Drivers

Introduction

A Driver is an interface between Fernhill SCADA and any of the following:

A PLC Device
An IoT Device
An SNMP Agent
An email service
A database or other type of data source

Fernhill SCADA architecture highlighting drivers

Most Fernhill SCADA Drivers provide a way of mapping I/O Data Point Tags to a data source. In these cases the driver performs the following tasks:

Reading data from the data source.
Generating alarms if any permanent communication errors are detected.
Extracting data relevant to the associated I/O Data Point Tags.
Sending write requests to the I/O Data Point Tags back to the data source.
Note: Not all drivers support writing back to the data source.

Some other drivers provide an interface to an external service. For example the Message Services driver provides a connector to an SMTP Relay to send emails from Fernhill SCADA.

Data Access Interfaces

All data read from external data sources is available to other applications through the Data Access interfaces.

Fernhill SCADA Tags

How a driver works is defined by the Tags configured in the Fernhill SCADA database. Tags can represent:

A measured analog value, for example: Pressure, Level, Voltage, Current
The digital state of something, for example: Pump running or stopped, Valve Open or Closed
A contiguous block of registers in a data source
A physical device for example a PLC
A communication channel to a data source

You manage Tags using the Tag Window in the Configuration Tool.

All tags are built from a common set of Tag Components. Each driver provides a set of tags which build on the common set of properties to provide more specialized features.

Supported Drivers

Fernhill SCADA supports these drivers:

Driver	Version	Features Provided
Allen Bradley	2.2	Tags to communicate with an Allen Bradley PLC. Map I/O Data Point Tags to register addresses in an Allen Bradley PLC.
BACnet	3.78	Tags to communicate with BACnet Devices. Map I/O Data Point Tags to Properties in BACnet Devices.
Core	1.0	Internal Data Point Tags, I/O Data Point Tags, and calculated tags. Alarm Tags. Tags to schedule IEC 61131-3 Programs.
DNP3	3.46	Tags to communicate with a DNP3 Outstation. Map I/O Data Point Tags to points in a DNP3 Outstation.
Data File	1.6	Tags to represent an external data file. The driver maps I/O Data Point Tags to values in the external data file.
GE Fanuc	3.74	Tags to communicate with a GE Fanuc PLC. Map I/O Data Point Tags to data addresses in a GE Fanuc PLC.
Idec Micro	2.1	Tags to communicate with an Idec Micro PLC. Map I/O Data Point Tags to register addresses in an Idec Micro PLC.
Message Services	3.23	Alarm routing. Text report generation. SMTP Email connector.
Mitsubishi Melsec	1.1	Tags to communicate with a Mitsubishi Melsec PLC. Map I/O Data Point Tags to register addresses in a Mitsubishi Melsec PLC.
Modbus	1.0	Tags to communicate with a Modbus Device. Map I/O Data Point Tags to register addresses in a Modbus Device.
Modbus Slave	3.10	Maps Fernhill SCADA tags to the Modbus address space and accepts commands from external drivers.
MQTT	3.22	Maps Fernhill SCADA I/O Data Point Tags to topics in one or more MQTT Brokers.
ODBC Client	1.2	Execute commands on databases using ODBC. Map I/O Data Point Tags to the result set of a query.
Omron	1.0	Tags to communicate with an Omron PLC. Map I/O Data Point Tags to register addresses in an Omron PLC.
OPC Client	1.3	Read data from and write data to: OPC UA Servers OPC Classic Servers (Windows only)
Random	1.0	Update tags from a random number generator.
Security Camera	3.89	Tags to interface to Security Cameras.
Siemens S7	1.4	Tags to communicate with a Siemens S7 PLC. Map I/O Data Point Tags to memory locations in a Siemens S7 PLC.
SNMP Client	1.3	Read data from an SNMP agent.

Notes:

The Version column gives the version of Fernhill SCADA required to support the corresponding driver.
Unless otherwise stated, all drivers are supported on these operating systems:
- Windows
- Linux
- macOS

Further Information

Configuration Tool

To learn about the configuration tool.

Glossary

For the meaning of terms used in Fernhill SCADA.