OPC Data Wrangler Blog

Modern data engineering for manufacturing. Visual ETL, AI-powered pipelines, Python transforms, and real-world industrial automation insights.

Industrial Data BrokerOPC UAMQTTUnified NamespaceETL

What an OPC UA Broker Actually Does (and What It Doesn't)

Chris Laponsie8 min read

The term broker has a problem in industrial software. OPC UA servers, MQTT middleware, UNS hubs, and historians have all been called brokers. This post defines what an industrial data broker actually is, maps the adjacent categories, and explains where OPC Data Wrangler sits on that map.

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Agentic AIAI AgentsIndustrial AutomationOPC UANo-CodeAI Copilot

I Asked Agentic AI to Build My OPC Pipeline (And It Actually Worked)

Chris Laponsie8 min read

Autonomous AI agents create visual industrial data pipelines from a sentence of natural language. This post walks through what happened when I gave OPC Data Wrangler's copilot a single English description and watched it wire the DAG in 30 seconds.

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Free OPC UA Client with Real-Time Plotting | OPC Telescope

Chris Laponsie7 min read

Free, portable OPC UA client with real-time monitoring, live signal plotting, and a drag-and-drop dashboard. Cross-platform, no installation. OPC Telescope launches free for Windows on May 27, 2026.

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PythonJythonAI Code GenerationIgnition SCADAIndustrial Automation

Why Industrial Engineers Are Learning Python (And Why Jython Isn't Enough)

Chris Laponsie11 min read

Industrial engineers are learning Python. But 57-65% of Fortune 100 companies use Ignition SCADA, which runs Jython 2.7, a deprecated version that cannot use NumPy, Pandas, or modern ML libraries. The AI era widened the gap. This post walks through why.

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OPC UA ETLData TransformationVisual DAGUnit Conversion

The OPC UA ETL Problem Nobody Talks About: Data Transformation

Chris Laponsie9 min read

OPC UA moves industrial data, but the harder problem is transforming it: unit conversion, formula evaluation, smoothing, and validation. This post walks through the three levels of OPC data transformation and where visual DAGs help.

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Coming Soon

Weekly insights on modern data engineering for manufacturing.

Week 5

Why SCADA Needs to Move Towards Modular Purpose-Built Tools

Breaking free from monolithic frameworks with vendor lock-in for flexible, modern industrial automation.

Week 6

From Napkin Sketch to Production: Building an OPC Pipeline in 10 Minutes

How visual DAGs turn ideas into running data pipelines faster than traditional development.

Week 7

The Unit Conversion Bug That Cost Toyota $50M (And How to Prevent It)

Real disaster stories and technical solutions for preventing costly unit conversion errors in manufacturing.

Week 8

The True Cost of “Free” OPC Tools (A 5-Year TCO Analysis)

That “free” OPC DA bridge cost one manufacturer $47,000 in hidden expenses. Here's the real math.