Introduction to the IEC 60870-5 Driver

This driver is an advanced driver. It provides additional functionality to enable ClearSCADA to interface with specific supported devices using a particular protocol. To interact successfully with such devices, you need to:

• Install and run the driver
• Ensure that the driver is licensed
  
• Configure the required database items and settings on the driver
• Ensure that the database items (and any database items on which they depend) have valid, saved, configuration and are 'In Service'.

 

The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) maintains a series of standards that provide rules for standardizing communications between Controlling Station(s) (SCADA master(s)) and Controlled Stations (including outstations, slaves, and remote terminal units (RTUs)).

IEC 60870-5 is the IEC’s protocol standard for monitoring and controlling geographically widespread processes.

The ClearSCADA IEC 60870-5 driver supports two of the IEC 60870-5 companion standard protocols:

• IEC 60870-5-101, a protocol for directly-connected serial based communications
• IEC 60870-5-104, a protocol for TCP/IP communications.

The ClearSCADA IEC 60870-5 driver provides ClearSCADA with the additional functionality that is required to enable the ClearSCADA server to retrieve data from and write to devices, using either of the above protocols.

This guide summarizes the IEC 60870-5 Terminology of which you need to be aware, and provides detailed information on Configuring IEC 60870-5 Devices in ClearSCADA.

It also explains:

• IEC 60870-5 features that are of interest to operators (see Using IEC 60870-5 Specific Actions).
• IEC 60870-5 specific aspects that are of interest to system administrators and engineers when investigating the causes of unexpected system behavior (relating to the IEC 60870-5 driver):
  • see IEC 60870-5 Specific Status Display Attributes
  • see System Analysis.

ClearSCADA can use IEC 60870-5 to communicate with a variety of devices, including some that support additional features that are unavailable on other IEC devices. Where ClearSCADA uses an IEC 60870-5 Extension Driver to support these additional features, you can use the guide to configure the relevant extension driver in conjunction with this guide.