "opc.tcp://<OPCUAHostOrIPAddress>:<OPCUAServerPort>",
    "Subscriptions": [
      {
        "Interval": 100,
        "Topics": [
          "Timebase Load Test.PLC 01.000000.#",
          "Timebase Load Test.PLC 01.100000.#"
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

One can add multiple subscriptions with multiple Topics and Intervals

The config below will create 2 subscriptions to the OPC UA Server with an interval of 100ms and 1000ms each. Each subscription has 2 different topic patterns defined to match tags on to add to the subscriptions.

"Settings": 
 { 
  "Url": "opc.tcp://<OPCUAHostOrIPAddress>:<OPCUAServerPort>",
  "Subscriptions": [     
   {       
    "Interval": 100,       
    "Topics": [         
      "Timebase Load Test.PLC 01.000000.#",         
      "Timebase Load Test.PLC 01.100000.#"      
    ]     
   },
    {       
    "Interval": 1000,       
    "Topics": [         
      "Timebase Load Test.PLC 01.200000.#",         
      "Timebase Load Test.PLC 01.300000.#"     
    ]     
   }   
  ],
}

Settings & Security

The following settings can be set for the OPC UA  plugin:

Connection

• Url string required The fully qualified url for the OPCUA server (e.g. opc.tcp://opcua.demo-this.com:58810)
• SessionTimeout int Timeout of the OPCUA session (ms). Default value is 60000.
• KeepAlivePeriod int Interval between periodic signals sent to the OPCUA server to confirm it is reachable (ms). Default value is 10000.
• ReconnectPeriodMaximum int Maximum interval between periodic attempts to reconnect to the OPCUA server (ms). Reconnection attempts will start immediately, but then exponentially backoff until this maximum period is reached. Default value is 15000.
• BrowseInterval int Refresh Interval for Browsing the OPCUA Server for new Nodes. Defines the frequency (in minutes) at which the OPC UA server's namespace is browsed for new nodes. A lower value results in more frequent checks and faster updates, while a higher value reduces network traffic at the expense of update latency. The default is 30 minutes.

It may be helpful to watch this demonstration of how the security and authentication settings are configured as well as the error messages that you may experience while dialing in these settings.

Authentication

• Username string The username required to authenticate with the OPC UA Server
• Password string The password required to authenticate with the OPC UA Server. If a Username is provided, then a Password must also be provided.

Security

• SecurityPolicy string Defines the encryption and hashing algorithm used to secure OPC UA communications. Options include None, Basic256, Basic128Rsa15, Basic256Sha256, Aes128Sha256RsaOaep, or Aes256Sha256RsaPss. Default value is None.
• SecurityMode string Defines how the security policy is applied to message exchanges. Options include None, Sign, or SignAndEncrypt . Default value is None.

Certificate Management

• ApplicationSubjectName string Used to uniquely identify the client application (CN=Common Name, O=Organization, OU=Department, C=Country, DC=Domain Component)
• ApplicationStorePath string Specifies the directory where an application's certificates and private keys are stored
• TrustedIssuerStorePath string Specifies the directory that stores certificates from trusted Certificate Authorities
• TrustedPeerStorePath string Specifies the directory that contains certificates of other trusted OPC UA clients and servers
• RejectedStorePath string Specifies the directory where certificates are placed if they are not trusted or do not pass validation checks
• AutoAcceptUntrusted bool Allows automatic acceptance of untrusted certificates. Default value is true.

Subscriptions

• Subscriptions array of Subscription required

Subscriptions

Interval

• Interval intThis represents the cyclic rate at which the subscription executes and attempts to send a NotificationMessage to the client

Tagname Prefix

• TagnamePrefix string A constant string to be prepended to the node name for uniqueness in this subscription. If left empty, the node name is used as is. This is useful if multiple identical pieces of equipment need to write data to a dataset. A tag prefix would then ensure uniqueness in tag names when created.

Topic Definition

• TopicDefinition string A dot-delimited string describing the semantic keys for each topic segment (e.g. enterprise.site.area.machine). Topic segments beyond those defined here will be ignored.
• These segments can be used to add dynamic fields to your tags based on the values of these keys in your Topic structure. Looking at our example topic of ACME.Austin.Packaging.Capper1, enterprise will resolve to "ACME", area to "Packaging" and machine to "Capper1".
• These fields can be added to your tag definition using the Fields property defined below.

Fields

Fields are metadata key/value pairs applied to all tags in this subscription. Defining these key/value pairs will add Fields to tags in the dataset, allowing metadata to be extracted directly from your source systems where available. Fields are useful to classify, group, and filter tags based on attributes like enterprise, site, area, machine or device associated to the tag.

Static Fields

Fields can be defined a static text:

"Fields": {
   "Enterprise": "ACME",
   "Site": "Austin",
   "Area": "Packaging"
 }

Topic Fields

Together with the TopicDefinition configuration above, fields can be defined to extract values from the topic structure:

"Fields": {
  "Enterprise": "[Topic:enterprise]",
  "Site": "[Topic:site]",
  "Area": "[Topic:area]",
  "Machine": "[Topic:Machine]"
 }

"Fields": {
  "Id": "Id-[Topic:area][Topic:machine]"
 }

Topics

Configure your subscriptions to have less than 10,000 tags per subscription. Multiple subscriptions are allowed.

• Topics array of string Topics are case-sensitive and composed of one or more levels, separated by a dot ("."). "+" represents a single-level wildcard (e.g. "rooms.+.temperature"). ."#" represents a multi-level wildcard that can only be used as the last character in the topic, preceded by a dot (e.g. "rooms.#"). 
• Filter string A tag filter is case-sensitive regex string applied to the resultant tagnames (e.g. "Line 1|.*RPM$" will exclude any tagname that contains "Line 1" or ends with "RPM". The regex string can be used to specify multiple filters where required.