OPC UA Learner Series - How to Build a Secure OPC-UA Server for PLCs in Node-RED

[Hisma 2]

Hey guys, last week I posted part 1 of a series of OPC UA articles in Node-RED. That article covered some important concepts of OPC UA and how they relate to building your own server in Node-RED. I then walk through an example OPC UA Server flow and show how to successfully deploy it.

https://flowforge.com/blog/2023/07/how-to-deploy-a-basic-opc-ua-server-in-node-red/

In this second article, I create a more practical example, and show how to build a custom OPC UA Server for an Allen Bradley PLC in Node-RED, including how to encrypt the server connection with SSL to make it production-ready.

https://flowforge.com/blog/2023/07/how-to-build-a-secure-opc-ua-server-for-plcs-in-node-red/

I did my best to break everything down into manageable details, so that hopefully even someone with minimal experience can follow it. But ultimately building a custom OPC UA Server does take some effort.

My hope is that this tutorial can teach someone enough concepts to go on and develop their own custom OPC Server applications to suit their specific use-case.

As always, if you have any questions please let me know! Here to help.

note - the full source code is included at the end :).

Let me know if you have any questions!

[pturmel 160]

Well done.  Possibly worth posting outside the Rockwell category, as it looks like it would apply to a wider collection of targets.

[Hisma 2]

Thank you!  And good point, I used Allen Bradley in my example, but realistically if you have a PLC or device that's got a driver supported by node-red (which there are tons!) this application could easily be adapted to other devices.

I'll see about a good general area to post this as well.