Master Driver Agent

Introduction

The Master Driver Agent is linchpin for communicating with devices in VOLTTRON. It replaces the functionality of sMap from Volttron 2.0 and separates device communication from the process recording device data in a database. Recording device data to a database is now handled by a Historian Agent.

The Master Driver Agent is configured and deployed in a manner similar to any other agent (TODO: insert link to Agent deployment howto).

Configuration

The configuration consists a list of device configuration files to load at startup. Optionally the user may stagger the start of drivers to improve scalability of the platform by using the staggered_start setting.

{
    "driver_config_list": [
           "/home/volttron-user/configs/test_bacnet1.config",  
           "/home/volttron-user/configs/test_bacnet2.config",
           "/home/volttron-user/configs/test_modbus1.config"
    ],
    "staggered_start": 30.0
}

• staggered_start - Spread the scraping and publishing of device data over approximately N seconds. Useful for working with many devices and the platform scrapes too many devices too quickly resulting in failed scrapes.

Each device configuration has the following form:

{
    "driver_config": {"device_address": "<IP ADDRESS>"},
    "campus": "campus",
    "building": "building",
    "unit": "modbus1",
    "driver_type": "modbus",
    "registry_config":"/home/volttron-user/configs/catalyst371.csv",
    "interval": 60,
    "timezone": "UTC",
    "heart_beat_point": "Heartbeat"
}

• driver_config - Driver specific setting go here. See the documentation for specific drivers for details.
• campus - Campus portion of the device topic. (Optional, at least one must be specified, all device topics must be unique)
• building - Building portion of the device topic. (Optional)
• unit - Unit portion of the device topic. (Optional)
• path - Additional topic bits after unit. Useful for specifying sub devices. (Optional)
• driver_type - Type of driver to use for this device.
• registry_config - Configuration file for registers on the device. See the documentation for specific drivers for details.
• interval - Period which to scrape the device and publish the results.
• heart_beat_point - Point (must exist in the registry) which to toggle to indicate a heartbeat to the device.

See Also

• BACnet Driver
• Modbus Drivers