ioPorts

General Knowledge

ioPorts represent and contain the linkage to the ‘outside’ world. All IO-cards (and other cards), mbus, modbus, etc. devices are brought into the system via ioPorts. ioPort points contain all the relevant information and configuration for the peripheral devices for them to work correctly.

Available settings differ from device type to device type; mbus ports have different options than modbus, etc.

Important

The device field in any of the serial based IOPorts is the most important part of the point. The device field determines which physical interface the serial data belongs to. If the device field is incorrectly set, no data will ever be correctly received or transmitted for that ioPort.

Note

The pointname (or path) of the IOPort point does not matter, but they are usually stored under ioPorts/ in Actiweb database

About Device

What the device field content can — or rather needs to — be depends on the device Actiweb has been installed on and what serial interfaces has been made available.

When using Actiweb on Bithouse Integral controller and using the Modbus Extension Card, the device for serial ioPorts is determined by the slot the card has been installed into. More information here.

Actiweb can also be installed on other devices which might not have integrated serial ports. In these cases serial port can be added by adding a USB-to-RS485 adapter, which will become available as /dev/ttyUSBN where N is a incrementing number represeting the amount of USB-Serial devices currently connected.

Autogenerated ioPorts

Modbus module, Mbus module and RPC (ioCard) module will create default ioPort-points to help user to start working with ioPorts. These ioPort points will be created under ioPorts/ in databse. The ioPort points that will be always generated will use following naming pattern:

Modbus:

ioPorts/modbusRTU/P1 for RTU based communication and ioPorts/modbusTCP/M1 for TCP/IP

Mbus:

ioPorts/mbusSerial/P1

rpc:

ioPorts/rpc/P1

Note

These ports will be always regenerated if the points does not exists. That is, if the point gets renamed or deleted, the point will reappear after next restart.