Use this area to work with the shared driver communication layer that connects the runtime to external meters, readers, sensors, lights, drives, HMIs, and similar field devices.
Use it when a product needs external field communication through shared device models, profiles, slots, addresses, and monitoring rules.
Use these pages as the main entry points for supported device families, profile setup, and monitoring behavior.
For built-in 1-Wire sensor settings, see Shared Technologies > 1-Wire Temperature.
The current communication layer is used with these device families:
See Instruments for representative device groups and examples.
The built-in communication layer includes multiple transport types that can be selected through the network profile and optional gateway profile:
See Network profiles, Gateway profiles, and Defaults for the built-in runtime profiles and known instrument communication defaults.
Each configured external device uses one driver profile. A driver profile combines:
Use Device Model Setup to select the model-specific communication values, check known factory values in Defaults, then configure them on the Settings page.
Timeout and retry values control how quickly the communication layer treats a profile as failed and how much extra communication it will try before that happens.
The runtime distributes driver profiles across owner groups so several communication types can run in parallel.
Automatic owner selection is the normal mode. Use a manual owner group only when engineering requires a specific override.
The communication layer also provides generic monitoring settings for supported driver profiles.
Configure these values on the Monitoring settings page.
Public revision 21/05/2026