In 1974, Robert Engman III stared down at 22 optically isolated, highly reliable, liquid epoxy-filled, solid state relays (SSRs) with no moving parts—quite an innovation back then—and he contemplated what to name the new company.

The result? "Opto" signifies optical isolation, and the "22" represents the original lineup of 22 relays. But this year, there’s another important number that we need to discuss—50!

Yes, Opto 22 is 50. Years. Young. 

This week, as we celebrate Opto’s Golden Anniversary of existence, I’d be remiss not to reflect on the legacy of a company I have loved being a part of for the last decade. And while my 11 years may seem like a long time, many of the folks I work with each day have tenures twice or thrice as long—they’ve been carrying the torch, maintaining the legacy that we are still building today.

Laundry OEM Gurtler Industries reinvents their dispensing systems with groov EPIC and Opto 22's free Software Development Kits (SDKs).

What do you do when competitors in the chemical storage and dispensing industry are surpassing you, and a shift in technology is needed to put you back at the forefront of laundry operations?

Learn how Gurtler Industries, a third-generation family business based in the United States Midwest, regained its position as a leading provider of laundry chemical products, services, and support for many industries including healthcare, hospitality, and textile rentals. When their competitors began leveraging data collection, remote monitoring, and enhanced visualizations, Gurtler knew they also needed to expand the capabilities of their dispensing systems to maintain their competitive market position.

In this case study, find out how Gurtler Industries was able to stay ahead of the competition by transitioning to an open-source platform with Opto 22's free Software Development Kits (SDKs) and advanced hardware solutions.

The annual Ignition Community Conference is your opportunity to see how Ignition software can provide new, innovative solutions for your projects and industrial applications.

The exciting tradition continues as Inductive Automation recently announced the dates and theme of this year's Ignition Community Conference. We invite you to attend the 2024 Ignition Community Conference taking place September 17 - 19th in Folsom, California, and experience your own "A-ha!" moment. 

Meet industry thought leaders, see innovative Ignition use cases, and learn from Ignition experts. And of course, meet with Opto 22 engineers and see live demos of groov EPIC and groov RIO working together with Ignition.

This year's "Breakthrough" theme is focused on three categories designed to educate about Ignition software:

• Keynote speakers, exhibitor presentations, and table talks
• Product announcements revealing software version updates and exciting new features
• Discover Gallery with videos and project demonstrations of real-world Ignition application scenarios from a variety of industries, from all over the world

This event has sold out the last few years, so get your tickets now! Attend in person or with a livestream pass.

How do you go from serial comms to serious SCADA without downtime or compromise?

Based in Cincinnati, Ohio, Varland Plating has provided high quality, precision barrel-plated finishes to their customers since 1946. Varland manually performed plating operations until the early 1990s. Then automated systems improved turnaround times and product quality. More recently, the company saw the advanced capabilities of Opto 22's groov products—smaller equipment footprint, Ethernet, data visibility, and more—and entered a new era of industrial automation.

In this case study, find out how Varland Plating was able to bring a 30-year-old automation system into the future without downtime or compromising their SCADA goals.

Learn how all the pieces of digital transformation come together to add another level of data connectivity and security to your projects.

Join Opto 22 and several industry experts at the first annual OT SCADA CON event in Houston.

Dive into the world of operational technology and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems with industry experts and fellow enthusiasts. Opto 22 is a proud sponsor of a first-of-its-kind SCADA event taking place in Houston July 25–26, 2024: OT SCADA CON.

Don't miss out on the opportunity to expand your knowledge and grow your professional network. It promises to be the perfect chance to connect, learn, and network in person.

OT SCADA CON is for controls people, maintenance staff, technicians, and sales professionals to learn all about operational technology and the world of SCADA.

Premium Factory Training classes provide hands-on instruction for choosing the best programming options for your control applications.

Looking for a reason to attend groov EPIC Premium Factory Training at Opto 22 headquarters? Are your projects requiring technology that can do much more than a PLC?

The monthly in-person training sessions offered at Opto 22 headquarters help you expand your skill set and find easier ways to meet your current application challenges. The team of Opto 22 instructors are committed to helping each student succeed—no matter your years of experience, skill level, range of interests or goals.

Learn system components and configuration, networking capabilities, diagnostics, troubleshooting, and communication methods that you can apply to your own industrial automation application. You might just build a complete solution before you leave!

At the conclusion of each class, students are encouraged to share their feedback with the training staff. Hear what this month's students had to say about their groov EPIC training experience. Then register to join us for the next class!

Register to attend an Inductive Automation Solution Partner Webinar—presented by Inductive Automation, Cirrus Link Solutions, Sepasoft, Opto 22, and 4IR Solutions.

Digital Transformation is a multi-layered process that requires data and connectivity on every level. Each level of connectivity presents its own challenges and complexities, but you can definitely achieve Digital Transformation when you have the right lineup of solutions.

In this one-hour webinar, you'll see how to build a scalable system for SCADA, MES, IIoT, and Digital Transformation, step by step. Experts from Inductive Automation, Cirrus Link Solutions, Sepasoft, Opto 22, and 4IR Solutions will explain how their respective software and hardware components fit together to create a seamless automation ecosystem within an Ignition Hub and Spoke Architecture.

Discover how groov View, a simple, user-friendly HMI building tool, makes responsive web design easy.

I’ve had the line “Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got till it's gone” from Joni Mitchell’s 1970 hit Big Yellow Taxi rolling around in my head the past few weeks.

I've been working on building web pages for a personal project I will use on my PC and my smartphone, so they must be responsive.

Because I’ve been working with groov View for so long, I’d forgotten just how really, really hard it is to use standard web design tools to build responsive web pages with graphical elements. There is so much HTML and CSS development required to get a single webpage to display nicely on both a PC-sized screen and a smartphone-sized screen (and everything in between).

With groov View, you don’t have to write a single line of code—it's all just drag and drop!

Read about the features, enhancements, and various fixes you'll get in the groov EPIC 3.6 firmware release.

You'll see some really amazing updates this year. Meanwhile, while it's exciting to be working on new hardware and software, we also know that regular updates that address some "pebble in the shoe" discomfort are just as important. Our 3.6.0 firmware release adds a few new features and takes out a few pebbles for some nice quality-of-life improvements.

Let’s do a quick unpacking of this new EPIC firmware release.