Emerson Exchange 365

Julian, I undertook a similar activity several years ago with a Raman spec system integration to DeltaV.

The spectral data was served up as an array of 4096 elements, which is first of all more elements than a DeltaV array can handle (255 is the limit I believe). Furthermore, complex data structures like arrays aren't really handled in the OPC classic spec, they are supposed to be in OPC UA. If you are using a static OPC client like OPC Mirror or Data Manager (you are apparently using synTQ as a client to write OPC tags based on your diagram) , then you can't do clever things like for loops where you read/write array[i through n].

I believe our solution involved ingesting the spectral data (.spc file) directly from the spectroscopy system into the modeling/analysis software, bypassing DeltaV for this part of the integration. We kept the integration of commands, statuses, titres through OPC. Looking at your diagram, it actually would make more sense to follow this architecture as you reduce the number of transactions and possibilities of transcription errors between systems, and DeltaV doesn't need to know anything about the spectral data itself, just the resultant.

I'm sure synTQ can make the data available in a fashion for consumption by SIMCA, so I would focus on making that handover bullet-proof.

In reply to Youssef.El-Bahtimy:

Hi Youssef,
You are correct, books online tells DeltaV array data can hold up to more or less 250 values, so It can't simply carry all that information at once. I was thinking in splitting the data into several tags and then somehow join them outside, but this doesn't seem easy either.

For information purposes, I am using OPC remote in the PC1 and I'm not feeding a .spc file to syntq. Instead I'm connecting the instrument directly to syntq because the instrument doesn't give me a file output (viavi micronir without unscrambler)

Currently I haven't figured out the way to interact synTQ and simca directly which is as you said, a simpler and more logical way to get the data. An issue I need to check is that the interaction between syntq and simca I'm allowed to have right now is through a calibration model file, which would return the predicted moisture. This is good because I could write a scalar value (moisture%) to a DeltaV tag and I wouldn't have the array data problem, however, I'm in the prior stage of obtaining the spectral data to build such model.

I'll continue working on a way to get the spectra data to a file or something useful to build the model.