Plugins 〉OPC UA (Unified Architecture)


Developer
srclosson@gmail.com


Sign up to receive occasional product news and updates:



Data Source
grafana

OPC UA (Unified Architecture)

  • Overview
  • Installation
  • Change log
  • Related content

OPC UA Datasource plugin for Grafana

Utilizing the datasource plugin framework, this projects allows you to access data from OPC UA servers directly from Grafana.

TLDR;

To build on any platform:

  • yarn build

full dashboard

Status

Currently used in production and under active maintenance

What works

  • Browsing and adding multiple servers
  • Authenticated connection with certificate or no security
  • Graphical query editor
  • Data Access (DA)
  • Historical Access (HA / HDA)
  • Alarms & Conditions (AC / AE)

What needs to be implemented

  • OPCUA DA Subscriptions: These are the ones where you will not need to hit the refresh button. If you have subscribed to a datapoint at 500ms, you will get an unsolicited update every 500ms.
  • Password authentication
  • Two-way communication with the OPC UA server (currently read only)

Description and Architecture

This plugin uses GRPC and a C# backend to communicate with Grafana directly. See pkg/dotnet directory for the backend component

Building

  • yarn install to install dependencies
  • yarn build | yarn dev to build the plugin
  • make build to build the backend component

Restart Grafana and you should have the datasource installed.

Contributing

Contributions that addresses the needs above or other feature you'd like to see are most welcome. Fork the project and commit a PR with your requests.

Prediktor is a proud contributor Open Software like this project and open standards like OPC UA fits perfectly with our quest to give our clients the freedom to operate. To know more about our offerings and get in touch, check out https://prediktor.com.

Q&A

Q: Can it read OPC Classic DA/HDA/AE?

A: Yes, provided use use the OPC Foundations COMIOP wrapper, which you can find here. You will need to configure IOP to wrap your OPC COM server. Tested against Matrikon OPC Desktop Historian and Matrikon OPC Simulation Server.

Vision

The OPC UA datasource should be

  • Easy to use
  • Graphically configurable
  • Smart (ie: Able to use metadata from the browsing of tags to ease configuration in whatever panel the datasource is interacting with)
  • Robust and Reliable (of course!)

Installing OPC UA (Unified Architecture) on Grafana Cloud:

For more information, visit the docs on plugin installation.

Change Log

[1.2.0-beta.1] - 2022-05-06

  • Added the ability to select timestamps from either the OPC server, or OPC client/device/source

[1.1.6] - 2022-04-05

  • Removed all references to Dashboard Mapping (dashboard.db)
  • Exchanged BinaryFormatter for BinaryWriter due to security issues with BinaryFormatter

[1.1.5] - 2022-01-24

  • Fixed issue with dynamic files in the MANIFEST.txt
  • Removed log4net; all logging goes through grafana logs
  • The dashboard mapping database, dashboardmapping.db, is moved out of the plugins directory. If the file already exists in the old location, it will be moved

[1.1.4] - 2021-11-14

  • Plugin published on grafana.com

[1.1.2] - 2021-06-10

  • Mostly fixes needed for Successfully registering in the Grafana Plugin Registry

[1.0.1] - 2021-05-6

  • Exchanged the UA Client to Prediktor.UA.Client (https://www.nuget.org/packages/Prediktor.UA.Client/)
  • Added Alarms and Events; historic and subscription
  • Config UI and persistence have been changed, not backwards compatible
  • Added support for dashboard mapping from instance/type. This is to support complementary Grafana panel plugins at https://github.com/PrediktorAS/grafana

[1.0.0] - 2020-06-15

  • Initial official release that will be submitted to grafana.com
  • OPC DA/HDA reads working
  • Certificate and "no security" authentication working