Non-PLC Data collection

Let me preface this by saying I'm very new to the PLC/automation world and am learning on the job.

My company is currently dealing with a "custom built" high pressure liquid chromatography skid running OPTO 22 hardware interface, and LC Responder user interface. LC Responder is a custom program from the vendor, which we are having trouble acquiring data from in a reasonable format.

We are currently running a Allen Bradley control logix system which is tied into a PI Historian, where data is collected via PI Process Book. What I want to do is pull the data and tags from the chromatography skid into our PI historian so we can completley work around the bad piece of software.

Could anyone give me any advice, or a starting point on how this can be done? There are not that many tags on the system, so having to configure engineering units, etc.. is not a big deal, I'm just looking for a starting point.

Thanks

OSI-PI can collect data via OPC, or they may have an interface for your software. I would contact PI first.

Opto 22 have an OPC Server for their devices called the "OptoOPCServer". You may want to ask them if it would work with your custom built application.

PI can have OPC client capability.

Like adrielmichaud recommends, get the OPC Server for Opto 22 called the "OptoOPCServer".

Rule:
OPC servers talk to OPC clients.
OPC clients talk to OPC servers.

When the OPTO 22 hardware communicates with OPTO's OPC server, PI's OPC client can be configured to grab the output of the chromatograph.

My limited experience with chromographs showed that 1 second sampling intervals (somewhat of a default for many OPC clients) were too slow to catch the peaks, with resulting errors in elution times. Make sure that the OPC client requests data fast enough to capture the data needed.
Dan