Koyo DirectNET Driver

Not counted towards your tag license limit.

The Koyo driver started out as a Texas Instrument (TI) driver. Koyo purchased the technology, therefore new PLCs using this protocol bear the Koyo name. This driver works with the 200 / 300 and 400 series of PLCs.

The current Koyo addressing formats work only for the DL series of PLCs.

Related information:

Koyo Driver Addressing

Koyo Error Codes

Best Practices for Tags

Related Application Properties

KoyoSharedRPC - Koyo shared RPC. If set, all Koyo PLCs will share the same RPC name, "KoyoDriverService". Defaults to false (0). drivernameSharedRPC properties are stored in Settings.Startup, not Settings.Dynamic. Changes require a restart of the application in order to take effect.

KoyoFailoverCount - Number of communication failures before switching to backup. Defaults to 1.

Koyo Driver properties ID tab

The ID tab of every tag includes the same common elements: Name, Area, Description, and Help ID.

Name:

Uniquely identifies each tag in the application. If the tag is a child of another, the parent names will be displayed in a separate area before the name field.

You may right-click on the tag's name to add or remove a conditional start expression.

Area

The area field is used to group similar tags together. By defining an area, you make it possible to:

Filter for particular tag groups when searching in the tag browser
Link dial-out alarm rosters to Alarm tags having a particular area
Limit the number of tags loaded upon startup.
Filter the alarm display to show only certain areas.
Filter tag selection by area when building reports

When working with Parent-Child tag structures, the area property of all child tags will automatically match the configured area of a parent. Naturally, you can change any tag's area as required. In the case of a child tag, the field background will turn yellow to indicate that you have applied an override. (Orange in the case of user-defined types. Refer to Configuration Field Colors)

To use the area field effectively, you might consider setting the same Area for each I/O driver and its related I/O tags to group all the tags representing the equipment processes installed at each I/O device. You might also consider naming the Area property for the physical location of the tag (i.e. a station or name of a landmark near the location of the I/O device). For serial port or Roster tags, you might configure the Area property according to the purpose of each tag, such as System or Communications.

You may define as many areas as you wish and you may leave the area blank for some tags (note that for Modem tags that are to be used with the Alarm Notification System, it is actually required that the area field be left blank).

To define a new area, type the name in the field. It will immediately be added. To use an existing area, use the drop-down list feature. Re-typing an existing area name is not recommended since a typo or misspelling will result in a second area being created.

There is no tool to remove an area name from VTScada since such a tool is unnecessary. An area definition will exist as long as any tag uses it and will stop existing when no tag uses it (following the next re-start).

Description

Tag names tend to be brief. The description field provides a way to give each tag a human-friendly note describing its purpose. While not mandatory, the description is highly recommended.

Tag descriptions are displayed in the tag browser, in the list of tags to be selected for a report and also on-screen when the operator holds the pointer over the tag’s widget. For installations that use the Alarm Notification System, the description will be spoken when identifying the tag that caused the alarm.

The description field will store up to 65,500 characters, but this will exceed the practical limits of what can be displayed on-screen.

This note is relevant only to those with a multilingual user interface:
When editing any textual parameter (description, area, engineering units...) always work in the phrase editor. Any changes made directly to the textual parameter will result in a new phrase being created rather than the existing phrase being changed.
In a unilingual application this makes no difference, but in a multilingual application it is regarded as poor practice.

Help Search Key

Used only by those who have created their own CHM-format context sensitive help files to accompany their application. Refer to Custom Help Files

Server List

Select (or create) a named server list. (Driver Server Lists) Servers for the list must be defined using the Application Configuration dialog, as described in Servers for Specific Services. Smaller sites that do not have multiple servers, or that use only the default server list, need not configure this field.

Koyo Driver properties Configuration tab

The Configuration tab includes the following properties:

Port

This is the name of the port tag that will be used to communicate with the PLC and can be a serial port tag, a TCP/IP port tag or a UDP/IP port tag. Note that TCP/IP and UDP/IP can only be used in combination with a terminal server to convert the TCP/IP or UDP/IP to the serial communications needed to interface with the PLC at the far end. There are Koyo PLCs available that communicate directly on TCP/IP but they use a protocol that is not supported by this driver.

PLC Type

Sets the Koyo / TI PLC type with which you are communicating. Valid types selected from the drop list are: 205, 315, 315S, 320, 320S, 325, 325S, 330, 330S or 405.

Time-Out Limit

Sets the time in seconds that the driver will wait for a response before it gives up and retries or sets an error if all retries have been attempted.

VTScada Address

Sets the address of the VTScada server that is communicating with the Koyo PLC. The valid range is 0 to 80.

Station Address

Sets the address of the PLC station with which the device will communicate. The valid range is 0 to 80.

Retries

The number of times to retry a message before declaring an error.

Use only if the driver is connected to a device that uses a serial port or a UDP/IP port that is configured to be polled. When connected directly to a device using TCP/IP, this value should normally be set to 0 since TCP/IP is a guaranteed message delivery protocol.
For unreliable communications, such as radio, set to 3 or 4.

Hold

Select this to have I/O tags attached to the driver hold their last value in the event of a communication failure. If not selected, tags will have their value set to invalid on a communication failure.