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OPC Trend Link by Canary LabsProduct Review
Overall Rating:
By Chris Robinson
OverviewHaving spent a lot of time working in the field on OPC systems I am always on the lookout for helpful tools that I can add to my toolbox. I specifically look for tools that are light weight (so they travel well!), powerful, easy to install, easy to connect, easy to learn, and, most importantly, reliable. All the things you would expect from an industrial quality application. I think I have found another addition to my other travelling tools!
Trend Link is a data trending tool that has been around for awhile, and you can tell by the stability the application offers and the ease of getting setup and started. This application is designed to collect data from local or remote OPC data sources (all the OPC DA and HDA specification revisions are supported) and setup data capturing on series of data points for real time or historical analysis. Captured data translates into a visual representation of your process and simplifies the task of monitoring for optimization or root cause analysis on process issues. Trend Link supports up to 200 separate data trends with the ability to label and order the trends. With other applications I have always found the ability for switching between real time and historical views clumsy or in different areas of the application. Trend Link makes this a breeze with a simple button click to toggle between the live view and the historical view. Browsing through the trends is fantastic as well with simple click and dragging along the trend timelines to move forward and backward in time. The dynamic auto scaling of trends limits the amount of time you need to be fussing with the scales. I had an experience with another application where you would always lose the scale setting and the trends would be zoomed in to such a degree you couldn’t even tell what the application was doing. So I find this feature key in a good data trending application. Speaking of quality, the quality of Trend Link was right where you would expect as the application worked flawlessly during all the work I did with it. It was always very responsive and was able to keep up with data changing at the millisecond level, and the real time trending view was always very smooth with no hiccups. It never left me with any concerns that it may not be keeping up with the incoming data on real time connections. I was also impressed with how easy it was to compare trend values through what Canary Labs calls a Value Cursor. This is a simple mouse click and it will display in a nice large font the values at any given point in time down to millisecond resolution. Deltas can also be measured easily through a right click and drag of the mouse. Something that surprised me was how configurable this application is. Not only can you create data tags for each of the trend lines, but you can modify the look and feel of the charts, the time scales, the buttons, colors, and grids. This level of customization is great if you have several people using the application and each person has their own requirements for what is being monitored. Feature sets can be created, saved, and reloaded for each user. This is also useful for setting up specific trend groups by making configuration of the views quick to load and easy to repeat.
Trend Link has implemented support for Microsoft’s Active X technology. This technology allows Trend Link to run directly within another application. So, if you’re looking to spice up your existing HMI solution with some visual eye candy or seriously want to provide powerful trend data for your process, you can consider incorporating Trend Link as if it was written by the HMI vendor. I wasn’t able to try this but Canary Labs advertises support for running Trend Link within InTouch, iFix, and RSView to name a few! That covers a large percentage of installed HMI systems but with Active X it can also be used in the ever growing demand for web based solutions. I need to hit on the ease of using this application one more time. Installation of Trend Link took less than 2 minutes (I timed it!). The footprint of the application is so small. I measured around 11 megabytes. The only part that took any consideration was if I wanted it to automatically configure my DCOM settings or not. I decided to give this a try and was pleased when it presented me with a very detailed breakdown of exactly what it changed in my configuration. I had never seen any vendor do this before, but for the advanced users it’s useful to know how the security settings are being modified. This way there is no guessing on how the application may have changed the security settings and potentially opened your PC up to unwanted guests.
Once everything was installed I decided to avoid the user manual. I wanted to see how long it would take for me to get a simple data trend running from a remote OPC server. It took me a minute to find the button but only because I toured the menus to get oriented first. However, even with the tour I had OPC data points trending in less than 5 minutes. I was able to get several trends running, work with the view changing scales, and working with the time intervals for the main view. I even figured out how to set limits on the trends without reading the manual.
Eventually I gave in and read the user manual and was pleased to learn just how many things I had missed. The manipulation of the trend view with the mouse was much better than I had first thought. You can check precise data point values simply by clicking on the trends, and it shows the comparative values of the other trend lines for the same time point. This helps you understand the relationships of the data points for the various parts of the process you are monitoring. You can also mark specific points of interest with annotations. This helps draw out the story of the process under analysis quickly and easily. Annotation fields shown on the trends are configurable so they can contain just the specific details you need and nothing more. Everything this application offers was easy to learn through the user manual. The manual is presented in a typical manner using HTML help (In a CHM file) but what I liked about it was the design of the “How To” chapters. The manual is laid out to help the reader quickly figure out how to perform important tasks with the tool. You don’t need to know anything about how the tool works to find useful manual entries using this design. Even if you needed some extra help, Canary Labs offers a free support desk for anyone who carries a Trend Link license.
Overall I enjoyed working with Trend Link. Simplicity and ease of use get you started and over time the day-to-day user grows to appreciate how comfortable this application is to work with. Being easy to use and comfortable to work with encourages the user to explore their process, not to mention keeps the application up and running in the operator’s workstation. The quality is high which will also ensure that anyone who installs this into their workstation will keep it there. In my experience users will only tolerate poor quality for so long before the application is either abandoned or replaced. With all these key requirements covered for a good data trending application bringing home the value is something Canary Labs has taken care of with Trend Link.
For the purposes of this review, the following product version was used:
Vendor Recommended Specifications for Trend Link:
Required Processor (CPU) Class: Any that runs Windows Required Processor Speed: Any that runs Windows Required Disk Space: 20 Megs for Program files Required Memory (RAM): 128 Megs Recommended Memory (RAM): 500 Megs
Software Specifications: The following computer hardware was used for the review of Trend Link:
Dell Inspiron 9400, Dual Core, 2.2 Ghz CPU, 2 Gigs RAM Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 This review is published by the OPC Training Institute. Copyright ©2008 OPC Training Institute (OPCTI). All rights reserved. The information contained in this review is proprietary to OPCTI. No part of this review may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, translated, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from OPCTI. |
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