Product Overview
The Weatherford 8500 driver enables the monitoring of real-time data and immediate control of Rod Pump Controller (RPC) devices and other Weatherford controllers used at wellhead facilities. It provides an easy and reliable way to read and write data to Weatherford series devices via the Weatherford 8500 protocol through client applications (including HMI, SCADA, Historian, MES, ERP, and countless custom applications).
Resources
Performance
- Supports up to 256 communication channels and up to 4095 devices/controllers
- Supports data acquisition for Downhole Dynagraph data
- Supports event directory retrieval
- Supports surface and downhole card retrieval
- Supports valve check data item syntax
- Supports Advanced Statistics Tags, including _CommFailures, _ErrorResponses, and more
- Optimized for extreme conditions (noisy communication channels and low-bandwidth).
- Ethernet Encapsulation
- Modem Support
- Automatic Tag Generation
- Automatic Device Demotion
- Channel Virtualization/Serialization
- Device Level and Communications Path Based Redundancy.
- Communication Serialization
Protocols
- Weatherford 8500 Protocol
Supported Devices
- 8500/8650
- 8750
- 8800
- ePIC RPC
- M2000
- WellPilot RPOC
- WellPilot/ePIC VSD
Application Support
- DDE Format CF_Text and AdvancedDDE
- NIO Interface for iFIX
- OPC .NET Service (OPC .NET) Version 1.00
- OPC Alarms and Events (OPC AE) Version 1.10
- OPC Data Access (OPC DA) Versions 1.0a, 2.0, 2.05a, and 3.0
- OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) Clients
- SuiteLink and FastDDE for Wonderware
Release Notes
6.9.572.0
6/2/2020
- Fixed an issue where the Request Timeout was incorrectly used instead of the Connect Timeout when the driver was not connected.
6.7.1046.0
6/27/2019
- Expanded the Connect Attempts feature introduced for Ethernet Encapsulation in the 6.6.348.0 release to honor the connection timeout when not connected.
6.6.348.0
11/14/2018
- Added a Connect Attempts setting to specify the maximum number of tries. The new setting is in the Timing group of device properties available when the connection type is Ethernet Encapsulation.
6.1.601.0
4/4/2017
- Increased the channel limit from 256 to 1024.
5.20.396.0
5/3/2016
- Added the ability to format Date and Time values as ACSII numeric strings.
5.19.467.0
10/20/2015
- Added support for Advanced Statistics Tags, including _CommFailures, _ErrorResponses, and more.
- Enhanced the driver to allow the RTU P619 value to be queried prior to a Dynagraph request. The result of this request determines the “position inclusion and type character” parameter when building the Dynagraph transaction.
5.10.205
11/13/2012
Updated the driver with the new Connection Sharing feature.
5.9.170
6/26/2012
Added the new device-level internal tag "_FailedConnection" that indicates the driver failed on its attempt to connect to the device.
5.8.109.0
2/21/2012
Fixed a Communication Serialization bug that prevented the driver from releasing communication control when there were many memory and/or Write Only tags with scan rates.
5.7.84.0
10/24/2011
- Added channel serialization.
- Added support for the following models: EPIC, M2000, WellPilot Classic, 8800, 8750, 8650, and 8500.
- Added Inter-Device Delay
5.6.122.0
7/25/2011
- New serial driver that allows the 8500 Protocol to communicate with Weatherford model 8500 RPOC controllers. Ethernet Encapsulation is supported.
What Is a Driver?
KEPServerEX is more than an
OPC server—it's a connectivity platform for industrial automation and IoT. Simply download KEPServerEX, and then select from Kepware's library of more than 150 device drivers, client drivers, and advanced plug-ins to fit the communication requirements unique to your industrial control system.
A driver is a software component that enables KEPServerEX to meet the connectivity requirements of a specific device, system, or other data source. The driver handles all proprietary communications to the data source for KEPServerEX; the client interfaces handle all supported OPC, proprietary, and open standards connectivity to applications that monitor or control the devices.
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