The upcoming conference in Houston provides opportunities to learn best practices for data mobility and security for today’s industrial cyber environment.

Join us in Houston for this year's ENTELEC Conference & Expo, April 1-4, 2024. It's a chance to explore a complete edge solution for your project using Opto 22’s groov EPIC and RIO products, along with Opto 22 Technology partners Inductive Automation (Ignition Edge), Cirrus Link Solutions (MQTT Modules), and Snowflake (Data Cloud).

Ireland-based distributor now available to help meet your automation needs.

Announcing a new addition to our international channel of distributors and partners: Cully Automation Ltd in Ireland. Cully Automation offers groov EPIC, groov RIO, and the complete Opto 22 product line in the region.  

With over 20 years’ experience in water treatment, process control, automation, and instrumentation within water utilities and multi-sector industries, Cully Automation brings extensive knowledge to help you choose automation products. Opto 22’s edge products and technologies complement their areas of expertise for an ideal partnership.
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Get great resources and tips from experienced Opto 22 product users—and help other users with your insights.

You’ll see the OptoForums mentioned here on the blog from time to time, and that's for good reason. The Forums have valuable technical advice, sample code, product feature discussions, and firmware release previews that you can't get anywhere else.

The OptoForums community just surpassed 10,000 members! A sincere thank you to all our valuable contributors. And if you're not already a member, now is the time to sign up or sign in with your MyOpto account. You can find the direct link under the Community tab on our website.

Visit Opto 22's Events page to see where you can find Opto engineers demonstrating groov products in 2024.

We're already a month into the new year and our calendar of events is filling up quickly. Opto 22 engineers, sales and marketing staff will be in attendance at various trade shows, conferences and participating in virtual webinars throughout the year.

Take a look at what's available online or in your area and plan to join us at one or more of these industry events. You'll have several opportunities to see live demos of groov EPIC and groov RIO.

Here's what's on the schedule so far.

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.

Get free online instruction for using the CODESYS runtime engine on groov RIO in the new training series.

A customer favorite in 2023 was the groov RIO 3.5 firmware release. With this release, you could use the groov RIO edge I/O module as a controller with the CODESYS runtime engine onboard.

This was a game changer for many of our customers. Our Director of Technical Marketing, Dan White, even shared one of the first applications taking advantage of the new RIO 3.5 features in this CODESYS Tech Talk with Costa Farms.  It illustrated how the addition of CODESYS has transformed groov RIO into a full-fledged Edge PLC, opening up a world of possibilities for automation and control.

Now you can get a better understanding of how this new feature can work in your application by following along with some brand-new lessons on OptoU—Opto 22's free online training site. 

Preventing spills and improving operational efficiency using Opto 22's groov RIO.

Texas-based Point Energy Partners (PEP) specializes in acquiring and developing onshore U.S. oil and gas properties with extensive experience working in major basins across the nation. PEP owns and operates the majority of the gathering and midstream assets for its operations, including its very large water recycling program, which showcases their commitment to sustainable and efficient resource management.

In an industry where every spill carries a hefty price tag, PEP found that the manual and low-tech systems at their water sites were a significant problem. These sites did not have a big budget for upgrades, so most control solutions on the market just wouldn’t fit the bill.

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.

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.