Working With Device Drivers

The word ‘driver’ is often used when referring to communications. A driver is a component piece of software that implements a protocol or transport (or both). Drivers are modular, such that new drivers can be easily ‘plugged-in’ to existing systems.

Drivers enable Plant SCADA to communicate with the devices in your system. Every communication setup in Plant SCADA needs drivers to implement the protocol and transport. Often this means two separate drivers, but in some cases both are combined into one driver – termed a ‘board’ driver.

Plant SCADA has over 140 device drivers available, enabling communication with a vast array of production devices across several communication types. These include generic drivers that support industry-standard protocols such as OPC and Modbus.

The driver you will need to communicate with a particular device is determined by:

• the device itself

• the communication protocol the device supports

• the communication channel used to connect the device to the Plant SCADA I/O server.

To add a particular device to your Plant SCADA project, you will need to determine the driver necessary to support it. If the particular driver is not installed with your current version of Plant SCADA, you will have to obtain a driver pack and install it separately.

Note: With the release of Plant SCADA 2020 R2, a classification system for the driver portfolio was introduced to indicate the level of ongoing maintenance that customers can reasonably expect for each driver. In line with these classifications, the number of drivers included by default with the Plant SCADA installation media has been reduced to a set of ‘core’ drivers that have undergone recent updates. All other drivers continue to be available for download from the Communication Drivers page at the AVEVA Knowledge and Support Center.

See Also

Determining Which Driver To Use

Installing a Driver Pack