BACnet OPC Server (TOP Server BACnet Ethernet Driver)

Quick Start Video for BACnet/IP Driver

Overview

This OPC and IO server provides connectivity between HMI/SCADA/DCS client software applications supporting OPC, DDE, FastDDE, SuiteLink, or AdvancedDDE interfaces and building automation systems and devices supporting BACnet over Ethernet protocol over TCP/IP Ethernet connections. User configurable BACnet APDU (Application Protocol Data Unit) settings which affect message segmentation help you tune performance to the needs of your system. The driver will work with any standard ethernet card in your computer that is supported by your Windows operating system.

This driver can be used successfully with devices that use the BACnet protocol, are visible on an Ethernet network, and support the objects, properties, and services supported by this driver as shown below. You should consult the Protocol Implementation Conformance Statement (PICS), available from your hardware vendor.

• Protocol: BACnet/IP (Annex J)
• Maximum Channels: 128
• Maximum Devices per Channel: 254

Features:

• Extended character set support (ISO 10646/UCS-2 and ISO 8859-1/Latin1)
• Support for Simple Array Properties
• Support for routing COV notifications from a device on a different BACnet network where NPDUs do not contain the source address.
• Support for communication with BACnet MS/TP Serial devices through BACnet/IP Broadcast Management Device (BBMD) routing.
• Support for channel level device discovery on a BACnet network
• Support for multiple device discovery scope including sending Who-Is/I-Am to a specified IP Address
• Support for mass adding devices from device discovery operations
• Devices added from discovery automatically inherit the discovered device name
• Configurable tag import group options default to most commonly required groups of tags.
• Support for individually assigning a BACnet command priority to tags from a connected BACnet device
• User configurable items per request to optimize communications by reducing the total number of requests required to the device (Up to 64 items per request).
• Support for IBM/Microsoft DBCS character set

Automatic Tag Database Generation

This driver has the ability to automatically create tags for almost all of the properties supported by a device. The driver setup allows you to specify what object types you wish to generate tags for, and to specify additional tag generation options. This driver will also import a configurations from legacy Cimetrics BACnet OPC Servers.

Change of Value Event Support

BACnet allows applications to subscribe to change of value (COV) event notification for many properties. Use of COV notifications means that the driver does not have to continuously poll the device for the current value of these properties, reducing network traffic and communications processing load. You can configure this driver to utilize this capability on a per device level.

Supported BACnet Services

Please visit our detailed TOP Server BACnet Device Compatibility article for BACnet Interoperability Building Blocks (BIBBs) supported by TOP Server

Supported BACnet Objects - See the BACnet/IP Driver Help File for full details on each object´s properties and data types.

• Analog Input
• Analog Output
• Analog Value
• Averaging
• Binary Input
• Binary Output
• Binary Value
• Calendar (Custom Formatted String)
• Command
• Device
• Event Enrollment
• File
• Group
• Life Safety Point
• Life Safety Zone
• Loop
• Multi-State Input
• Multi-State Output
• Multi-State Value
• Notification Class
• Program
• Schedule (Custom Formatted String)
• Trend Log
• Accumulator

The official BACnet specification, "ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 135-2001 BACnet A Data Communication Protocol for Building Automation and Control Networks", describes all aspects of the BACnet protocol. It is recommended that users of this driver be familiar with the standard BACnet objects and properties discussed in Clause 12 of the specification. In addition, you should be familiar with the particulars of BACNet/IP outlined in Annex J of the specification. The specification document, as well as many other useful resources, is available through the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. (ASHRAE) or the official BACnet website: www.BACNet.org.

General TOP Server Features Common to All Drivers

This communications driver is a member of the TOP Server family of products and shares a number of powerful features in common with all of the products in the TOP Server family. The TOP Server family represents the latest in client-server communications technology for connecting HMI, Historian, Database, and other applications to plant floor equipment.

Broad OPC Technology Support
The TOP Server implements a wide range of OPC specifications, including OPC DA, OPC UA, OPC AE, OPC .NET and OPC HDA. Click here for full details of the current OPC Specifications and Versions Supported

This level of OPC support gives you the choice of the widest range of OPC client applications. The TOP Server is continuously tested with the most popular OPC client applications on the market to insure ease of use, integration, and reliability, including popular names as Wonderware, Siemens WinCC, Intellution, Iconics, Cimplicity, RSView and more.

Full Support for Wonderware SuiteLink and FastDDE
The TOP Server's support of Wonderware SuiteLink simplifies the task of connecting the server with Wonderware applications such as InTouch, Historian and System Platform. By using the Wonderware connectivity toolkit, our TOP Server can simultaneously provide OPC and FastDDE/SuiteLink connectivity to address your communications needs (make sure to select this interface from the Native Client Interfaces when installing TOP Server). With built-in support of these Client/Server technologies, the TOP Server allows you to quickly access device data without the need to use an intermediary software bridge (i.e. OI Gateway, formerly known as FSGateway) as is done when using a strictly OPC only communications server. For Wonderware users, the familiar look and feel of FastDDE/SuiteLink tag database setup is maintained. Backwards compatibility for legacy DDE is also supported.

Intellution NIO/PDB native interface supported - no OPC Power Tool needed!
Direct connection to the iFix Process Database allows you to skip the OPC Power Tool. Enabling the iFix PDB interface in TOP Server under File | Project Properties allows TOP Server to appear as a native Intellution driver named "IDS" (make sure to select this interface from the Native Client Interfaces when installing TOP Server). Never before has connecting TOP Server to Intellution iFix been easier.

Legacy Support for DDE
While OPC has become the most common choice for communications drivers in the automation market, we realize that not everyone can replace their client software with the latest OPC technology. For this reason, TOP Server is one of the few OPC servers on the market to also simultaneously support Wonderware's FastDDE and Suitelink interfaces, Rockwell's AdvanceDDE and Microsoft's standard DDE interfaces for connecting the TOP Server to your client application. With the TOP Server, you can connect to your legacy DDE clients today and move smoothly to the world of OPC when you are ready and not have to worry about replacing or re-configuring the communications driver connecting you to your production machinery.

Other Key Features in the TOP Server

Runtime Configuration Changes A very unique feature to this product is the ability to change your configuration while the server is running and has clients connected. The connected client application has access to an expansive group of system tags that allow the client to request the TOP Server to change a number of different settings at runtime.

Online Full Time The TOP Server allows you to make changes to your tag database configuration at any time. In older versions, you could be online, but not add tags, or be offline to add tags but not read data. With the TOP Server you make changes when you need to, on the fly.

User Management With powerful features such as online changes, you want to make sure you manage who is allowed to make certain changes. The User Manager in the TOP Server lets you define what different people can change and update in the servers' configuration.

Security Policies Plug-in Aside from standard user management, the included Security Policies plug-in for TOP Server provides even further granular control of access by users with respect to what changes can and cannot be made by certain users, including all the way down to the individual channel, device and even tag level. You must be using an OPC UA client application in order to benefit from this plug in as the OPC UA standard supports passing OPC UA authentication.

Tag Management You want to organize your tag database around your process. With the TOP Server we've taken full advantage of OPC grouping capabilities to let you segregate and organize your tags the way you want them. Drag and Drop configuration lets you quickly move, add, copy large numbers of tags quickly and easily. CSV (Ascii comma-delimited) format import and export lets you bring in your tags from an Excel worksheet or export them, edit them in bulk and bring them back in.

Tag Scaling Display your data in units that are meaningful to you. The TOP Server supports Linear and Square Root tag scaling. You define the display format and the engineering units display string to meet your needs.

Diagnostics The TOP Server family of communications products provides real-time OPC diagnostics for all tag read/write operations between TOP Server and your OPC clients (DA and UA) to keep tabs on what is going on in the server. For those tough to debug communications problems, you can turn on our communication diagnostics and capture protocol packets off to disk to find out what is really happening between the computer and the hardware device.

Redundancy The TOP Server includes a Media-Level Redundancy plug-in at no additional cost (simply select it from the list of available option while installing TOP Server). Easily configure redundant paths for redundant devices and redundant communication connections to the same device as part of your device configurations in TOP Server. Automatic failover handling is flexible, with multiple options for how to trigger a failover.

Other Powerful Features in the TOP Server include:

• OPC Tag Browsing
• Modem support built-in for serial drivers
• Ethernet encapsulation support built-in for most serial drivers
• Auto-demotion (i.e. slow polling) support
• Extensive help files and examples of how to use the TOP Server with popular OPC clients
• Visual Basic OPC client sample code
• 32-bit high performance multi-threaded drivers
• Run as a Windows service for unattended operation
• Works with any OPC client or DDE, AdvancedDDE client application
• Works with Wonderware's FastDDE and SuiteLink interfaces
• For details on additional functionality and optional features click here

Specifications (Operating Systems/Client Interfaces/Hardware Requirements)