Two wish list items - OPC support and a discovery tool

[KS-Soft Europe]

anybody using opccheck utility?

Have you faced to any problems using opccheck utility? What exact errors do you get?

Could you provide more information, please?
- What version of HostMonitor do you use?
- What Windows do you use? Service Pack?
- What exact parameters do you use to start opccheck.exe?

Regards,
Max

[wb]

We have just started using OPC check and seems to be running fine, getting the occasional script timeout but a retest fixes that - not sure if its hostmon or the OPC server. The OPC server does not seem to be busy.

Certainly opens up a world of options for us in monitoring levels and alarms for PLC control systems.

Had some issues getting it to run initially as the error messages were not overly descriptive - I needed to read the notes closer. There is a dependancy on installing the OPC core components and .Net framework > 2.0 (http://www.opcfoundation.org)

Be nice to see this as an integrated test rather than a shell script test perhaps.

Thanks for the code though - really useful - solves a problem we had on how to monitor and distribute the results to lots of users without writing custom code.

[KS-Soft Europe]

We have just started using OPC check and seems to be running fine, getting the occasional script timeout but a retest fixes that - not sure if its hostmon or the OPC server. The OPC server does not seem to be busy.

Hm. We will check the code, thanks. How often do you get script timeout? As a workaround, you may set HostMonitor to alert you after two or three consecutive bad statuses.

Certainly opens up a world of options for us in monitoring levels and alarms for PLC control systems.

Had some issues getting it to run initially as the error messages were not overly descriptive - I needed to read the notes closer. There is a dependancy on installing the OPC core components and .Net framework > 2.0 (http://www.opcfoundation.org)

Could you please, provide more information? What exact errors did you see?
Have you faced to any problems? Actually, opccheck.exe do not require any .Net components. If you check OPC server on remote machine, you probably should download and install OPC COM ProxyStub Merge Module, available here: http://www.opcfoundation.org/Downloads. ... =286&CU=18

Be nice to see this as an integrated test rather than a shell script test perhaps.

Yeah, we are going to integrate OPC test into HostMonitor core. However, we want opccheck.exe utility to be tested by our customers. Looks like you are the first person who send us a feedback...

Thanks for the code though - really useful - solves a problem we had on how to monitor and distribute the results to lots of users without writing custom code.

You are welcome!


Regards,
Max

[wb]

Timeouts happen about once or twice per day, and generally for all, or the majority, of the OPC checks in a folder (we currently only have 16 check s - 8 in each of two folders). Clears on the next run (15mins) generally. I have just set a retest and then shorten the test time until a good response is received.

This is fine as levels we are reading are not critical - and its quite possible its the server causing the problem as we have not been using it long.

Basically we just put the opccheck exe in the temp folder of a machine and ran the below comand:
R:\>"C:\temp\opccheck" -serverid:AutomationDirect.KEPDirectServer -host:{IP Address} -user:{username} -password:{password} -itemname:"NIX-41-INK.Line-A.InkLevel.Black-B"

We then get
ScriptRes:Unknown:OPCDiscover Error: Interface not supported

This exact same command works ok from the Hostmon machine that has had OPC Core Agents installed (and to do this it required .NET 2 or greater)

Got core components (OPC Core Components 3.00 Redistributable (x64)
) from
http://www.opcfoundation.org/Downloads. ... KEY&CI=286
but it was only from remote machines that we had problems so maybe it was just the proxy stub we needed.......

Cheers
Wayne