Connecting to TCP Device

To connect to a barcode scanner or scale

You can connect to a barcode scanner or scale by using Ignition's UDP and TCP driver.

  1. Go to the Configure section of the Gateway webpage.

  2. Scroll down and select OPC-UA > Devices.

  3. On the Devices page, find the orange arrow and click on Create new Device.

  4. On the Add Device Step 1: Choose Type page, scroll all the way down and select TCP Driver, and click Next.

  5. On the New Device page, leave all the default values and type in the following fields:
    Name: Scale, the name you specify here will appear under Devices folder on the Quick Client page in the Gateway.
    Port(s): 12345, as an example
    Hostname: type the IP address, for example 10.20.6.108

  6. You can check the box for Show advanced properties? to see the additional settings, but you can keep all the defaults.

  7. Click Create New Device.
    The Devices page is displayed showing the Scale device is successfully created and added to Ignition. The Status will show as 1/1 Connected.

  8. Go to the OPC Connections > Quick Client in the Configure section of the Gateway, under the Devices>[Scale]>12345 folder you will see the Last Receive Time and the Message folders.
    Next to each tag, under the Action column, you will see [s][r][w].

  9. Click on [s] which means Subscription. You will be able to see the Value of the tag displayed on this OPC Quick Client page.

Device Properties

The properties on the New Device page of the Gateway for the TCP and UDP devices are as follows:

General

 

Name

Name of the device using this driver. This name will appear in the Devices
folder when browsing the OPC-UA server.

Enables

When selected, the device is enabled. When not selected, disabled devices will not make a
connection attempt.

Connectivity

 

Port(s)

On the UDP driver, this is the port(s) to listen on.
On the TCP driver, this is the port(s) to connect to.
Separate multiple ports with a comma.

Address

On the UDP driver, this is the IP address to listen to.
On the TCP driver, this is the IP address to connect to.

Inactivity Timeout

The number of milliseconds without receiving data from the source before a disconnect/reconnect is made. Set to 0 to disable.

Message

 

Message Delimiter Type

Sets the method used to determine how much or what data length constitutes a full message.
Packet Based: Assumes that whatever arrives in one packet, regardless if length or content, is the message.
Character Based: Content is appended to a message buffer until the given character arrives, at which point the contents of the buffer are considered the message.
Fixed Size Content is appended to a message buffer until some fixed number of bytes is received, at which point the contents of the buffer are considered the message.

Message Delimiter

If the message delimiter type is Character Based, this will be the character used to identify a message.
If the type is Fixed Size, this will be the size used to identify a message.

Field Count

The number of fields within a message must be fixed. This property dictates how many fields will be present in each message. When the number of fields received does not match the designated count, all nodes will receive quality BAD_CONFIG_ERROR.

Field Delimiter

This is the character(s) that are used as field delimiters. For example, the message a|b|c|d with a field delimiter of | would
be split into four fields: a, b, c, and d. The field count would have to be set at 4.

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