IO devices

IO-devices represent a connection, via a driver, to, for example, a control system. Tags, (see chapter "Tags") are then used to tell what signals should be connected between Web Port and the control system.

To create new IO-devices or change settings for existing IO, go to SYSTEM SETTINGS/COMMUNICATION/IO-DEVICES. There you will find a table showing created IO-devices and their communication states.

The table of available IO-devices has the following columns and colours:

Name	Type	State	Description
Name of IO-device	Driver	OK	Descriptive text
		Error
		Disabled
		Not connected

Information:

Regardless of which drivers are installed, you can always create IO devices with drivers DrvDisk and DrvWebPortAPI (from v2.21.6).

For DrvWebPortAPI there is a separate manual which is included when installing Web Port with documentation.

DrvDisk is a simulated IO device stored locally in your Web Port project. It is often used for e.g. communication alarm tags or internal tags handled by scripts.

Create IO device

To create a new IO-device, click the tool button Add device. In the dialog that opens, settings are listed as follows: 

Setting	Description
*Name	Name of the IO device
Description	Descriptive text for the IO device
*Driver	Driver that the IO device should use

*Required setting

Then press SAVE at the bottom of the dialog page to create the IO-device.

A new dialog now opens with settings for the selected driver. See the help for the current driver for more information on the settings that can be made.

Edit IO-device

To change the settings for an existing IO-device. Click the table device table row to open a dialog with available settings, see manual for the specific driver. Perform the desired changes and then press the SAVE button at the bottom.

Remove IO-device

To remove an IO-device, it is selected in the table. In the dialog that opens, click REMOVE and then YES to confirm.

General settings

For each IO-device, there are a number of general settings that are available regardless of the selected driver. These are described below:

Setting	Description
GUID	Unique ID for each device. This is automatically created by Web Port.
Name	Name of the device.
Description	Descriptive text for the device, such as make and placement.
Note	Possibility to add a longer descriptive text about the device.
Active unit	Indicates whether the device is active and can be used.
Activate alarms	Indicates whether alarm management is active for the device.
Activate trends	Indicates whether trend management is active for the device.
Block alarm sender	Blocks sending of alarms for tags connected to the device.
Memory mode	Indicates whether the device is in memory mode (request are only made toward an in memory copy of the device).
Debug mode	Additional debug information regarding communication with the device is written in the debug log (see chapter "Logs->Debug").
Reading cache	Indicates the cache time that limits how often readings are made. Standard priority read operations will not be done before the cache time has passed since last read. (See chapter "System Settings->Queue distribution" for more info.)
Cache priority	If Cache priority is enabled, no read operations will be done before the cache time has passed since last read.
Read only	Indicates whether the device can only be read (write request are blocked).
Watchdog type	Indicates whether a Watchdog function should be used and if so, what type.
Watchdog interval	Indicates the interval for any watchdog.
Watchdog tag	Indicates the tag that the watchdog function should affect.
Status tag	Indicates the tag to which the device status is written. (See chapter "Status tag")
Redundant unit	Indicates any redundant device.

Status Tag

Fill in any tag (name) where the IO-device status should be displayed. If an alarm tag is used, the tag is set to 1 for errors and 0 for OK. In case of another tag type, the following applies:

Data Type DIGITAL:

If unit is OK tag is set to 1 and at error to 0.

For tags with other data types, the status is set to the following:

0: OFFLINE, 1: CONNECTING, 2: OK. 3: ERROR, 4: MEMORY, 5:

NOLICENSE Use a IO-device based on a DrvDisk driver for the status tags.

Note!

The status tag needs to be connected to a device of type DrvDisk in order not to be dependent on the device it is set to monitor.

Status

Under settings for an IO-device, information about the current status is displayed. This includes the latest reset time, the number of tags associated with the IO-device, and how many of these are alarm and trend tags. Here information is also indicated about how many requests per second (currently average and max), as well as how many requests have been made since the last reset.