OPC Foundation's Cloud Initiative Reference Solution and UA NodeSet Editor expand OPC UA tools for interoperability and model development.
The OPC Foundation has released several updates covering interoperability testing, cloud tooling, information model development and certification activities. The items below summarize recent work on OPC UA FX, the Cloud Initiative Reference Solution, the UA NodeSet Editor and regional events in China and North America.
For Control Engineering readers, topic such as OPC UA semantics, standardization and interoperability help with industrial networking, system integration and optimization.
OPC UA FX interoperability at Festo
The OPC UA FX PlugFest at Festo in Esslingen, Germany, ran from Sept. 7-10, 2026 and included 28 participants from 16 companies. The event focused on validating controllers and field devices for the OPC UA FX Demo Wall, which is scheduled to appear at SPS in Nuremberg from Nov. 24-26, 2026. Participants tested controller-to-controller and controller-to-device communication, along with UDP multicast, VLAN-based QoS and gPTP time synchronization across different implementations.
ISW at the University of Stuttgart will host a two-day Industrial TSN PlugFest on Sept. 28-29, 2026, before the TSN/A Conference in Stuttgart on Sept. 30-Oct. 1. The PlugFest will include industrial TSN endpoint prototypes, including OPC UA FX-enabled devices, connected through a 60802-ready TSN network. The OPC Foundation is also sponsoring the conference, which will include sessions on OPC UA FX, deterministic industrial communication, IEC/IEEE 60802, 5G integration, embedded devices, security and testbed activities.
The OPC Foundation published OPC UA FX Specification Maintenance Release V1.00.04 on July 27, 2026, updating Parts 10000-081 and 10000-084 with corrections and additions to communication, identification and conformance details. The APL/SPE Port Specification Revision 3.1 was approved on Sept. 1, 2026, providing a common framework for Single Pair Ethernet and Ethernet-APL ports. The next step is the finalization of the Conformance Test Specification, expected around November 2026.
For full details, read Field Level Communications Corner.
OPC Foundation releases open-source Cloud Initiative Reference Solution
The OPC Foundation has released its open-source Cloud Initiative Reference Solution on GitHub. It turns the Cloud Reference Architecture into a working edge-to-cloud implementation based on open standards and open-source software, with support for Digital Product Passports, semantic information models and cloud-native tools.
The reference solution combines several OPC Foundation projects, including UA Edge Translator, UA Cloud Publisher and UA Cloud Library, along with telemetry storage, dashboards and cloud-to-edge control. It is designed to run on Linux systems, industrial PCs or edge gateways and supports OPC UA Client/Server, OPC UA PubSub, MQTT and REST.
The platform also supports automated onboarding of devices that do not natively use OPC UA through protocol translation and semantic mapping. This makes their data available for analytics, AI applications and business systems while preserving context through OPC UA Information Models and Companion Specifications.
The solution also provides an open-source base for Digital Product Passport use cases and gives vendors, integrators and end users a common starting point for testing and deployment.
Read the full press release.
UA NodeSet Editor for information model development
The OPC Foundation has released the UA NodeSet Editor, a browser-based tool for creating and extending OPC UA information models. It supports the UA Cloud Library and lets users browse existing models, build new NodeSets and share them for use in servers, companion specifications, digital twins, unified namespace structures and smart manufacturing profiles.
The editor can be used to define equipment models, support collaboration on domain models and create snapshots for cloud dashboards or Digital Product Passport workflows. The code is open source, and users can self-host it with Docker. The OPC Foundation is also collecting feedback on usability and additional use cases.
For more information, read the full release.
Certification activities continue worldwide
Certification and interoperability activities continued through the summer. The OPC Foundation Certification Lab in China completed its audit, added Ethernet-APL testing and began supporting the new CTT Lite tool. China’s first OPC UA Interoperability Workshop also drew participation from regional automation vendors. The article includes updates on upcoming IOP workshops and notes the planned end of OPC UA 1.03 certification support.
Know more about Compliance Corner.
North America update on fall activities
North American OPC Foundation activities resumed after the summer break. Recent events included Ethernet-APL meetings, Yokogawa’s YNOW2026 conference, the OPC Technical Webinar and IMTS Chicago, with participation from end users, standards groups, technology providers and automation leaders. The update covers recent events, presentations and fall opportunities to meet with OPC Foundation staff.
For full details, visit the OPC Foundation announcement.
Edited by Puja Mitra, Arrowfly, for Control Engineering, from an OPC Foundation news release.
