In a recent upgrade to their video-based quality control system, Kimberly-Clark, the leading tissue paper producer for Switzerland and Austria, worked with Cogent Sales Partner in Switzerland, Logicpark, who used the OPC DataHub to connect their client's ABB QCS (Quality Control System) to a new, state-of-the-art Viconsys Process and Quality Vision System.

"The OPC DataHub worked very well for this project," said Bruno Maurer, Head of Solutions at Logicpark. "With it we were able to combine OPC tunneling and OPC bridging to get complete and reliable networking of real-time data."

The OPC DataHub's built-in mailing program (Blat) does not support SSL or TLS encryption for sending secure emails. However, it is possible and very simple to create an SSL tunnel that converts the DataHub's plain-text mail connection into an SSL-encrypted connection, using a free tool called Stunnel.

Version 7.0 of the OPC DataHub will have secure email as a permanent feature, but it can be done now, in version 6.4. The online documentation explains how, in a few easy steps.

Sometimes you don't need to write records to a database using a full-blown data logger. It's enough to log data to a text file, most commonly a CSV (comma separated value) file. On the other hand, sometimes you might need to read data from a CSV file.

The OPC DataHub comes with two scripts that let you do exactly these two tasks, ReadCSV.g and WriteCSV.g. All you need to do is edit the script for your data as explained in the script's comments, and run it. Give it a try!