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This document describes the CODESYS Communication Driver, and the device and protocol environment in which it works. It includes application-level and bus-level communications protocols, item naming conventions, and Communication Driver features.

The Operations Integration CODESYS Communication Driver (referred to as the Communication Driver through the remainder of this user’s guide) is a Microsoft® Windows® application program that acts as a communications protocol server. This Communication Driver is hosted by the OI Server Manager, a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in, which is part of the Operations Control Management Console (OCMC) suite of utilities.

This Communication Driver allows other Windows application programs access to data in PLCs (also referred to as devices) attached to an Ethernet network. The server can operate in either stand-alone mode or connect with any OPC, DDE, or SuiteLink compliant client application.

This Communication Driver documentation covers only the information you need to configure and run the Communication Driver component. See the documentation that comes with the related components for details on their operation. You can find installation instructions in a help file on the distribution CD. Many high-level functions and user-interface elements of the OI Server Manager are universal to all Communication Drivers, and only the documentation for the OI Server Manager contains descriptions of those universal functions/UI elements. Therefore, reading the documentation for both the MMC and the OI Server Manager is critical to understanding this user’s guide. To read the documentation about the MMC and OI Server Manager, select the Help Topics on the OCMC Help menu.

Note: The shortcut menu items described in this document typically represent only a subset of any actual shortcut menu. Most items in each shortcut menu are standard Windows commands. See the MMC Help for more information about those commands.