OPC UA serves as a common data exchange standard for secure, reliable, manufacturer and platform-independent communication in IoT, M2M and industry 4.0 environments. The requirement for communication between the components of different manufacturers via OPC UA to work is that each device involved in the communication must meet the current specifications of the OPC Foundation.

Baumüller has now implemented the three most important parts of the extensive catalog of OPC UA Foundation specifications for its applications:

• DA (Data Access)for access to machine data and parameters.
• Security via certificates, to ensure that only authorized nodes have access to the OPC UA server.
• With OPC UA methods, the oscilloscope function of the Baumüller devices can also be used for other suppliers, for example.

Baumüller control units with OPC UA server

The basic idea of OPC UA is that all hardware manufacturers involved in a system provide an OPC UA server for their components connected to the communication. Baumüller offers the ProDataX software tool for this purpose.

ProDataX provides an OPC UA server interface that can run not only on the Baumüller control hardware but also on standard PCs with the Windows operating system. ProDataX can be configured using the Baumüller ProMaster and ProDrive programming/operating tools.