OSIsoft Learning just finished a set of videos on the PI Interface for Universal File and Stream Loading! This interface most famously reads data out of text files, usually text files deposited by whatever device or server our script you have, and then read by PI UFL and written to a PI Tag. This is one of OSIsoft's most common interfaces out there, so I'm sure there are users that would like to see a step-by-step of how to step it up and use it. We've included time-stamps in the youtube video description to assist navigating the videos.
A little background on PI UFL:
The PI Interface for Universal File and Stream Loading, or 'PI UFL', is one of the most flexible and adaptable ways to import data into the PI System.
PI UFL reads data from ASCII data sources and writes data to PI. The PI UFL interface can read text from ASCII files, a serial port, or a POP3 email server, parse and transform the incoming data, and update PI points.
To specify how the incoming data is handled, you create a configuration (INI) file, which defines how data is filtered, parsed, manipulated and written to PI. The PI UFL interface is intended to replace the PI Batch File interface.
The PI UFL interface can process XML files, but for applications that are best addressed using the OPC XML-DA specification, use the PI Interface for OPC DA XML.
The videos show :
- PI UFL Overview: What is PI UFL?
- Downloading & Installing PI UFL
- Creating new PI UFL instances
- Importing a basic text file
- Importing a more complex text file
- Security & Connecting to the PI System
- Automatically building PI UFL Tags
- Manually building PI UFL Tags
- and more