arrowup_inline

basysKom Application Development Services

OPC UA support in Qt 5.11 Release
  • OPC UA, Qt, Qt OPC UA
Essential Summary
OPC UA is a central element of the Industry 4.0 story providing seamless communication between IT and industrial production systems. basysKom has initiated Qt OPC UA in 2015 with the goal of providing an out of the box Qt API for OPC UA. In 2017 basysKom, together with The Qt Company, has finished up a Technology Preview of that API. It will be available with the upcoming Qt 5.11 release end of May.

OPC UA is a central element of the Industry 4.0 story providing seamless communication between IT and industrial production systems. basysKom has initiated Qt OPC UA in 2015 with the goal of providing an out of the box Qt API for OPC UA. In 2017 basysKom, together with The Qt Company, has finished up a Technology Preview of that API. It will be available with the upcoming Qt 5.11 release end of May.

The focus of Qt OPC UA is on HMI/application development and ease of use for client-side development. The Tech Preview implements a subset of the OPC UA standard. It allows to connect to servers, read and write attributes, call methods on the server, monitor values for data changes and browse nodes. All this functionality is provided by asynchronous APIs which integrate nicely into Qt applications.

Qt OPC UA is primarily an API and not a whole OPC UA stack. A plugin interface allows to integrate existing OPC UA stacks as API backends. Currently, plugins for the following stacks are available:

  • FreeOpcUa
  • open62541
  • Unified Automation C++ SDK 1.5

Qt OPC UA will be available directly from the Qt installer for those holding a Qt for Automation license. The source code itself is triple licensed (GPL, LGPL and commercial) with the exception of the Unified Automation backend which is only available under a commercial license. Users of one of the Open Source licenses will need to compile Qt OPC UA themselves. See here for a list of build recipes.

The backends for FreeOpcUa and open62541 are available under an Open Source license. When going for an Open Source solution, we recommend the open62541 plugin as it is the more complete implementation with an active community and a good momentum. It also has less dependencies, making usage on platforms such as Android or iOS much easier.

On the platform side, the technology preview will by available for

  • Windows with Visual Studio 2015 & 2017 as well as MinGW
  • Linux (Desktop and Embedded)
  • Android and iOS

Please note that not every backend is available on every platform.

On top of what is part of the Tech Preview, there are already a number of additions planned. Among them support for transport security, the discovery service, event support and filters.

We are looking forward to feedback and questions on this new module.

Picture of Frank Meerkötter

Frank Meerkötter

Frank Meerkoetter is the Development Lead for basysKom GmbH, where he is consulting customers on industrial and embedded applications, often in combination with Qt. He is responsible for the technical consulting, system- and software-architecture within basysKom. He used to be the the maintainer of Qt OPC UA (2017-2024) and a contributor to the Qt project. He has a strong background in Embedded Linux, systems programming, distributed systems and application development. He holds a Master of Computer Science from the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt.

Sorry, comments are disabled on this post.

More Blogarticles

Qt OPC UA
Revisiting NodeOPCUA
The NodeOPCUA library is a very mature OPC UA implementation for TypeScript/JavaScript on the Node.js platform. Since the initial release eleven years ago, it has been continuously updated and extended by the main developer and various external contributors. Read this article to learn if NodeOPCUA might be the right OPC UA stack for your next project.
State of Flutter on Embedded Linux
Flutter, originally designed for mobile applications, has evolved to support a wide range of platforms, including embedded Linux. In this article, we explore why Flutter might be a viable choice for your embedded project, weigh its pros and cons, and compare it to Qt to see if it stands as a strong alternative.
Qt
Translating Qt Applications
Translating a Qt application, can be a daunting task. This is an overview from Qt 5 to Qt 6 and what new functionality Qt 6.7 brings.
OPC UA: Programming against Type Descriptions
OPC UA client code that relies on hardcoded NodeIds is brittle and often only works with a specific OPC UA server instance. This article shows the proper way to write robust and portable OPC UA client code.
Qt
About QML Efficiency: Compilers, Language Server, and Type Annotations
In our last post we had a look at how to set up QML Modules and how we can benefit from the QML Linter. Today we’re going to set up the QML Language Server to get an IDE-like experience in an editor of our choice. We’ll also help the the QML Compiler generate more efficient code.
Qt
How To Use Modern QML Tooling in Practice
Qt 5.15 introduced “Automatic Type Registration”. With it, a C++ class can be marked as “QML_ELEMENT” to be automatically registered to the QML engine. Qt 6 takes this to the next level and builds all of its tooling around the so-called QML Modules. Let’s talk about what this new infrastructure means to your application in practice and how to benefit from it in an existing project.
Get In Touch 1 basysKom, HMI Dienstleistung, Qt, Cloud, Azure

Heike Ziegler

Managing Director

Get in touch

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

Result of 4 + 4 * 0?

Checkboxen
BasysKom Newsletter
YOUR DIGITAL UPDATE

Our newsletter keeps you regularly updated. We inform you about technologically relevant and new developments.

Subscribe now! Exciting, free and of course, you can unsubscribe at any time. We look forward to having you.

Einfach Ihre E-Mail eintragen

Einfach Ihre E-Mail eintragen Einfach Ihre E-Mail eintragen
Services
Technologien
Über uns

Folgen Sie uns

Xing Linkedin Youtube Facebook Github Rss

basysKom Newsletter

We collect only the data you enter in this form (no IP address or information that can be derived from it). The collected data is only used in order to send you our regular newsletters, from which you can unsubscribe at any point using the link at the bottom of each newsletter. We will retain this information until you ask us to delete it permanently. For more information about our privacy policy, read Privacy Policy