See what Opto users were talking about as we look back at last year's Top 5 posts on the OptoForums.
There is no question that the Opto 22 forums are very much alive and kicking. The past 9 months of COVID lockdown did not even make the slightest dent in the activity level.
Let's take a quick look back at 5 of the top forum posts from last year.
Using Node-RED to talk to serial devices
We have heard from many new customers that when you search the greater Internet for anything related to IIoT, industrial controllers and Node-RED, you find Opto 22 very quickly. And for good reason: Terry Orchard has set up his home office as a micro studio and has been putting out video after video on the subject of using the embedded Node-RED software on our groov EPIC and RIO systems.
It's no wonder one of the top forum posts from 2020 was on the subject of using Node-RED to talk to serial devices: https://forums.opto22.com/t/modbus-serial-with-node-red/3176
With Modbus RTU being such a popular industrial protocol, many customers are using serial-to-USB adaptors to pick up this legacy data and move it into other platforms, or even do a little control as needed.
- USB file management with groov View and Node-RED
Speaking of USB ports, both EPIC and RIO have two of them and it is very popular to use a USB memory stick to log data to those thumb drives.
A very active thread was using groov View, Node-RED and USB memory sticks to log data: https://forums.opto22.com/t/usb-file-management-with-groov-view-and-node-red/3250
This forum thread starts out with a really interesting work around for safely unmounting the USB drive at the end of the file copy, but the Opto 22 software guys saw the thread and added an official API endpoint to do a safe eject of the drive.
Keep an eye on our YouTube channel (you're a subscriber right?). Terry is working on a series of videos on the subject of using Node-RED on the groov family line for data logging. It should be very helpful seeing the different methods of writing data to the file area.
- Firmware updates
Even under COVID lockdown, the Opto 22 software engineers delivered two massive firmware updates. There is no question that groov EPIC version 3.0 made a big splash on the forums: https://forums.opto22.com/t/groov-epic-3-0-firmware-has-been-released/3460. More than a few features on this list stemmed from popular forum posts. - Feature requests
A great example of this was the ability to backup all user installed nodes in Node-RED.
Now when you do a firmware update, all your Node-RED flows and nodes are backed up and restored automatically, even if you are off-line from the Internet.
This feature was one of the top topics for the forum in 2020: https://forums.opto22.com/t/feature-request-recover-full-node-red-state-from-backup/3229
It was great to see this very topic addressed in the 3.0 firmware update.
groov RIO in the flesh
The last popular forum post of 2020 we are going to mention is, of course, the very exciting news of a new product in the form of the groov RIO.
We were able to offer a sneak peek of groov RIO on the forums and answer a lot of questions before its official release: https://forums.opto22.com/t/groov-rio-in-the-flesh/2964
This thread was proof positive that it is very much worth your time to check in on the forums and turn on notifications so you can be part of the community that is tapped into all things Opto 22.
I hope that this quick review of last year's popular forum posts gives you a good feel for the community we have built together on the OptoForums. Keep in mind that the forum is not for setup for product support; for that we have a dedicated team. However, the forums are a great place to brainstorm ideas and share your experiences.
We would love for you to sign up and join in, but even if you just lurk, well, that's OK with us too.
See ya on the forums.
Cheers mate.
-Ben