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In this tutorial we see how OPC Expert receives OPC Alarms and Events
OPC Expert is a tool to view OPC data and troubleshoot connections
Unlike other applications that only relay standard Windows error codes when they can't connect,
OPC Expert diagnoses problems and provides users with actionable recommendations
OPC Expert's powerful diagnosis and troubleshooting capabilities make it unique in the industry
Also, OPC Expert does not make any changes to Windows registry
and does not require an installation
So, it is safe to download and run OPC Expert on your computer
Of course, you can download and run OPC Expert at no cost
I already copied OPC Expert to my computer and put a shortcut on the desktop
Notice, I did not have to install OPC Expert, so there are no changes to Windows registry
Let's start OPC Expert and connect to an OPC server
Open "This Computer" to browse for available OPC servers
Open the Siemens OPC server
The green checkmark tells us everything is alright
Browse to a flow measurement
Double click to subscribe and view the data
This flow ranges from 20,000 to 40,000
In addition to viewing flow values, we are also interested in flow events
OPC Alarms and Events retrieves these real-time events
Click the "Alarms & Events" tab
Open the Siemens OPC server
Again, the green checkmark tells us everything is alright
Inside we can see some preconfigured alarms
Open "_CustomAlarms" and open "Area1"
Here we only see 2 different alarm sources, but servers can have hundreds of sources
We could subscribe to some sources and not others
But in our case, let's subscribe to "All Alarms and Events"
The OPC server sends its data
Here we can see the time of each event,
the source,
the condition,
message,
and whatever else the OPC server provides
The OPC server continues sending new events as they occur
In this tutorial we used OPC Expert to receive OPC Alarms and Events
OPC Expert is easy to use and is a favorite tool in process control and automation
Remember, OPC Expert does not make any registry changes
and does not require an installation
So, OPC Expert is safe to use on all computers
Troubleshooting and diagnosis is free,
so download OPC Expert and give it a try yourself!