Communication driver
The
FactoryTalk Optix Studio
Communication drivers enable you to establish connections and import tags from controllers.
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You can use controller tags for designing application logic. For example, an Alarm can be activated when a tag exceeds a value.
Available communication drivers
In
Type view
, the CommDrivers
folder contains the available Communication driver
objects.
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You can communicate with controllers that support custom protocols through the serial interface by using the
Serial port
object. For more information, see C# APIs reference.Communication with controllers
In
FactoryTalk Optix Studio
, you can configure the communication with controllers at:
- Design time
- Establish a communication channel to import the controller tags.
- Runtime
- Use to keep the values and data types of the tags imported intoFactoryTalk Optix Studiosynchronized with the controller.FactoryTalk Optix Studiosynchronizes tags at regular intervals based on thePolling time for dynamic variablesproperty value of thePresentation Engineobject.TIP:To optimize the read/write operations of tags,FactoryTalk Optix Studioprimarily synchronizes the tags displayed or written through the active graphical objects (for example, a circular indicator in a window in the foreground).To save bandwidth, controller tag values update at runtime only whenFactoryTalk Optix Applicationsdisplay the tags values.
To configure the communication between
FactoryTalk Optix Studio
and a controller, you must use these objects:
- ACommunication driverobject that represents the communication protocol.
- ACommunication stationobject inside the relatedCommunication driver, which represents the controller that you want to connect to.TIP: For each protocol (Communication driverobject), you can configure as manyCommunication stationobjects as there are physical controllers that use the same protocol in your application.
Import controller tags
To use the controller tags in application logic, import the controller tags into
FactoryTalk Optix Studio
.Depending on the communication protocol, the
Communication station
object can contain a TagImporter
object to import tags in the online or offline mode.
- Offline mode
- Import a file with tags exported from the controller and imported intoFactoryTalk Optix Studio.
- Online mode
- Establish a connection with the controller in the network and import tags from the controller fromFactoryTalk Optix Studio.
For each tag imported from the controller,
FactoryTalk Optix Studio
creates a corresponding Tag
project variable. For example, a CODESYS Tag
variable represents a Codesys PLC
tag. The values and data types of Tag
variables remain synchronized with the values of the tags on the controller at runtime (in read mode and in write mode).
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When the controller Tag Data Type does not match an OPC UA standard Data Type,
FactoryTalk Optix Studio
sets the most relevant OPC UA Data Type for the variable.For advanced implementations, you can use the dedicated APIs through NetLogic (for example, to read/write tags at runtime). For more information, see C# APIs reference.
Read/write operation codes
For each read/write operation of a single or multiple tags, the controller generates an operation code that describes the operation result.
Code | Description |
---|---|
Good | The read/write operation succeeded. |
BadNoCommunication | The read/write failed because of a timeout (for example, a connection timeout).
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The timeout value is determined by the
Timeout property of a Communication station object. |
BadCommunicationError | The read/write operation failed because the controller returned an error. |
BadConfigurationError | The read/write operation failed because of a tag configuration error (for example, an invalid address). |
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