Subscribing and publishing to OPC UA in Red hat linux environment

[Giuvan]

Hi y’all!

I’m running LV 2013 development system on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and I’m looking for a painless  labview solution for reading/writing data in OPC UA nodes fashion, so that this data would be accessible from another OPC client application.

Since the real time module is not supported for linux, nor is the DSC module, I’m giving up the idea of making labview act as an OPC UA server itself: am I right?

The other option would be installing a generic OPC UA server and make labview read and write the nodes, hence acting as a client as well.

I was thinking of using data socket for performing such communications, but it's not clear whether that's actually possible when the OPC server running on Linux; the discussion on this topic are pretty old and misleading.

Does anybody have a good hint for me?

Thanks in advance!.

[Dasso]

Hello Giovasa,

To communicate with a OPC Sever, on a MAc or Linux system, you will need a Windows Computer between them (OPC Sever - Windows - Mac, Linux). The Windows computer will host the shared variables which will be bound to OPC items. Then VIs on the Mac and Linux systems, which don't support OPC, can use DataSocket to read or write to those same network-published shared variables.

Neither Mac nor Linux is able to host shared variables or the DataSocket Server. However, those platforms can access shared variables as DataSocket clients (since LV 8.5). 

You can also use Tcp ip and VI server to communicate between a pc and a Mac,Linux system check this conversation : http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Cross-Platform-VI-Communication/m-p/726432?requireLogin=False

A great overview of shared variables, OPC, and DataSocket is "Using the LabVIEW Shared Variable" (http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/4679).

Best regards,

Dasso

[Giuvan]

Hi Dasso!

Thank you very much for your interest and your kind reply.

If I get it right, there is NO way for a VI running in Linux labVIEW to communicate its data to an OPC UA server in Linux.

I can't count on a Windows PC, as the whole system has to reside on the same machine. I could install a virtual instance of Windows for hosting the shared variables as you suggest, but in that case it would be easier if I install LabVIEW for Windows and create a VI that directly connects to the OPC UA server, using OPC blocks or the group network published SV+ the SV engine.

I'd rather avoid this virtualization indeed, I should look for another solution...

Kind Regards!