PI Interfaces
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PI Interfaces feedback page!
We created this forum to hear your ideas, feature suggestions and feedback on PI Interfaces. Please suggest your most important features and design change ideas on this site, and vote for your favorite ideas.
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Support float64 point type in PI Interface for China Network Isolator
China Network Isolator interface does not support float64 point type, which is required by many customers in China. Right now, they have to change the point type to string first and then to float64 by analytics, this will consume two times of license number.
19 votes -
Request for customizing the order of the interface instances in PI ICU interface list.
The interface instances
names contain the plants
names and I want to put the interfaces with the same plant name together in the list.2 votes -
Update the CA ISO interface in preparation for the upcoming API V8 deployment
CA ISO is planning to upgrade its ADS (automated dispatch system) to version 8. This upgrade introduces breaking changes from the current system, API version 7.
The CA ISO interface should be updated to account for these changes.
14 votesAdminAllison Muraski (Admin, OSIsoft) responded
The current information available from CA ISO indicates the go-live of ADS API V8 and the decommissioning of ADS API V6. We have confirmed with CA ISO technical support that ADS API V7 will continue to be supported. The PI Interface for CA ISO ADS Web Service is compatible with ADS API V7, so at this time we do not plan to make any changes to the OSIsoft Interface.
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Allowing output point with source tag to keep working even after switching to secondary server
When primary server is down, secondary server is accessed instead of primary server, which is good. However, in the case of output point with source tag, it stops working, then restarting the interface instance of interest is needed. Of course, if we set up UniInt Failover that backup instance keeps its session with secondary server, this issue can be prevented. But, it will be better if source tag is also switched to secondary server.
3 votes -
Allow scan class 0 to be monitored via Performance Counters
As a PI System Administrator, I would like to monitor the point count and other parameters for scan class 0 via Performance Counters. Currently, this is only exposed via the UniInt Health Tags.
2 votes -
Link Referenced Elements from Unitprocedure to Procedure Event
When Eventframe Batches are created by a Batch Interface, the used Unit in the plant is created as Element in AF and linked to the Unitprocedure EventFrame. Unfortunately it is not linked to the parent Procedure Event, leaving the "referenced Element" list of procedure event empty.
If a user wants to create a report over all Procedures a certain unit was involved, he has to download all Procedure Events and Unitprocedures via Datalink and do the filtering there.
With PI Batch it was possible to search for PI Batches using PI UnitBatch criteria like Unitname. We need this feature in…11 votes -
Create a migration path for AMI Interfaces when PI Server is moved to a new machine/hostname
Currently, AMI Interfaces require a rebuild of the AMI cache files when the PI Server is migrated to a new machine/hostname (Although to clarify if the hostname does not change during the PI Server migration the cache does not need to be rebuilt). This is undesirable for large AMI implementations as rebuilding the cache files can be a time consuming process.
It is requested that AMI Interfaces should be able to handle PI Server migrations with new hostnames without rebuilding the AMI cache files
2 votes -
PI AMI Itron Interface support for TLS1.3
PI AMI Itron Interface currently supports TLS1.1. Microsoft ended support for TLS1.1 in March 2020. To keep the PI AMI Itron Interface usable with latest browsers, please update to support TLS1.3.
6 votesWe are currently evaluating the work necessary to update the PI AMI Itron Interface to offer support for TLS 1.3.
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Allow renaming of diagnostic tags for batch interfaces
Batch interfaces should follow a similar approach to UniInt based interfaces to retrieve the diagnostic tags. That is to say they should pull the diagnostic tags based on the PointSource, Location1, and ExDesc, not a hardcoded name based purely on EXE name and Location1. This would allow the PI admin to name tags to their organization's naming convention and also avoid naming conflicts between interface instances of the same type running on another interface node.
4 votes -
Enhance WMI interface to verify that ACE Class Libraries are running
PI-ACE Manager looks at the PI-Module Database to see if the individual modules are running. The Class Library sub-processes updates the PI-MDB when it starts & stops. If the process dies, it does not always update the PI-MDB values. So, there is no supported way to verify if the Class Library sub-process is running.
The PerfMon interface can't monitor the existence of the process. I have found that I can use the OSIWMI interface to find the Class Library process based on the Command Line of the process.
The WMI interface will only update the PI tag if the process…
9 votes -
Hitachi ABB Mach Interface
There are no current direct native interface connectivity to Hitachi ABB Mach systems.
Current suggestion is to investigate IEC 61850 or Modbus could be investigated as an option.
1 vote -
Add a configuration option to UniInt so that the user can adjust the minimum wait time for checking for new events from the Update Manager
This affects the delay in Event\Trigger tags. KCS: Delay in Event Points.
The largest and most variable delay seems to come from the time the event is written to the PI Server and the time the interface (UniInt) picks, which is between 0ms-1,000ms from my testing. This seems to be due to a built-in, hard-coded, delay in how often UniInt checks for events from the PI Server update manager. The serviceeventsx function that is part of the main UniInt loop only checks for new events once a second; this means that sometimes there is no delay if the…
2 votes -
Add a configuration option to the OPC DA Interface so that the user can adjust the maximum advise tag exception delay for Event/Trigger tags
This affect to delay in Event\Trigger points. KCS: Delay in Event Points.
When using Event Points, we purposefully do have a delay (if excMax is > 2 s then 2 s else 0.9*excMax) for advise tags (Trigger Point) before they're sent to the PI Server if the event value has not changed since the last scan.
2 votes -
Manage interface names with service ID
As a PI system administrator, I would like to use the service ID to define the interface name so that I can organize and manage my interfaces more efficiently. I am currently able to do this with PItoPI but not UFL x64.
Ideally, I would like to define my service ID with a descriptor (e.g. <pointsource>-<instance ID>) so that my interface is named with this descriptor in PI ICU, PI SMT, Windows Services, and the PIHOME Interfaces directory. With this naming parameter:
– The interface would be listed in PI ICU & PI SMT as PIUFL<pointsource>-<instance ID>
–…2 votes -
Update GE iFix interface compatibility information
As an interfaces user, I would like to know which versions of iFIX and Windows Server OS are compatible with the PI Interface for GE iFix so that I can determine whether this interface is suitable for my use case.
The last update for this interface was in 2014, so there has been no testing on compatibility since iFIX 5.5, but I am looking to use versions 5.8, 5.9, and 6.0 and Windows Server 2016.
5 votes -
Upgrade the PI Interface Configuration Utility to use only the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable
The PI Interface Configuration Utility install kit currently includes both the 2012 and the 2019 Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables. Please upgrade the PI Interface Configuration Utility so that it requires only the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable. This will reduce the size of the install kit and make it faster to download and install.
Even though PI Interfaces are slowly being phased out in favour of PI Connectors, OSIsoft is still releasing new PI Interfaces, and so the PI Interface Configuration Utility will still be around for a long time and it will still be worthwhile to optimize it.
2 votes -
Fix MAXSTOPTIME parameter for batch interfaces
The MAXSTOPTIME parameter for batch interfaces does not kill the interface process when the limit is exceeded, however the parameter does work for UniInt based interfaces. Please fix the batch interfaces so that the interface process is killed once the MAXSTOPTIME has elapsed.
3 votes -
Enhance how batch interfaces write to the message logs
Batch interfaces should write their messages to the message logs using the Source1 and Source2 fields just like UniInt based interfaces. Currently, batch interfaces leave these 2 fields blank. Source1 should contain the process name or similar and Source2 should contain a string in the format of "<PointSource> | <Location1/ID> | <FailoverID>". Having this will greatly help PI administrators filter the logs based on point source, especially when there are 20+ interfaces running on a server.
3 votes -
Allow diagnostic tags per failover node for batch interfaces
Batch interfaces should allow for diagnostic tags per failover node, just like UniInt based interfaces. Currently, there is no differentiation between the diagnostic tags for the primary failover node versus the backup failover node. The Location3 field is used to hold the failover ID of UniInt based interfaces so that there is a unique set of tags per failover node, however for some bizarre reason the Location3 field for batch interfaces stores the diagnostic tag index even though the diagnostic tag pointer exists in the ExDesc field. While not all diagnostics tags may be of interest for the backup node,…
3 votes -
Capture data from ABB 800xA that doesn't follow ISA88
ABB 800xA offers a batch capture mode that is more flexible than ISA88 since it doesn't match all unit procedures to units, but rather acquires them at the beginning of the batch. Currently the interface is designed to only retrieve batches that follow the ISA88 model.
1 vote
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