Wonderware’s new FSGateway provides the robust protocol conversion tool that many Wonderware users have been asking for.  As part of the DAServer line of products, the FSGateway allows for robust diagnostics, as well as reliable and diverse connectivity to and from the FactorySuite A2 line of process control software. Additionally, the FSGateway provides a portal into the Industrial Application Server Galaxy, allowing data to be passed to and from Application Server Objects. This month’s Q-Tip focuses on configuring FSGateway to connect to the different protocols and FactorySuite products, as well as how to connect to the FSGateway from data clients.

 

Opening the FSGateway

 

 

The FSGateway, being a DAServer, is located in the ArchestrA System Management Console (or SMC, as it will be called from this point on).  For new users to The FactorySuite A2 world, the SMC is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) that contains the Wonderware Log Viewer, as well as the DA Server Manager, which is where the FSGateway is located.  To open the SMC, go to Start/Programs/Wonderware/System Management console from the start menu.  Upon opening the SMC, the screen should like this:

 

 

For the purposes of this tutorial, the left hand side will be referred to as the “Explorer pane, and the right side the “properties pane”. Now that the SMC is open, use the following steps to get to the FSGateway:

• Expand the DAServer Manager.

• Expand the “Default Group” section

• Expand the “Local” section

• Click on the “Archestra.FSGateway.1” server.

At this point, the SMC should look similar to the figure below:

 

Note the red X in the bottom right corner of the Gateway icon.  This signifies that the Gateway is currently deactivated.  The next step is to add a communications type to the Gateway.

 

Adding a DDE server

 

Expand the FSGateway to show the configuration.  The “Global Parameters” pane will open up on the properties pane of the SMC.  These parameters can be customized if your servers (particularly OPC servers) require specific poke modes or cache settings, but for the purposes of this tutorial, they will be left at the default setting. Right click on the Configuration in the explorer pane of the SMC. In the menu, select “Add DDE Object”.  A new DDE object will be created and its name will be editable in the explorer pane.

 

 

The properties pane will display three properties:

 

 

Server Name – Sets the application that the FSGateway will connect to.  Note that there is no place to put the server node/computer name in this property window.  To connect a DDE server to the FSGateway, the DDE server MUST be on the same machine as the FSGateway install.

 

Reconnect Attempts - Sets the number of reconnects the FSGateway will attempt if a connection fails. This value defaults to 3, and can be set from 0 (unlimited) to 1,000,000.

 

Reconnect Period - Sets the period between reconnects, and has a range of 10,000 to 300,000 ms, or 10 seconds to 5 minutes.

 

The following shows an example of creating a DDE server item that would connect to ABTCP:

 

Once the DDE Server is created, the next step is to add a topic.  To do this, right click on the newly created DDE Server object and select “Add Topic”.  A new Topic object will be created and its name will be editable in the Explorer pane.

 

 

The name entered will be the name of the topic by default.  However, this can be changed by checking the “Change Topic Name” in the Properties pane. Each DDE or Suitelink Object can have 100 topics attached to it.

 

 

The “Device Items” tab in the Properties pane allows the user to create aliases for a specific item if the need arises.  For example, below displays the alias “PLCSeconds” assigned to the item “S:42”. 

 

 

Adding a SuiteLink Server

 

Adding a SuiteLink Server is essentially the same as adding a DDE server, with one important difference: the ability to select a Server Node.  Like before, create a SuiteLink server object by right clicking on Configuration and selecting “Add SuiteLink Object”.

 

 

NOTE: To add a child object to any parent object in DAServer Manager, the parent object’s properties must be shown in the Properties Window.  If the parent object is not selected, right clicking will show all menu items disabled.

 

Note that the “Server Node” property is on the SuiteLink Server object’s properties pane. By clicking on the ellipsis (…) button, you can browse the network for a computer name. The figure below shows the properties pane for the SuiteLink Server:

 

 

Aside from the Server Node property, the SuiteLink and DDE object configuration is identical. Hence, adding topic objects to the SuiteLink server object can be achieved by following the steps in the previous section.

 

Adding an OPC Server

 

Adding an OPC Server Object to the FSGateway starts off in the same manner as adding a SuiteLink or DAServer object. Right click on configuration in the explorer pane and select “Add OPC Object” from the drop down box. This will create the new OPC object, and allow its name to be edited.  For the purposes of this tutorial, the OPCServer object will be named “TOPServer”.

 

 

By selecting the newly created “TOPServer” object, the properties pane will bring up the main OPC object properties.  The main parameters that can be configured here are as follows:

 

 

Server Node:  The node where the OPC server exists.  By clicking on the ellipsis (…) and browsing/selecting the node from a list instead of simply typing in the name, the object will automatically connect and populate the list of OPC Servers available on that node. If the server node is typed in manually, the same effect can be created by then clicking on the ellipsis (…) next to the server name dialog box.

 

 

Server Name: The name of the server.  If the server list has been populated in the method above, you can select the server from this drop down list.  You may also manually type the name in the dialog box.

 

Reconnect Attempts - Sets the number of reconnects the FSGateway will attempt if a connection fails. This value defaults to 3, and can be set from 0 (unlimited) to 1,000,000.

 

Reconnect Period - Sets the period between reconnects, and has a range of 10,000 to 300,000 ms, or 10 seconds to 5 minutes.

 

Activate Server Out of Proc – This checkbox configures the FSGateway to connect to the OPC server “Out-of-Proc”, or out of process.  It is checked by default, but the best way to decide whether to check this or not is to contact the OPC server vendor.

 

As shown above, the tutorial has set up the Server node to “localhost”, or the computer where FSGateway resides, and the server name is SWToolbox.TOPServer.

 

Creating a new OPC Group

 

Now that the OPC Server object is created, a OPC Group object can be created by right clicking on the Server object and selecting “Add OPCGroup object”.

 

 

Again, the object is created and is allowed to be renamed. Highlighting the object in the explorer pane will show the following properties in the properties pane:

 

 

Device Group name: This is analogous to the “Topic” that would be used by a DDE/SuiteLink client to connect to this OPCGroup object.  This name is created by taking the Server object name and the group object name. To change it, rename your objects in the explorer pane.

 

Update Rate: the rate at which the topic connects to the OPC server and updates the data.

 

OPC Item ID Prefix: If the items to be accessed have a long hierarchy in the OPC server, adding a common prefix in this property will allow clients to call the individual items without having to type said prefix. For example, if the OPC items to be accessed are Channel1.Device1.S:42 and Channel1.Device1.S:43, and the OPC Item ID Prefix is set to “Channel1.Device1.”, then the OPC Client would only have to call the items as “S:42” and “S:43”.

 

Use Group Name as Access Path: This will use the group name for the OPC access path for all items if checked.  It is unchecked by default.

 

Read Only: This box, if checked, will not allow the points accessed by this group to be written to. 

The “Browse OPC Items” button will bring up an OPC client that will allow you to browse the OPC server.  This browser can also be used to add OPC items to the device items tab in the properties pane. Note that items do not have to be in the “Device Items” tab in order to be accessed. 

 

 

Creating an Intouch object

 

In addition to being able to connect to any DDE, SuiteLink, or OPC client, the FSGateway also has the ability to connect to any existing Intouch system.  As with every other server object, right click on the Configuration object in the explorer pane and select “Add Intouch Object”. For the purposes of this tutorial, the object will be named “ReactDemo”. The following properties are available for this object:

 

 

Read Only – checking this box will not allow the client to poke values to the object.

 

Intouch Runtime Node - The computer that the Intouch application is running on.  Clicking on the ellipsis (…) will allow you to browse to the particular computer.

 

Item Browse Path – The network path where the application resides.  Hence, the application must reside in a shared folder on the network for the application to be available. If connecting to a local application (an application on the same node as the FSGateway), enter the UNC path for the application folder.

The tag browser button allows adding specific tags to the object’s device items list merely by selecting them from the tagname dictionary. Additionally, For grouping purposes, an IntouchGroup object can be added to the Intouch object.  This is merely for ease of use/modeling purposes.  You do not need to add tags or groups to an Intouch object in order to access those tags from the FSGateway.

 

Creating an ArchestrA object

 

Previously, there was no way to extract data from the Application Server Galaxy to outside clients.  This has now changed with the advent of FSGateway.  Like all others, right click on the Configuration object in the explorer pane and select “Add ArchestrA Object” . For the purposes of the tutorial, this object will be named “aaSandlot”, after the galaxy to be accessed.

 

 

While the premise of the ArchestrA object is similar to that of the Intouch object, the properties panel is very different.  Since the object is connecting to the Galaxy, a node or path does not need to be specified. However, if the galaxy to be connected to has either Galaxy or OS (User or Group) security enabled, the “Write Credentials” field must be completed.  To specify the topic as read-only, select the read-only checkbox. The fields for the write credentials are defined as follows:

 

Domain: If the Galaxy is set to OS Security, enter the domain of the qualified user. If the Galaxy is set to “Galaxy” security, leave this column blank.

 

User Name: The qualified user that the FSGateway will utilize for write credentials to the Galaxy.

 

Password: The matching password to the qualified user filled in the user name field.

 

Creating an ArchestraGroup Object

 

 

While the IntouchGroup object is available merely for ease of use/modeling purposes, the ArchestrAGroup object allows the administrator to add a prefix in the "ArchestrA item ID prefix" field. Similar to that of the OPC Group Object, this field allows for shorter item addressing from the client.  For example, if the object to be addressed is Tank101.InletValve210.PV, and the ArchestrAGroup object has the item prefix “Tank101.” in the Item Prefix field, the client would only need to call the item as “InletValve210.PV” instead of having to write the entire address. 

 

 

Activating the FSGateway from the SMC

 

 

Now that the FSGateway has been configured, its time to activate the Gateway itself.  In order to do that, right click on the “Archestra.FSGateway.1” object in the explorer pane of the SMC.  From there, select “Activate server” from the list.  To have the server activate automatically as a service, right click again on the :ArchestrA.FSGateway.1” object, then select the “Configure As Service/Automatic Service” option. The server will activate, and then will activate again whenever the operating system launches.

 

Connecting to the FSGateway

 

To connect to the FSGateway from  a DDE/Suitelink client, use the application name “FSGateway” and the device group name of the desired FSGateway object. As a reminder, the device group name can be found as the first item in the properties pane of a given object.  For example, to connect to the “Channel1” topic configured earlier, the application name would be “FSGateway” and the topic name would be “TOPServer_Channel1”, taken from the Device Group name of the “Channel1” properties pane.

 

To connect to the FSGateway from a OPC Server, the Gateway need not be activated. In fact, Wonderware recommends deactivating the FSGateway and let the OPC Client start up the FSGateway on its own to use the Gateway as an OPC server.  The server name for FSGateway is “ArchestrA.FSGateway.1”.  The path to each object will be analogous to its location in the explorer pane hierarchy.  For example, the access path to the “PLCSeconds” item on the “PLC1” object would be “ABTCP.PLC1.PLCSeconds”.

 

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to call us at 215-675-5800 or email us as support@qmation.com.