Get Started Guide

The Intel® Edge Controls Protocol Bridge can be used to bridge various industrial protocols together, effectively providing translation from one protocol to another. Some use cases include bridging the OPC UA Client/Server Model to OPC UA Publish/Subscribe Model. Other uses include bridging the PLCopen OPC UA Transport Layer to MQTT.

PLCopen OPC UA Transport Layer

OPC UA is a machine-to-machine communication protocol for industrial automation developed by the OPC Foundation. Historically, OPC UA only supported a client/server model, but in recent years an additional publish/subscribe model has become available. Currently, most industrial applications only utilize the older OPC UA client/server model, primarily as a result of the industry trend to cautiously adopt new technologies.

OPC UA Client/Server Model

First released in 2006, OPC UA was developed to replace its predecessor (OPC) and provide a path forward that would better meet the emerging needs of industrial automation. Since its release, OPC UA has seen enormous success in the automation industry and continues to be employed, with its primary application to provide a standard fieldbus communication between PLCs and networked devices.

OPC UA Publish/Subscribe Model

The newest addition to OPC UA is the publish/subscribe model. The Publish/Subscribe (PubSub) extension for OPC UA enables fast and efficient 1:m communication. The PubSub extension is protocol agnostic and can be used with broker-based protocols like MQTT and AMQP or brokerless implementations like UDP-Multicasting.

Unfortunately, OPC UA publish/subscribe is not backwards compatible with OPC UA client/server. A software bridge is required to permit cross communication between the two models. To solve this issue, the Edge Controls Protocol Bridge can bridge OPC UA client/server to publish/subscribe.

Edge Controls Protocol Bridge Plugins

The following table provides information on the Edge Controls Protocol Bridge and its various plugins.

Document / Section	Description
Edge Controls Protocol Bridge Developer Guide	This Developer Guide covers the fundamentals for using and developing custom plugins within the EC Protocol Bridge framework.
Intel® Edge Controls Protocol Bridge Microservice	This section details the Edge Controls Protocol Bridge application.
Configuration Parameters	This section details the configuration parameters that are common to all plug-ins.
OPC UA Plug-in	This section details the configuration parameters that are defined for the OPC UA plug-in. Note: This plugin only supports platforms with at least four cores.
OPC UA Key Generation	This section details the methods of creating and using certificates to sign and encrypt OPC UA data.
MQTT Plug-in	This section details the configuration parameters that are defined for the MQTT plug-in.
Data Simulator Plug-in	This section details the configuration parameters that are defined for the Simulator plug-in.
Shared Memory Plug-in	This section details the configuration parameters that are defined for the Shared Memory plug-in.
Edge Control OPC UA Server Application	This section details the Edge Control Server application.
EMB Plug-in	This section details the configuration parameters that are defined for the EII Message Bus (EMB) plug-in.
C++ Template Plug-in	This section details the configuration parameters that are common across all C++ plug-ins.
Template Plug-in	This section details the configuration parameters that are common across all plug-ins.

Learn More

Learn more about the microservice using the Tutorials.