Allen Bradley DF1 OPC Server - KEPServerEX OPC Servers

Overview

Kepware's 32 bit Allen Bradley DF1 device driver works in conjunction with our OPC/DDE Server, KEPServerEX to provide data exchange between OPC & DDE Clients and Allen Bradley PLC5(20)/SLC500/MicroLogix compliant PLCs via DF1. The DF1 OPC Server has support for complex function blocks in the MicroLogix 1200/1500 PLCs. Half Duplex operation supports wide area radio modem links for all PLC types. KEPServerEX automatically optimizes your data acquisition based on client demand. Data integrity is ensured with our extensive error handling.

Note: Does not require the use of RSLinx licenses.

Allen Bradley DF1 OPC Server

This driver is part of the Allen Bradley OPC Server Suite. Purchasing either the Allen Bradley PLC5/SLC505 Ethernet OPC Server, the Allen Bradley Unsolicited Ethernet OPC Server, the Allen Bradley ControlLogix Ethernet OPC Server, the Allen-Bradley Data Highway Plus OPC Server or the Allen Bradley DF1 OPC Server driver entitles you to all of the drivers.

Devices

Supported Devices

Device	Note
MicroLogix 1000	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
MicroLogix 1200	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
MicroLogix 1500	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
MicroLogix 1000-1500 1761 NET-ENI to DF1	via 1761 NET-ENI adapter to Full Duplex DF1
PLC5 Family NET-ENI to DF1	Duplex DF1
PLC5/10	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
PLC5/10	via 1785 ENET/ENBT Side Car
PLC5/15	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
PLC5/15	via 1785 ENET/ENBT Side Car
PLC5/20	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
PLC5/20	via 1785 ENET/ENBT Side Car
PLC5/20E	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
PLC5/20E	Ethernet Enabled Model
PLC5/25	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
PLC5/25	via 1785 ENET/ENBT Side Car
PLC5/30	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
PLC5/30	via 1785 ENET/ENBT Side Car
PLC5/40	via 1785 ENET/ENBT Side Car
PLC5/40	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
PLC5/40E	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
PLC5/40E	Ethernet Enable Model
PLC5/60	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
PLC5/60	via 1785 ENET/ENBT Side Car
PLC5/80	via 1785 ENET/ENBT Side Car
PLC5/80	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
PLC5/80E	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
PLC5/80E	Ethernet Enabled Model
SLC5 Family 1761 NET-ENI to DF1	via 1761 NET-ENI adapter to Full Duplex DF1
SLC5/03	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
SLC5/04	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
SLC5/05	via DF1 Full and Half Duplex Serial Protocol
SLC5/05	Ethernet Enabled Model

Features

Specific Driver Features

Specific

The DF1 has support for complex function blocks in the MicroLogix 1200/1500 PLCs
DF1 Radio Modem support.
Half Duplex operation supports wide area radio modem links for all PLC types
The Ethernet Encapsulation mode has been designed to provide communications with serial devices connected to terminal servers such as the Digi One IA or Kepware NetSLX on your Ethernet network
This driver is part of our Allen Bradley Suite. Purchasing either the AB ControlLogix Ethernet, AB DF1, or the AB PLC5/SLC505 Ethernet driver entitles you to all three drivers

General

Multi-threaded design for optimum performance.
Application Connectivity
Device Connectivity for concurrent devices.
Supports running as a Windows NT Service.
Supports Direct Scaling of device data.
Full Time On-line operation.
CSV file import and exportof server tags.
User Management
Tag Management
Network Interface Selection
Channel Diagnostics provide real-time data.
OPC Diagnostics to view OPC events.
Modem support for all serial drivers.
OPC Quick Client application.
Visual Basic OPC Client with VB Examples.

OPC/DDE

OPC Data Access Version 1.0a
OPC Data Access Version 2.05a
OPC Data Access Version 3.0

Learn more about OPC - Open Process Control

HMI/Client

KEPServerEX has been enhanced to provide the widest range of connectivity of any server product available. KEPServerEX supports the following client server technologies:

FastDDE for Wonderware
SuiteLink for Wonderware
iFIX PDB for Intellution
DDE Format CF_Text
DDE Format AdvancedDDE

To see a list of HMI's and Clients that we support go to our HMI / Client Support page.

Required

Required Software and Hardware

Supported Operating Systems

Windows NT
Windows 2000
Windows Server 2003
Windows XP

PC Hardware

Minimum

400 Mhz Pentium CPU
128 Megs of RAM
100 Megs of Free Hard Drive Space

Recommended

600 Mhz Pentium CPU
512 Megs of RAM
100 Megs of Free Hard Drive Space

Hardware Requirements

For Device and Hardware Requirements see the Devices tab.
Hardware Accessories

Protocol

Communication Protocol

Full Duplex
Half Duplex
TCP/IP Ethernet Encapsulation

VB

Visual Basic

KEPServerEX Visual Basic OPC Client
Complex and Simple Visual Basic OPC Client Examples
Using Modems and Visual Basic with KEPServerEX.
Download the Modem and VB Example with Source Code
Knowledge Base

Help

Help/Links

Revisions

Allen-Bradley DF1 OPC Driver Revisions

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.280.435.0 (04/30/08)

Allen-Bradley DF1 (V4.100.117.0)

- Fixed error that can occur if a dynamic bit reference is assigned a non-Boolean data type from the client.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.270.416.0 (09/27/07)

All Drivers

- Fixed issue where server menu buttons like 'New', 'Open', 'Exit' would become permanently disabled when attempting to perform auto tag generation on a driver that had missing runtime dependencies.
- Fixed issue that could occur when multiple items with the same scan rate are read by exception and another item is added/asynchronously read/removed at that same rate. This issue resulted in stale data for those tags read by exception.

Allen-Bradley DF1 (V4.100.113.0)

- Added "Only accept responses for Station Num" Channel Property for Full Duplex mode to handle cases in which the driver is encountering data responses destined for other clients besides itself.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.264.401 (06/01/07)

All Drivers

- Fixed issue in the driver library where it was possible to delete a tag prior to stopping it. This would result in the accessing of invalid memory which could eventually result in an exception that would prevent a channel from processing any tags.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.210.367 (11/17/06)

All Drivers

- Fixed issue where a rapid sequence of item add, sync read, and item remove requests could result in bad OPC quality for some items included in a block sync read and/or sync read timeouts.
- Fixed issue with Unsolicited UDP Mode Ethernet Encapsulation mode, where driver would stop receiving unsolicited messages after sending a message.

Allen-Bradley DF1 (V4.90.106)

- Increased address ranges for B,T,C,R,N,F,A,D, and BT files to 2000 elements for PLC-5.
- Added BK support for MicroLogix MG files.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.190.341 (11/23/05)

Allen-Bradley DF1 (V4.73.96)

- Updated float arrays to return 0 for any item that contains an invalid IEEE floating point value.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.180.338 (8/12/05)

Allen-Bradley DF1 (V4.71.94)

- Added support for Function File CS1. Applicable to the Micrologix 1500.
- Fixed Function File HSC:CU and CD to be Read-Only as documented in the Help File.
- Fixed issue where a write of LEN bytes to an ASCII (A File) string of length LEN would write two NULL terminators to the bytes following the string.
- Added SLC 5/05 to Model selection.
- Fixed Half-Duplex Master issue that would halt writes to a Slave if a previous Master Message write request was never received by the Slave.
- Fixed ASCII (A File) issue where the last element of an array would always read NULL for arrays of even length size starting at an odd byte offset.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.141.293 (7/22/04)

Allen-Bradley DF1 (V4.64.87)

- Fixed SLC Slot Configuration issue in which error "An unsupported operation was attempted" would occur when attempting to add a Generic Module.
- Fixed SLC Slot Configuration issue when modules are attempted to be added or removed with no slot selected.
- Fixed Half-Duplex Master polling logic to retry Master Messages that were previously failing with a slave source empty condition.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.130.287 (5/28/04)

Allen Bradley DF1 (V4.63.78)

- Fixed issue involving KF2 in Full Duplex mode where if communications were broken between the KF2 and PLC, communications would not recover.
- SLC500 DB9 wiring diagram added to help for DF1 driver

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.110.270 (3/22/04)

All Drivers

- Library fix affecting all drivers.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.105.260 (1/9/04)

Allen Bradley DF1 (V4.62.72)

- Fixed discrepancy in the tag hints.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.103.252 (10/30/03)

Allen Bradley DF1 (V4.61.70)

- Added link protocol type KF2/KF3 Half Duplex Master

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.102.251 (9/25/03)

Allen Bradley DF1 (V4.60.69)

- Added DF1 Radio Modem support.
- Added Local ID channel property.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.100.239 (7/10/03)

Allen Bradley DF1 (V4.50.68)

- Driver performance has been increased to allow for larger amounts PLC data to be requested.

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.90.237 (5/10/03)

All Drivers

All drivers have been updated to support 32 channels. (Exceptions are DDE Client driver, Modbus Plus, and SattBus).

Allen Bradley DF1 (V4.50.64)

- Enhanced event log error messaging for I/O tags, SLC 500 Modular I/O models to be in slot.word format.