New categories and reorganization of topics are just some of the reasons to visit the OptoForums.

Whether you're new to using Opto 22 products or a long-time user, you can benefit from checking out the OptoForums. It's where engineering minds meet to post questions, answer fellow forum user questions, recommend solutions or even provide code samples—all related to Opto 22 hardware and software.

Moderated by Opto 22's Ben Orchard and Terry Orchard, the Forums are another great resource to keep bookmarked for troubleshooting or application advice.

And the Forums recently went through some reorganization, with more topics and categories added to help you find your answers more quickly and efficiently. Take a look at what's new.

A new section just added to the Opto 22 Developer site supports the latest 3.0.0 release of the Opto 22 CODESYS library package.

If you haven't visited developer.opto22.com in awhile, you'll want to spend some time reviewing our latest technical guides and resources. The site gets a lot of traffic from developers working with groov EPIC, SNAP PACs, Node-RED, and even industrial I/O for Raspberry Pi. 

Since all Opto 22 products are designed on open standards, you have a variety of ways to interact with them and integrate with other systems. The developer site helps you do that.

Now we've added a section dedicated to helping you program CODESYS on groov EPIC controllers.

Watch the recording of episode 8 of IntegrateLive! - as Opto 22 and Phoenix Contact connect their PLCs to web APIs to leverage data.

If you're not familiar with IntegrateLive! yet, we encourage you to check out this new online community. Jeff Knepper and Allen Ray created this platform to help all end users, manufacturers, and system integrators in the industrial automation space.

The importance of open source technologies working together is the foundation of IL and it celebrates "Co-op-etition"—which is what brought Opto 22 and Phoenix Contact together in this latest episode.

Join us for another episode of an IntegrateLive! virtual workshop showcasing Linux-based PLCs.

Have you attended any virtual workshops hosted by the IntegrateLive! community? The IL platform started earlier this year as a collaboration that aligns integrators, vendors, and end users. Each episode brings together "changemakers in automation" who show how open source technologies work well together.

The result? An integrated solution ecosystem that you can use to solve everyday industrial problems.

Opto 22 is once again participating in this month's live demo to show the capabilities of edge controllers like groov EPIC. We'll be joined by Phoenix Contact in this 8th episode of IntegrateLive, happening October 26th at 8:00 am PDT (11:00 am EDT). Register to attend.

groov EPIC OPC UA Server makes it easy to access your data; lessons on OptoU show you how

Do you need access to your PAC Control strategy variables and I/O, or data from the memory map area on your groov EPIC? Do you want to connect to OPC UA client applications such as SCADA, MES, or enterprise software?

groov EPIC is now serving up this data securely and reliably with its built-in groov EPIC OPC UA Server. Publish the data where you need it.

In this post, we’ll go over exactly what data is accessible from the server, the basics of configuring the server, and some examples of how you can use it. And when you’re ready to work with the OPC UA server, you can find step-by-step instructions in the groov EPIC OPC UA courses on OptoU.

See what's new in the latest version of Node-RED included in groov EPIC 3.4 firmware.

With every groov firmware update we also include updates to the software our devices run, whether that’s groov View, Ignition, or Node-RED. The recent groov EPIC 3.4.0 update is no different! In this post, I’ll briefly go over some of the biggest updates to Node-RED, which has been bumped to v2.2.2. If you want to know more about the 3.4.0 groov EPIC firmware, check out Ben’s forum post.

Major release adds embedded OPC UA server, expanded MQTT/Sparkplug options, SNMP, Scratch Pad data access, and more

Everyone here at Opto is very excited to announce that the latest EPIC firmware update is now live.

Just as you update the OS on your phone to get the latest improvements in security, stability and performance, the OS on your groov EPIC is no different. It is after all, a quad core Linux computer, so updates are very important for the exact same reasons: security, stability, and performance.

And often these updates come with some cool new features. With this release, you'll find several.

New technical note shows you how to update security settings for your email applications.

You can use many Opto 22 products to send email notifications to keep engineers and technicians aware of important conditions in your system. For example:

• You can send email through a PAC Control strategy running on a groov EPIC or SNAP PAC controller.
• Your groov View HMI can send event notifications via email.
• Your Node-RED flow on groov RIO or groov EPIC can send email.

But you must make changes now to keep receiving emails!

Next up in the Node-RED videos series is a tutorial about using Swagger to help set up API calls.

In under 20 minutes, this new developer video from Terry Orchard will take you through all the steps you need to get a solid understanding of using Swagger UI pages to create API calls you can bring into Node-RED. Using them together, you can control all sorts of APIs from your groov device, both getting and posting data, using simple Node-RED.

Prepare to make security changes to your email accounts by May 30, 2022.

For a long time, automation engineers have sent email alerts and reports from automation applications via a ‘throwaway’ Gmail account. This seemed harmless enough at the time and really useful, but it wasn’t very secure. As email abuse has risen over the years, it's time for the “less secure” party to come to an end.

Does this mean an end to all email alerts? Not at all. You just need to adjust your Google Gmail settings and update to a new application password in each application. Of course, this applies (with different end dates) to most other email providers as well as Google; check with your email provider for details. This blog will focus on Google Gmail.