Hello, sorry to bother you but I am new to the B&R world.
I have 6 B&R machines from which I need to extract some tags and save them to a database.
[Since I do not have the PLC source files], we wanted to use TOP SERVER as the application to read the machine TAGs.
From what I understand, the available tags are in OPC DA.
The automation networks of the 6 machines do not communicate with each other.
The 6 APC910s communicate with each other via the second network port.
To check if OPC DA communication was working between machines, I opened OPC Monitor on machine xxx.xxx.xxx.47 and looked for the OPC server installed on .49.
It sees the BR_OPC_SERVER of the other machine but fails to see the TAGs, which tells me that the machines communicate with each other but there is some setting to fix.
this is very old system, not sure how many people really remember OPC DA and all the pain around to provide all settings as far as I remeber procedure was similar like this:
Do a backup first. It happened to me in the past that changing settings could cause that I broke system. So everything what you do, you do on your own responsibilty.
On both APC910s, run DCOMCnfg (Start → Run → DCOMCnfg)
Go to Component Services > Computers > My Computer → right-click → Properties
Default Properties tab:
Enable DCOM
Set authentication to “Packet Integrity” (important for security)
Set impersonation to “Anonymous”
COM Security tab:
Under Access Permissions, add Everyone and Anonymous Logon for remote access
Under Launch and Activation Permissions, add Everyone for remote access
Check your Windows Firewall allows RPC (port 135) + dynamic RPC range
That usually does it. If you’re still stuck after that, make sure you’re running OPC Monitor as Administrator on the client machine.
there are some howtos on internet as well as in our as help B&R Online Help
The ARembedded OPC DA Server was available in some AR’s for a very short time.
You still had to define an OPC Tag file in the AS-project, so that PLC-variables are available as OPC-tags for an OPC DA client.
If this is not the case, you could still try installing an older PVI development version (2.x or 3.3) and use this Windows OPC DA server for getting data from the plc, but you have to create you own opcs file.
These older PVI development versions seem not available on the website so you should ask your local support for these versions.
This (pvi) Windows OPC DA server uses the INA-protocol for reading and writing variables.
This INA-protocal can also be tested with the PVITransfer tool which is part of the PVI development setup.
as far as I remeber procedure was similar like this: