Communication driver

The
FactoryTalk Optix Studio
Communication drivers enable you to establish connections and import tags from controllers.
TIP: 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.
TIP: 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 into
FactoryTalk Optix Studio
synchronized with the controller.
FactoryTalk Optix Studio
synchronizes tags at regular intervals based on the
Polling time for dynamic variables
property value of the
Presentation Engine
object.
TIP:
To optimize the read/write operations of tags,
FactoryTalk Optix Studio
primarily 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 when
FactoryTalk Optix Applications
display the tags values.
To configure the communication between
FactoryTalk Optix Studio
and a controller, you must use these objects:
  • A
    Communication driver
    object that represents the communication protocol.
  • A
    Communication station
    object inside the related
    Communication driver
    , which represents the controller that you want to connect to.
    TIP: For each protocol (
    Communication driver
    object), you can configure as many
    Communication station
    objects 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 into
FactoryTalk Optix Studio
.
Online mode
Establish a connection with the controller in the network and import tags from the controller from
FactoryTalk 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).
TIP: 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).
TIP: 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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