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Every device in Ignition's OPC-UA server exposes diagnostic Tags that provide status and performance information about the device.

Video recorded using: Ignition 7.7

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[00:00] Every OPC server will provide you diagnostic tags about each of the devices that they are connected to. That way you can determine if it's connected, as well as receive some information like through put, as well as maybe information about the actual PLC itself. Ignition's OPC-UA server especially exposes these diagnostic tags. We can actually use those tag's ignition by dragging them to our tag browser, and we do that by going and first browsing the OPC-UA servers. So here you can see Ignition and Kepware. If I expand Ignition, for every device we have an Ignition, there will be a special folder called Diagnostics. This would give us tags that we can work with at Ignition. If I expand that for the control objects, I can see this Is Connected tag. So every device you're going to have an Is Connected, a Host Name, Device Name, a way or sort of seeing some basic information about every device. The Is Connected flag, if I drag it into the tag browser, will let me know if I'm actually connected to that PLC or not. We can use this tag to display status on the screen, as well as do alarming and history on this tag. Certain devices will expose more than just if they're connected. Like the control objects that I have here will also expose the edit number and the serial number and the status and the major and minor revision of that PLC program. Whereas the micrologics, it wouldn't have that, it's just simply is going to have the basic am I connected, and it also has a request folder. Most the devices have a request folder where we can see the last duration and the max duration and the through put to that device to see how long devices are taking to go back and forth. So once we drag these tags into ignition, we can work with them on screens. The most common case is to take the Is Connected flags and use those on screen. So if I create a window here, very common is to use a graphic or some sort of indication, like if I take a circle and draw on the screen, I can link that circle, the Fill Paint property, I can drag the Is Connected down to the Fill Paint, and if it is zero, meaning it's not connected, I'll make it red, and if it is connected, I'll make the color green, and so now I can have the status on the screen to tell me if I'm connected to these PLCs or not. So the device diagnostic tags are really important and you can just drag them in to make use of them in your project.

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