title: Noob guide to OPC: how to write a C# Hello World client?
body: <p>Here is my situation:</p>
  <p>We have a software that is used to monitor solar power plants developed.
  I have to introduce OPC as a new way to acquire data from the physical devices themselves, so that's why I ended up trying to learn about OPC, which so far is being frustrating.</p>
  <p>I have installed the Matrikon simulator and using the Matrikon explorer I can see that data is being simulated. What I need now is to create a very basic proof of concept that I can
  connect to it and print something using C#. As I understand it, I have to use some proprietary API/SDK. I'm only testing things so I don't want to commit to a proprietary way to do things right now. Wasn't OPC created to exactly avoid that?</p>
  <p>Is there a simple Opensource DLL that I can use to connect to the OPC server, that supports DA, HDA and AE, allowing me to work without worrying about vendors/sdks?</p>
  <p>To add to the confusion I have found OPC Xi and OPC UA.... and I haven't found a tutorial from ground zero up, which is what I'm looking for.</p>