Discovering Devices
If the connection to the Modbus or BACnet network is properly set up, it is possible to discover all devices physically connected on the bus. The discovering process involves recognizing the type of the device along with its address in the network. Each discovered device is automatically added to the table of the current project, so that the user does not need to know the type, address, and number of devices connected on the bus. The discovering process is fast, and it is recommended to run it at the beginning to have an overview of the whole network.
It is possible to start the discovering process by pressing the Discover Devices button or by right-clicking the protocol in the navigation tree. The discovering process requires some individual settings depending on the protocol type.
Press the Discover button to run the identification process. It is possible to abort this process without adding any devices to the table in the project, by pressing the Cancel button. If the number of already identified devices is satisfactory, the user can stop the further process and all he needs to do is to add the devices found to the table by pressing the Finish button.
There are five types of possible discovery methods:
- devices directly connected to RS485 port via Modbus RTU;
- devices directly connected to RS485 port via BACnet MS/TP;
- devices connected to IP port via Modbus TCP/IP;
- devices connected to IP port via BACnet IP;
- devices with RS485 port connected to an IP Gateway device via Modbus TCP/IP.
The above situations are described in the following sections.