The popularity of OPC UA has increased a lot during the past few years leading to more and more manufacturers of Industrial Control Systems integrating the technology with their system. There are many OPC UA stack implementations present with varying features sets. Often manufactures are interested in open source implementation which they can integrate in their product and own the future improvements.

open62541 is an open source and free implementation of OPC UA (OPC Unified Architecture) written in the common subset of the C99 and C++98 languages. The library is usable with all major compilers and provides the necessary tools to implement dedicated OPC UA clients and servers, or to integrate OPC UA-based communication into existing applications.

In this project we evaluated the open62541 on an embedded platform to understand the usability and capabilities of the stack.

The open62541 has platform independent implementation with platform support added via plugins. The target embedded platform was already supported. Various configurations provided by the stack were tested to see the difference and compare them with other available OPC UA implementations.

The open62541 provides a good set of features and supports various platforms. It is a suitable candidate for manufacturers which are looking for an open source implementation supporting embedded profiles.

During the selection process of an OPC UA solution, it is important to understand the advantages of a commercial stack like maintenance, support and product quality. We strongly recommend Matrikon Flex OPC UA stack and are happy to discuss pros and cons of different options.