Opto 22 headquarters welcomed a new group of groov EPIC students to kick off 2024 training.

The value of in-person, instructor-led training at the Opto 22 factory and headquarters is evident after working with another great class of Opto students this week—all eager to become groov EPIC experts. And kudos, once again, to the team of Opto trainers who devote their time to developing a class curriculum that is beneficial for all levels of engineering and types of applications.

This month, students made the trip to California from Texas, Tennessee, Florida, Massachusetts, and parts of central California to attend and spend 4 days immersed in the groov EPIC system—learning all its features, capabilities, and programming options.

If you haven't attended training yet, we hope you can join us at one of our upcoming classes.

These website tools make it easy to design your automation systems and choose the parts you need.

Hey Opto crew! Today, I want to walk you through something pretty cool and super useful – our System Configurators at Opto 22. These tools are all about making your life easier when it comes to picking the right automation gear. No fluff, just the good stuff, including all the specs for the parts you'll need, and you can access them all from the Products section of our website.

New features and improved performance are available on groov I/O modules with the click of a button.

A well-known electric car company is somewhat famous for its ability to add features and fix bugs with over-the-air updates to millions of cars. Of course, they are not the only ones with this feature. Many companies have been updating their hardware with firmware updates for decades, but it really captures the imagination when the hardware is something you drive.

Closer to our hearts and minds, Opto 22 has been adding features and squishing bugs on our controllers for more years than most of us can recall (it's our 50th year in 2024!). There are a few SNAP I/O modules that can have their firmware updated via our PAC Manager program—the serial data ones for example—but now with groov EPIC and RIO, ALL our modules can have new features and refined performance added at the click of a button.

Did you watch all of the 10 most popular videos on the Opto 22 YouTube channel in 2023?

If you're one of the over 27,000 subscribers who follow the OptoVideo channel on YouTube, you have first access to all the new video content we produce. Whether it's a new Node-RED developer video, product overview, or a technical how-to workshop, you get it all.

So what topics proved most useful (and popular) with our viewers last year? Let's review Opto 22's Top 10 Videos of 2023.

Sending Season's Greetings and keeping you informed of our year-end holiday schedule.

Did you get in on the holiday fun earlier this month and get your groov EPIC holiday ornament? There's still time to watch Opto 22's holiday video and see how you can score your own mini 3D EPIC.

It's been a treat to hear how everyone is utilizing all the features the groov EPIC system has to offer. 

The Opto 22 team would once again like to wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season, as well as keep you informed of this month's holiday schedule.

The Eclipse Foundation recently announced the Sparkplug international standard achievement.

Sparkplug, the MQTT specification that enhances the way your Opto 22 groov systems communicate and operate, has achieved the ISO/IEC 20237:2023 International Standard Status. It’s a significant milestone in the IIoT world, particularly for Opto 22 and our users. As you know, Opto 22 adopted Sparkplug years ago because of its reliability, efficiency, and plug-and-play functionality in modern IIoT architectures. It’s nice to see the rest of the industry accepting and adopting this groundbreaking tech.

Watch how Opto 22's Terry Orchard is designing and spreading some EPIC holiday cheer this season.

As we near the end of 2023, the Opto 22 team would like to extend our warmest wishes and gratitude to all our customers, dedicated OptoPartners, and distributors for making it a successful year. We thank you for your continued business and support. 

From the Opto headquarters in Temecula, California, USA, to all our customers and partners worldwide, we wish you a happy and healthy holiday season. But we'd like to give you a token of our appreciation on a slightly smaller EPIC scale. Watch and see what our busy technical content creator, Terry Orchard, has been cooking up for the holidays.

Take your groov View HMI to the next level!

Are you building HMI screens to use with your groov EPIC (GRV-EPIC-PR1 or GRV-EPIC-PR2) or groov Server for Windows (GROOV-SVR-WIN-BASE)? We can help! We've just debuted a new section of the Opto 22 website where you can find all your SVGs, PNGs, GIFs, product images, and logos in one convenient location.

Learn more about the Opto Memory Map Protocol—a powerful method of interacting with Opto 22 controllers

OptoMMP works with everything from SNAP PAC brains to the latest groov products. Let's go over some of the basics about what OptoMMP is and how it works.

In my last blog post I showed how easy it can be to work with OptoMMP using tools built right into groov Manage. To add to that resource, this follow up provides an overview about what OptoMMP is, how it works, and why you might want to make use of it.

Learn advanced design techniques for groov View in the latest groov workshop video.

Opto 22's Paul Hardt shows you ways to make your groov View operator interface even better—with a basic layout structure, a grid for lining up HMI elements, and layered gadgets. With browser-based groov View, you can easily build an HMI to see and interact with exactly what you need. groov View is included with groov EPIC and groov Server for Windows. 

Recently, Paul showed you the groov View Quick Start Guide, outlining 3 simple steps to an HMI. This time he takes a deeper dive into what you can do with the more advanced features of the design tool.

Watch: Advanced HMI Design Techniques with groov View.