OPC Time Monitor provides valuable timing data about your factory.

Ever wondered how much time the product can spend sitting on the belt before it proceeds to the next manufacturing step? Or the average daily time your output valve is open? Or how long the boiler temperature was above the normal range?

All this information, and much more, can be easily obtained by using the OPC Time Monitor. This product subscribes to data available from OPC sources, measures and computes various timing characteristics, and provides the results via OPC again!

Leaflet (Software Toolbox)

The purpose of the OPC Time Monitor is to provide a "time-in-condition" or "time-since-last-change" value for any OPC DA data tag. This gives the user or integrator valuable information for process optimization or increased manufacturing output.

In manufacturing, cycle time is of utmost importance. To be able to instantly know how long a machine or processing step has been "static" gives the plant engineer the information required to focus on the most time consuming phases of assembly. These time values can be viewed, plotted, logged or even used to trigger OPC A&E alarms (in case the process has been static too long and appropriate personnel need to be notified).

The OPC Time Monitor can be used in conjunction with other OPC-A&E servers to create an "alarm delay". By using both the original OPC-DA tag AND the OPC-DA Time tag, the 3rd party OPC-A&E server can effectively "delay" the creation of an OPC-A&E alarm until the static condition persists for more than a specified amount of time.

The OPC Time Server is an OPC-DA client that can connect to any OPC-DA 1.0 or 2.0 server. For each tag in the OPC-DA server, the user can establish an OPC-DA AND OPC-A&E tag that represents the "time since last change" in milliseconds, seconds, minutes or hours (configurable).

Features of OPC Time Monitor include:

• Maximum update time
  Accept any OPC-DA tag and report accumulated time until the OPC DA tag changes value (whereby the time accumulation resets to 0.)
• Deadbands, included and excluded values
  Specify a range of values or a value difference that will (or will not) reset the time value. For example, while the value of the OPC-DA tag is between 50 and 100, keep counting time or until the value changes by more than 5, keep counting time.
• Auto configuration
  The OPC Time Monitor can “auto browse” your OPC-DA server’s database to automatically create it’s own time tag database. This database can then be modified as desired.
• Dynamic discovery and browse through
  An OPC-DA Client can “browse through” the OPC Time Monitor to find the actual OPC-DA tag from the primary server. What the user will get is the time value of this tag from the OPC Time Monitor instead of the original value.
• Import/Export from .CSV
  Create the time tags using a simple .CSV file that can be imported into the OPC Time Server directly.
• Maximum time
  This per-tag option gives the user the maximum time value that this tag has ever had (reset by another OPC-DA tag) so that someone can see the “worst case time” value. This is kind of like logging the maximum value over a given interval.
• Other time characteristics
  Cycle count, total and average time.
• All flavours of scheduled resets.
• Reduce the constant load on connected servers by specifying that an item should only be requested when it is presently needed. 

OPC Time Monitor passes OPC Foundation Compliance Test.

The trial version is designed to help you understand how the OPC Time Monitor works and allow you to evaluate it. This page describes how to obtain, install and run the trial version.

Availability

The trial version is available as single downloadable file.

Installation

The installation can be started by running the downloaded program. Just follow the on-screen instructions.

When the installation is finished, it opens the ReadMe.htm file.

The program includes an uninstallation utility and registers itself as an installed application. It can therefore be removed easily from Control Panel.

OPC Labs Kit Server

To demonstrate capabilities of OPC Time Monitor, some OPC server to provide the measured values is needed.

The installation of OPC Time Monitor includes OPC Labs Kit Server. This is a small OPC server with no user interface or configuration that provides a set of simulated values. The Kit Server can be used to verify the operation of OPC Time Monitor. Also, the sample configuration (Sample1.otm_xml) of the OPC Time Monitor refers to the Kit Server.

Limitations

The trial version of OPC Time Monitor only supplies valid data for 2 hours since the server has been started. After this period, the OPC server state changes to OPC_STATUS_SUSPENDED, and quality of all items provided by the server becomes OPC_QUALITY_OUT_OF_SERVICE.

Contact us if you need to extend trial version limits for the evaluation purposes.

Software Toolbox is running a dedicated site on OPC Time Monitor.

The site is fully dedicated to OPC Time Monitor and contains an amazing collection of information on OPC Time Monitor, including "How to..." step-by-step tutorials, list of applications, detailed specifications etc. You are encouraged to visit the site, and book your purchases through Software Toolbox, Inc.