Drivers connect to Ports and define the protocol used to communicate with your hardware. Which one you choose will depend on the specifications of that hardware. More than 35 drivers come with each copy of VTScada and many more are available on request. Each brand of PLC or RTU generally requires its own communication driver. (Some also allow an alternate protocol. For example, many have a Modbus Compatibility mode.)
For an up-to-date list of drivers included with VTScada, please refer to the Device Driver List page on the VTScada website
Details for compatible address formats can be found in the topic following each driver description.
Address Assist / Address Select
Many drivers support an "Address Assist" or "Address Select" dialog, which will be available as a button beside the Address field of all I/O tags using that driver. The content of the dialog will vary according to the driver. The one thing these dialogs have in common is that they will help you build addresses in the correct format. Note that the addresses cannot be populated until communication is established with the device.
Three examples of an I/O address assist.
Driver Errors: To learn more about the cause of an error condition, refer to the Driver Summary Report and the Driver Error Report, both of which are available in the Reports page. The Show Stats button will also provide current and last error messages: Show Statistics Button Widget
The timestamp (local timezone) of the last successful read is held in the driver's LastTime property. You can view this by drawing a Show Statistics Button Widget, or by writing an expression using [Driver Name]\LastTime. Note that a change in this value does not necessarily mean that the data is live. The remote server could return the same value and the timestamp would continue to increase.
Trihedral Engineering Limited has many communication drivers available beyond those included with the VTScada. Refer to the VTScada driver library on the Trihedral web site for further information.
Communication Driver Log-Enabled Variables - Describes the variables that may be logged for your driver.
Data Suffixes for Tag I/O Addressing - Common strings to control how I/O data is interpreted.
Communication Driver Alarms - Example and instructions to create an alarm on any of the log-enabled variables.
Driver Server Lists - Specify the primary and backup servers for drivers.
