Add and configure Channel Selector objects

The server-specific configuration portion of the BACLITE Communication Driver hierarchy tree under the OI Server Manager starts at the Channel Selector object. This object lets you set server parameters for communication with agents (devices) in the hierarchy tree.

Add a Channel Selector object to your BACnet hierarchy

• In the console tree, right-click Configuration and then click Add Channel Selector Connection. The "New_ChannelSelector_000" object appears in the hierarchy.

Edit the object name to appropriately describe components of your specific hardware environment. If you do not rename the object at this time, a numeric sequencing system is applied. You can rename the hierarchy entry later.

Configure communication settings of a channel

Configure the communication settings for a selected channel to ensure uninterrupted communication with the device network.

Link Type

The specific interface or protocol to be used. The only option at this time is BACnet/IP.

Device UDP Port

The specific UDP/IP port to be used. The valid values range from 1 to 65535. If no port is specified, it will default to port 47808 (BAC0h).

Null Placeholder: Block Size

This is actually two settings separated by a colon (:).

The first setting, Null Placeholder, is the value that you use to represent NULL in write operations. For some properties like PRESENT-VALUE and DESCRIPTION, when this value is encountered in a write operation, a special NULL marker is sent to the device. For example, if you use -333 for NULL in your BACnet application, specify that value. There is no default value for this setting, so if you do not specify a value, the NULL marker will never be sent. (An empty string is not an acceptable placeholder value.)

The second setting, Block Size, is the number of objects that can be requested in each message. It is a way to limit the size of the messages transmitted. If you do not specify a value, the default value is 30.

Advanced

Select this button to open the Advanced Settings dialog box, which provides access to additional communication settings such as timeouts, retries, and buffer sizes. You might need to change these settings if the Communication Driver behaves unexpectedly during run time, but the default settings should work for most network configurations. For more information about these settings, see "Advanced settings" in Communication Driver Core Help.