Micromod MOD: ICN OPC Server Users Guide - Manual (Page 3)

1 Introduction
1.1 Introduction
ICN OPC Server is an Industrial IT enabled software product. It is an OPC Foundation
compliant server application (serial communications device interface) that allows
hardware devices to communicate with OPC Clients such as ABB Operate IT Products
and other software manufacturer's HSI packages like ICONICS’ Genesis32, Intellution's
FIX Dynamics and similar packages from Wonderware, CI Technologies and others. For
client software packages that are not OPC compliant, the server also supports dynamic
data entry (DDE) type links. ViZapp, Visual Application Designer, is also an OPC Client
that can use this OPC server to communicate with the devices it configures. The OPC
server handles the reading and writing of the device data. See Overview of OPC based
configuration for steps involved in configuring the client and server.
This OPC server supports MODCELL and MOD 30ML Controllers and MOD30
Instruments such as Controller, Recorder, Math Unit and Sequence and Logic Unit (SLU)
using the ICN (Instrument Communication Network) communication protocol.
The server is used to build the tag database that contains information about the tags such
as tag name, address, device (instrument) from which they are coming and communication
port settings. Any OPC Client application, such as OPC based HMI Software, can plug
and play with this and present the data to the user.
An OPC Client is included in the ABB ICN OPC Server. This monitor client is useful for
viewing live data and determining if configured tags are receiving correct data from the
hardware.
1.2 Definitions
1.2.1 ICN Protocol
ICN (Instrument Communication Network) is a master-less token passing protocol. It is
used for Peer-to-peer communication between the members on the ICN. It can also be
used for communication to host devices such as Computer and LCP (Local Control Panel).
The maximum number of devices on the ICN is 16. Each device should have a unique
address in the range of 0 – F Hex (0 – 15). Each device on the network is assured access to
the token every 250 ms. The device can receive or transmit messages or data when it has
the token.
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