Allen Bradley Ethernet OPC Server - KEPServerEX OPC Servers

Overview

Kepware's 32 bit Allen Bradley Ethernet device driver works in conjunction with our OPC/DDE Server, KEPServerEX to provide data exchange between OPC & DDE Clients and Allen Bradley PLC5/SLC500 compliant PLCs via Ethernet. 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 Ethernet 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
PLC 5/10
PLC 5/15
PLC 5/20
PLC 5/20E
PLC 5/25
PLC 5/30
PLC 5/40
PLC 5/40E
PLC 5/60
PLC 5/80
PLC 5/80E
SLC 5/05

Features

Specific Driver Features

Specific

All memory types and data types supported.
Array support
Multithreaded design allows for simultaneous messaging with mutltiple PLCs

Note: 1785 ENET may require PLC firmware upgrades.

General

Multi-threaded design ensures optimum performance
Full Time On-line operation allows on the fly changes
Channel Diagnostics with protocol display
OPC Diagnostic feature provides a real-time and historical view of OPC events that occur between any OPC client and the server
Additional System Tags provided for monitoring and diagnostics
Free OPC Test Client provided
Modem support included on all Serial port drivers
CSV file import and export of Server tags for easy configuration on large projects
Auto Demotion of Devices
Supports running as a Windows service
Supports direct scaling of device data which allows raw device data to be converted to engineering units for OPC client applications
Automatically backup project file on save
Includes a built-in User Manager that allows complete control over what types of functionality each individual user can access
Allows the user to specifically select a NIC card for use with any Ethernet driver or serial driver running in Ethernet Encapsulation mode
Supports up to 16 concurrent serial ports and PC card configurations

Client

OPC DA 1.0
OPC DA 2.05a
OPC DA 3.0

DDE CF-Text
NetDDE
AdvancedDDE
FastDDE for Wonderware’s Intouch

3rd Party Client Support

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 2000 (SP4 or greater) (32 bit and 64 bit)
Windows Server 2003 (SP2 or greater) (32 bit and 64 bit)
Windows XP (SP2 or greater)
Windows Vista Business/Ultimate (32 bit and 64 bit)
Windows Server 2008 (32 bit and 64 bit)

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

Allen-Bradley Ethernet

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 Ethernet OPC Driver Revisions

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

Allen-Bradley Ethernet (V4.70.79.0)

- Fixed issue where socket would be unnecessarily closed upon receipt of successive device errors.
- Added Boolean array support for file types Output, Input, Status,Binary, and Integer.

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.

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 Ethernet (V4.50.66)

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

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.200.353 (03/24/06)

Allen-Bradley Ethernet (V4.40.57)

- Added ability to specify a Destination Node Address for use in DF1 Gateway applications.

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

Allen-Bradley Ethernet (V4.28.49)

- 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 Ethernet (V4.26.46)

- Upon failing after x successive timeouts, the driver will close the communications socket to reduce the possibility of having to synchronize with previously buffered requests.
- 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 V4.150.304 (11/12/04)

Allen-Bradley Ethernet (V4.24.38)

- Fixed writing issue to DWORD, LONG and LBCD data types on PLC5 Family.

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 V4.102.251 (9/25/03)

Allen Bradley Ethernet (V4.23.30)

- Added code that initializes the block memory allocation.

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 Ethernet (V4.22.28)

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

Driver updates below coincide with Server Release V4.84.227

Allen-Bradley Ethernet (V4.22.25)

- Fixed toggle value issue when writing a value to a tag while a pending update is taking place.
- The driver was updated to reduce the chance of getting out of sync with the device during communications (receiving an old packet) which will ultimately reduce framing errors when network/device communication glitches occur.
- Occurrences of "Device not responding messages" were reduced for noisy environments.