Connect to Ignition OPC server from external Python application

Ignition
1

Hi,

I'm using Ignition 7.9.18 inside our company and I want to know for pure curiosity if there is any chance of connecting an external python 2.7 application and read OPC tag values from there?

OPC UA library for python isn't a problem because that can be easilly installed. The real problem is that I cannot open the connection with opc.tcp// uri and connection fails due to error or timeout.

I'm aware of that configured opc tags must be exposed to read any value from them. Is there any configuration in Ignition that allows other python application or external OPC server to trully connect to the Ignition OPC Server?

The reason for this is the capability to debug scripts more conveniently and efficiently in external editor (like PyCharm)

Thanks for help

2

Yes, should work just fine. You might need to make sure the Ignition OPC UA server is bound to an address reachable by wherever you're running your client and that the firewall isn't blocking it.

3

Yes. You will have to reconfigure Ignition to listen on a reachable interface. And set up some security. By default, it only listens on localhost for a loopback connection from itself.