OPC-UA Alarms and Conditions

I have some equipment which provides data via OPC-UA and the alarms are in the alarms and events format. I cannot resolve this format with the built-in OPC client and Kepware also does not resolve this format when it is coming from a 3rd party server. Using Unified Automation’s UaExpert client I can resolve the data within the client, but I cannot transform it. I can connect UaExpert to Ignition and get traditional tag transfer working normally, but still the alarms cannot be resolved.

I need to get this information into Ignition. Are there any standard options? Are there 3rd party modules which would offer this functionality? Is there another OPC client which supports this format and has the capability to transform the data into an array of strings or similar? Has anyone else dealt with this issue?

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I don’t have any solutions for you, unfortunately, but I am interested in hearing more about your use case and exactly what data from the events you need and how you imagine it might fit/integrate into Ignition. Do you just need receive alarm events or would you also need to acknowledge/call methods? Do you expect to be able to use these events to trigger notifications? etc…

Thanks Kevin. For my case I am connecting this equipment to an Ignition based OEE and production monitoring application. I need the active fault descriptions from the equipment so they can be logged and displayed. I have no need to use any of those features of the specification remotely. I only need the messages. It would be fine if I received them as a small array of string tags, but that is not the format they are provided in.

Hi @Kevin.Herron,

OPC-UA is a standard from the OPC Foundation.

Alarms and Events is a part of the OPC-UA Standard. This exposes Alarms and Notifications on an OPC-UA Server in a standard format.

The OPC-UA Standard for Alarms and Events can be found here

https://opcfoundation.org/developer-tools/specifications-unified-architecture/part-9-alarms-and-conditions/

We have several OPC-UA servers on machines from a variety of vendors that present their alarms and events in this format.

Could you please let us know when we will be able to capture Alarms and Events from OPC-UA Servers in Ignition?

Thanks,
Omair Tariq
Steelcase

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We don’t have this on our roadmap at all right now so I’m afraid there’s no estimate I can give you.

Would love to see this feature as well!

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This would be useful for us as well!

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Ya, Totally agree to have this function.
Our previous SCADA software has this function and now facing these issues after switching to Ignition.
Does anyone have an alternative solution to share the alarm event through OPC UA?

Any updates on having Ignition support OPC-UA Alarms and Events? we extremely need it.

Sorry, nothing has changed. Not on the roadmap at the moment. As far as OPC UA features are concerned support for OPC UA 1.04/1.05 is next and targeted for Ignition 8.2.

What’s the timeline for 8.2 then? We also need OPC UA A&E as the PLCs exposes their alarms as OPC UA A&E.The alternative we’re looking at @bennattan is for instance to use an OPC UA SDK, or I’ve understood that Tatsoft’s Factory Studio uses a different SDK for it’s OPC client implementation, so I’ve heard they support it. Could perhaps use their edge-solution and expose it to Ignition somehow.

Current estimate is mid-2023…

End user interest in OPC UA A&C functionality continues to grow, so it would be nice to see it get formally added to the Ignition roadmap. Also, it looks like someone submitted it on the features & ideas request site. It might be a good idea for people to continue to vote for it. People can click the link below to continue to vote for it and show their support.

Vote for OPC UA A&C addition to Ignition

CC List: @omairapril, @tordvd , @kissamcorrina, @bennettan , @ahmed_Abdelsalam , @Jon_Forbord

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I still don’t think it’s likely that OPC UA event support makes it into Ignition this year, but now we’re going to attempt to do it for 8.1 if possible instead of 8.2.

A&C is just a specialization of events, I’m not sure if any more specific A&C functionality will be needed or not.

Even OPC PubSub natively built in Ignition’s OPC server would be desirable.

Is there any workaround on how to get data from OPC UA events in Ignition?

You might be able to find a 3rd party OPC UA server that subscribes to events and in turn exposes them as a set of regular variables or something. Not really sure how that would work in practice.

We replaced Ignition with other 3rd party software that supports both OPC UA DA & AC. But the issue is they dont support Red Hat.
We represent the Asia region, we notice that the matter and 3rd party software we used are the same as US and Euro region.
Mentioned this as the example to Ignition OPC UA DA and AC are widely used globally. Due to the pandemic, user plan to link the information and alarm event back to HQ where OPC UA AC comes in place.

Hi Kevin! It's been some time so, any update on this one? Thanks.

It’s been pushed off to Ignition 8.3 some time. There’s some generic platform level event stream infrastructure we’re building for 8.3 that will be used with other event providers/systems as well, and it just makes sense to wait and build it on top of that.

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