I’m new to ignition and just downloaded designer. I’m launching a new project on localhost and following the “configure an alarm” training. Everything was fine until the guy in the video went to edit the OPC tag and add an alarm. So all I did was make an OPC tag like him and gave it a name but immediately when I applied changes the value and quality of the tag both said “Error_Configuration” and this is the same message I get when I make an Expression, OPC, or Query tag it says the same thing. I’m confused because I just started using it and it seems I already did something wrong?
If you edit the tag and select the option to ‘show diagnostics’, is there anything helpful in there?
If you click the ‘paragraph’ icon next to the red X (or hover over the X, perhaps?) is any more information shown?
A hunch: if you click the menu icon in the tag browser, do you actually have a tag group created named Default?
When I click the paragraph icon it shows the same information:
As for the tag browser when I click on ‘Edit Tag Groups’ it does show that ‘Default’ and ‘Default Historical’ are a group.
Does this mean that the tag I made could somehow not be coupled or exist under the Default tag group even though I created it while under the “default” option
At this point, the most productive thing might be a call in to our support department (support.inductiveautomation.com) - they can help guide you through what might be wrong ‘live’.
Somewhat confusingly: default is the standard name for the ‘realtime tag provider’ (used to organize tags) created by Ignition, but there’s nothing special about that name other than it being the one typically created by Ignition. Within a particular tag provider, you can have as many ‘tag groups’ as you can, which allow you to organize tags into different polling rates. By default, we create two: Default and Default Historical, at 1 and 10 second direct rates, but again, that’s just convention.
I’m really not sure why none of your tags are working.
One last thing quick thing to try - is your gateway in trial mode? Is the trial expired?
Thank you for you help, actually yes my gateway IS in fact in trial mode and when the trial expires I simply reset my 2 hour trial time. I have also closed and re-opened ignition designer launcher and re-launched my project in case it doesn’t automatically recognize if the trial time is active or not. I am actually a junior software engineer learning ignition because my company wants to integrate all there systems on there so that we have everything fully managed on one platform and I have a meeting coming up with one of ignitions representatives for 3rd party support. However I will also make sure to contact support.inductiveautomation.com and see if someone can let me know if I’m missing any modules or perhaps I have the wrong version installed locally. Thank you again for responding to my message
Can you copy the tag as json (right click on tag in tag browser, copy json) and paste into a preformatted block (the </> button) into a reply here?
{
"valueSource": "opc",
"name": "New Tag",
"tagType": "AtomicTag",
"opcServer": "Ignition OPC UA Server"
}
Do you have an OPC Item Path specified?
You can’t just “make an OPC tag” like you can a memory tag. It has to exist on the server you specify, and you either have to know the OPC Item Path in advance or let it get auto-populated by creating the OPC tag via drag n’ drop from the OPC/device browser.
Oh, no I didn’t but it worked, thanks! I just selected one of the sample tags in ‘Writeable’ called “WriteableFloat1” and the quality error was gone and it inherited the value of 6 from there. When selecting an OPC Item path I have 2 folders to go from “Server” and “Devices” is there anyway that I can add an OPC item path without it effecting another tag or item (like somehow allow it to be isolated) or would I need like an expression tag for that because opc’s need to be connected to an external item for its use?
If you don’t want to change live device values, you could change your tag type to memory tag (internal Ignition tag) or create a simulator device instead of a live device. This would allow you to test screens/logic but not interfere with the actual machine.
Otherwise you could adjust device/OPC settings. I believe you can mark it as read only so you can’t change values.
I think there are some other tools that can help make memory tags for testing based on AB files, but I haven’t used those so can’t speak on them.
Interesting, I’ll look more into that and see what I can do depending on the system I’m gonna try making. Also putting it only is although a bit limited can definitely be useful if I’m making a scheduler based on pre-defined rules so I can retrieve data without accidently messing up the order. Thanks for the tip!
You can’t just “make an OPC tag” like you can a memory tag. It has to exist on the server you specify, and you either have to know the OPC Item Path in advance or let it get auto-populated by creating the OPC tag via drag n’ drop from the OPC/device browser.
Glad I read this as that helps me out on this thread Edge Best Practices. Even though I cant browse the OPC tags I can still manually enter them knowing the address that will be used later on.