Driver Communication

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 instruments.

Use it when a product needs external field communication through registered instrument models, profiles, slots, addresses, and monitoring rules.

Start Here

Configure one instrument in a fixed order. Select the instrument model first, then its communication path, address, slot, and polling behavior. Verify communication before adding product-specific reporting or monitoring.

Device ModelNetwork Profile Gateway Profile Instrument Address Slot Polling Verify Communication

For built-in 1-Wire sensor settings, see Shared Technologies > 1-Wire Temperature.

Supported Instrument Families

The current communication layer is used with these instrument families:

Energy meters
Heat meters
Water meters
Key readers
Light units
Water velocity instruments
Climate sensors
HMI screens
VRS shore/grid drives
Maritime signalling instruments

See Instrument Families for supported instrument groups and examples.

Communication Paths

The built-in communication layer includes multiple transport types that can be selected through the network profile and optional gateway profile:

RS485 serial communication
RS232 serial communication
TCP/IP communication
Wireless M-Bus
Wired M-Bus
Pulse and digital-input based communication
Gateway-based conversion such as Modbus to M-Bus or Modbus to DALI

See Network profiles, Gateway profiles, and Defaults for the built-in runtime profiles and known instrument communication defaults.

Driver Profiles

Each configured external instrument uses one driver profile. A driver profile combines:

the selected instrument model
the selected network profile
an optional gateway profile
the slot used by the product runtime
the instrument address
optional timeout, retry, interval, and owner-group overrides

Use Device Model to find the registered model code. Select the communication path on Network Profile and, when needed, Gateway Profile. Then enter the address, slot, and polling values in Settings. Use Instrument Defaults only when a known model-specific factory value is needed.

Timeout and Retry Behavior

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.

A shorter timeout can detect communication problems faster, but it can also increase communication load and make slow equipment appear unstable.
A higher retry count gives the profile more chances to recover after a temporary fault, but it also increases the time before a real fault is treated as failed.
After an offline timeout or read failure, the default wait before the next retry cycle is 20 seconds.
After the profile has already received valid data, the reconnect wait is reduced to 5 seconds.
When a driver profile is updated, its communication state is reset before reinitialization.
Keep the default values unless the selected equipment, transport path, or project requirements clearly justify a different balance.

Owner Groups

The runtime distributes driver profiles across owner groups so several communication types can run in parallel.

Owner group 1 is the standard wired group.
Owner group 2 is the priority group.
Owner group 3 is used for wireless and related profiles.
Owner group 4 is used for DALI and related profiles.

Automatic owner selection is the normal mode. Use a manual owner group only when engineering requires a specific override.

Monitoring And Logging

The communication layer also provides generic monitoring settings for supported driver profiles.

Negative-value monitoring
Counter rollback monitoring
Periodic instrument logging

Configure these values on the Monitoring settings page.