Accessing the I/O Interface Configuration

The OPC UA communication protocol can be configured in the I/O Interface Configuration tool that can be opened from the HYPERSIM ribbon.

For more information on the general use of the I/O Interface Configuration, see I/O Interface Configuration.

General Configuration

The section explains the generic configuration parameters of OPC UA Server driver

Network interface	The desired network interface name. The proper interface name should be selected based on the information given by the Linux command "ifconfig". By default, this parameter is configured with "eth0".
Use an RT core for asynchronous computation	If set to true, the driver reserves a real-time CPU core for its communication system and can handle a bigger amount of data. If set to false, the communication system defaults to core 0.
TCP port	Select the TCP port on which the OPC UA Server will listen for an OPC UA client to connect and communicate with.
Verbose	If enabled, additional information is displayed while the model is loading.
Advanced options	If enabled, advanced configuration options of the OPC UA server is displayed.
Use external synchronization	If enabled, two data points are provided to provide an external timestamp source for the simulation.
Enable virtual mode	In virtual mode, the model can be executed even if this I/O interface is not compatible with the hardware configuration of the system. The connections between the model and the I/O interface will be done during the initialization, but the I/O interface will not do anything. The virtual mode can be used to troubleshoot problems on a system without having the required hardware, or to prepare a model with different I/O interfaces even if the final hardware platform is not available.

Server Configuration

The configuration parameters of the OPC UA Server are configured with default values. The server has configurations such as network interface and TCP port number, which are configured in the general section page and need to be specified by the user.

The server has more advanced configurations parameters that are not displayed by default. However, the user can modify these parameters after enabling the advanced option.

Advanced configuration options for OPC UA Server include the following.

TCP binary	Configures the TCP connection parameters such as message size, number of connections, and connection timeout.
Secure conversation	Configures the secure channel layer such as the number of revised channels and the maximum number of secure channels used in the OPC UA Server architecture.
Security	Configures the end security policy options utilized in the OPC UA Server architecture.
Services	Configures the session (used between server and client) parameters such as maximum no of sessions, session timeout, and queue size, etc.
Address space and profiles	Configures user-defined objects represented between server and client.
Server capabilities	Configures the server capabilities in terms of defining the number of browse contents, array length of point setup and length of the string, etc
Operation limits	Configures the nodes implemented between the server and the client. It defines various parameters of the node architecture such as the maximum number of nodes per read and write, the maximum number of nodes per method call and the maximum number of monitored per item, etc.
Internals	Configures the internal parameters such as buffer size, number of buckets for address space hash table, etc.
Diagnostics	Configures the diagnostics options such as enabling info and error log
Intervals	Intervals contain an array of predefined cyclic rates that the server can implement very efficiently for sampling and reporting data changes. All intervals must be a multiple of the server cyclic rates. Minimum intervals should be less than or equal to index 0 of the intervals array. Maximum intervals should be greater than or equal to the last entry of the intervals array. CyclicRateMs is the cyclic rate at which the server executes and the rate at which the server is polled by the application. The default value is 100 ms. It is not recommended to increase the rate beyond 50 ms without very careful testing.

Points Setup Data Configuration

The data points to be monitored and controlled by the user are configured in the Points setup section. Each data point has the following configurable parameters

Name	Name of the data point
Type	Data type of data point. The supported data types of this driver are displayed below in a table.
Direction	Data communication direction. It could either be "Server to client" or "Client to server"
Array Length	Length of the data, if it is '1' then its a single data point or else the data point is a vector of a specified length
Path	Folder tree of the data. All the folders will be displayed in the OPC UA client, and different points can be added to the same folder.
Enable quality control	If set, then quality control of the data point is enabled for monitoring with a separate connection point
Initial value(s)	Initial value(s) of the data point which communicates in this direction "Client to server". It will define the value applied to the data point before the client decides to write something in it

The following snapshot shows the points setup data configuration of the OPC UA Server example model. It has several data points configured in both directions. Scalar and array data points with some quality control monitoring

enabled are also included.

The table below describes the different data types that can be used in the 'type' field of a point:

Type	Description/range
boolean	Boolean value. 0 or 1
int8	Signed 8-bits integer (-128 to 127)
uint8	Unsigned 8-bits integer (0 to 255)
int16	Signed 16-bits integer (-32,768 to 32,767)
uint16	Unsigned 16-bits integer (0 to 65,535)
int32	Signed 32-bits integer (-2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647)
uint32	Unsigned 32-bits integer (0 to 4,294,967,295)
int64	Signed 64-bits integer (-(2⁶³) to 2⁶³ -1)
uint64	Unsigned 64-bits integer (0 to 2⁶⁴ -1)
float	Single precision floating point integer (3.4E +/- 38)
double	Double precision floating point integer (1.7E +/- 308)

HYPERSIM Documentation

OPC UA Server | Configuration

Accessing the I/O Interface Configuration

General Configuration

Server Configuration

Points Setup Data Configuration