The Field Level Communications (FLC) Initiative has been busy: collaboration with FieldComm Group for instrumentation devices; archived webinars available to watch; controller-to-device (C2D) kickoff; OPC UA Safety technical paper published, and more.
What is the Open Process Automation Standard (O-PAS) and why is it a future requirement for industries? What role does OPC UA play in the O-PAS Connectivity Framework? Learn more and get all of your burning questions answered.
Three years after its launch, the OPC Foundation’s Field Level Communications (FLC) Initiative is preparing for the transition from the first UAFX specification version with the focus on Controller-to-Controller (C2C) to the second UAFX specification version which is extending the UAFX concepts to also cover the use-cases Controller-to-Devices (C2D) and Device-to-Device (D2D).
In earlier times, OPC learned a hard lesson that tying a spec to a particular wire protocol leads to obsolescence as technologies evolve. This is why OPC UA has a layered architecture, which makes it possible to create mappings for any number of transports like JSON HTTP or UA TCP for Client/Server models and MQTT or UA UDP for Pub/Sub models.
Three years after its launch, the OPC Foundation’s Field Level Communications (FLC) initiative has completed the OPC UA FX (Field eXchange) specifications. In addition, a multi-vendor demo with controllers and network infrastructure components from 20 companies has been realized.
More than 320 experts from over 60 OPC Foundation member companies have been contributing to the OPC UA FX (Field eXchange) specifications which extend the OPC UA framework down to the field-level. The first public specification for Controller-to-Controller is expected by end of 2021 with a demo being shown at SPS in November.
The OPC Foundation congratulates the Ethernet-APL Project on the announcement of their achievement of a critically important milestone of cross-vendor utilization of their standard. We have joined this initiative because we strongly believe that the combination of OPC UA over APL will be a key technology for decades to come.
Due to the criticality of Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and the desire to make process and business information available to anyone, anywhere, and at any time, the information that is exchanged must meet the security requirements of the site. The OPC UA standards are designed to meet these security requirements while maintaining the level of flexibility and control that site administrators expect.
This whitepaper is intended to provide guidelines and best practices for developing OPC UA based information models. It is not a formal specification, but recommends ways to create OPC UA information models that eventually lead to a better product.
The OPC Foundation will support the development and promotion of an Advanced Physical Layer (APL) for industrial Ethernet, suitable for use in demanding applications and hazardous locations in the process industry.