For customers and integrators intending to use OPC Server plugin, the documents assume a reasonable working knowledge of network communication. They are targeted at technical teams, typically with software development skills, who are integrating the output from Witness into external systems.
Technical Overview
When Witness processes alarms and health statuses, it passes all this information to Witness Canary. Witness Canary then converts this information into a suitable data format to send to external systems.
OPC UA Specification:
On this page:
The OPC Server Plugin
Witness Canary supports integration with many different types of external systems through the use of plugins. These are stand-alone software libraries which are dynamically loaded by Canary and contain code which knows how to convert the Witness data into the required format for the external system. Navtech Radar can easily develop bespoke plugins to interface with a specific type of equipment or application. The OPC Server plugin has been developed to provide integration to the common OPC UA standard used in highway systems.
The OPC Server plugin file is entitled Witness.Plugin.OpcServer.dll and must be present in the Witness Plugin folder which is inside the main application folder. The plugin depends on OPC Foundation's liberaries Opc.Ua.Core.dll and Opc.Ua.Server.dll which must be present in the same folder.
The plugin can be selected during setup and required files will automatically be installed in the correct location.
Configuring the OPC Server Plugin
When the plugin is installed and Canary starts, the plugin configuration settings are saved to the PluginConfiguration.xml file. This file is located in the Witness main application folder. To change the settings this file should be opened in a text editor, such as Notepad, however we would recommend an editor which is XML aware, such as Notepad++.
Once the file is open, locate the OpcServer section, as illustrated below:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Config>
<Plugins>
<OpcServer>
<PluginConfig>
<ApplicationName>Tungsten.IntegrationPlugins.OPCServer</ApplicationName>
<ApplicationUri>http://navtechradar.com/OpcServerPlugin</ApplicationUri>
<BaseUri>opc.tcp://localhost:51210/WitnessOpcServer</BaseUri>
<Carriageways>
<Carriageway Id="2" Name="Carriageway 1">
<Sections>
<Section RadarId="1" Id="28" Name="Section 11">
<Rules>
<Rule Id="1" Name="Reversing Rule" />
<Rule Id="2" Name="Speed Rule" />
<Rule Id="3" Name="Person Rule" />
<Rule Id="4" Name="ERA Stopped Vehicle Rule" />
</Rules>
</Section>
<Section RadarId="2" Id="29" Name="Section 12">
<Rules>
<Rule Id="1" Name="Reversing Rule" />
<Rule Id="2" Name="Speed Rule" />
<Rule Id="3" Name="Person Rule" />
<Rule Id="4" Name="ERA Stopped Vehicle Rule" />
</Rules>
</Section>
<Section RadarId="3" Id="30" Name="Section 13">
<Rules>
<Rule Id="1" Name="Reversing Rule" />
<Rule Id="2" Name="Speed Rule" />
<Rule Id="3" Name="Person Rule" />
<Rule Id="4" Name="ERA Stopped Vehicle Rule" />
</Rules>
</Section>
</Sections>
</Carriageway>
</Carriageways>
<NodeConfiguration>
<DescriptionNode>Description</DescriptionNode>
<RaisedNode>Raised</RaisedNode>
<LocationXNode>LocationX</LocationXNode>
<LocationYNode>LocationY</LocationYNode>
<ActiveNode>Active</ActiveNode>
<SensorHealth>LastHealth</SensorHealth>
<SensorHealthTime>LastTime</SensorHealthTime>
<LaneIdNode>Lane</LaneIdNode>
<SectionIdNode>SectionId</SectionIdNode>
<SectionCountNode>SectionCount</SectionCountNode>
<CarriagewayCountNode>CarriagewayCount</CarriagewayCountNode>
<RadarCountNode>RadarCount</RadarCountNode>
<ManagementServerHealthNode>ManagementServerHealth</ManagementServerHealthNode>
<TrackEngineHealthNode>TrackEngineHealth</TrackEngineHealthNode>
<DatabaseHealthNode>DatabaseHealth</DatabaseHealthNode>
<RadarIdNode>RadarId</RadarIdNode>
<TrafficDataNode>TrafficData</TrafficDataNode>
<AveSpeedNode>AverageSpeed</AveSpeedNode>
<AveCountNode>AverageCount</AveCountNode>
<HeartbeatNode>Heartbeat</HeartbeatNode>
<CountClassify>CountClassify</CountClassify>
</NodeConfiguration>
<GenerateCertificate>False</GenerateCertificate>
<ServerCertificateType>Directory</ServerCertificateType>
<ServerCertificatePath>C:\ProgramData\Navtech\CertificateStore</ServerCertificatePath>
<ServerCertificateName>NoCertificate</ServerCertificateName>
<UserName>admin</UserName>
<Password>12345</Password>
<HeartbeatInterval>5</HeartbeatInterval>
<DisableTrafficData>False</DisableTrafficData>
</PluginConfig>
</OpcServer>
</Plugins>
</Config>
Once you have made changes to the plugin configuration file then you must restart the Canary application / service for the new settings to be applied. No other modules need to be restarted.
The setting options are as follows:
ApplicationName
- Application Name reported through the OPC protocol
ApplicationUri
- Application Uri reported through the OPC protocol
BaseUri
- Location where the OPC Server is hosted. This should be the actual Canary hosting machine name, localhost or the canary machine IP followed by an unused port and optionally location.
Carriageways
- This section indicates the carriageways, sections and rules that we want to track in the OPC server.
Examples
Example: A basic structure of the carriageways, indicating 1 carriageway with 1 section with 1 rule that we are interested in.
<Carriageways> <Carriageway Id="3" Name="Carriageway 1"> <Sections> <Section RadarId="1" Id="36" Name="Section 1"> <Rules> <Rule Id="1" Name="Reversing Rule" /> </Rules> </Section> </Sections> </Carriageway> </Carriageways>
When configuring a carriageway for the plugin, the Carriageway and Section Id attribute should be the "ID" number of the desired carriageway or section and NOT the "Carriageway ID" or "Section ID" number.
The name attribute will be used for the display name of the node in OPC. It is advised to use the Witness name for consistency.
When configuring rules for the sections, the Id attribute should use the rule "ID".
NodeConfiguration
- Customize the name for each node. Each string must be different from the other string. It is recommended to stay with the defaults.
To review the structure of the OPC nodes, please see the "Generating OPC Node Structure" section below. - Description: Name of the node for the alarm description
- Raised: The last time the alarm was raised
- LocationX: The X position of the Track causing this alarm is stored on this node if a track is available
- LocationY: The Y position of the Track causing this alarm is stored on this node if a track is available
- Active: Indicates if the alarm is active
- SensorHealth: Last health from a radar or other sensor
- SensorHealthTime: When the sensor health was last updated
- SectionCount: Indicates the number of sections within a carriageway
- CarriagewayCount: Number of carriageways being tracked
- RadarCount: Number of radars or sensors having their healths tracked
- DatabaseHealth: Last health of the database (Vault) module
- RadarId: Radar Id of the radar in Radar healths or section radar
- TrafficData: Indicates that traffic data is available for this section
- AveSpeed: Traffic data average speed
- AveCount: Traffic data tracks count
- HeartBeat: This is an increasing overall health indicator. This indicator resets to 0 after 32767
GenerateCertificate
- Defaults to True. This indicates that a server certificate will be generated if the specified one is not available. This is the recommended option.
- If a custom pregenerated certificate is used, the OPC Server must be configured to match the certified application name and URI.
ServerCertificateType
- Indicates where the server certificate is stored. Uses "Directory" by default.
- Otherwise the certificate will be stored in the Windows Certificate store.
ServerCertificatePath
- File location to store the server certificate
ServerCertificateName
- On on the server certificate file
UserName
- Username for the OPC login. The OPC UA client should be set up to always use this.
Password
- Password for OPC login. The OPC UA client should be set up to always use this.
HeartbeatInterval
- Interval, in seconds, at which the heartbeat counter on the OPC Server will count up while it is connected to the Witness system. This can be used to monitor the overall health of the OPC Server plugin.
DisableTrafficData
- Setting this to true will cause the plugin to ignore traffic data and will only output the more accurate Count Classify date
Generating OPC Node Structure
To assist development or configuration of the OPC UA Client, the OPC node structure will be output to the local program data folder for reference each time the plugin is started.
Connecting to the OPC UA Server
The OPC UA client used to connect to the OPC server must be able to login through a Username and Password channel.
Related information