Discover and add Mercury points
Discovery adds Mercury panel input, output and virtual points:
- Inputs
The Mercury driver distinguishes between two types of inputs:
- Standard inputs are read-only BooleanPoints to which readers, sensors and other input devices are connected. Discovery labels these Inputs.
- Portal inputs, eight for each door, are attached to door switches and indicate door open, door forced, etc. Discovery labels these Portals.
Depending on your configuration, portals may be most significant because they provide the door status information for doors connected to the EP1501 devices.
- Outputs
Standard outputs are BooleanWritables that may control output relays and devices, such as a siren, connected to the Mercury panel.
- Virtual inputs/outputs
In addition to standard inputs and outputs, virtual inputs and outputs are not connected to any physical device. They are used to communicate alarms and acknowledgments between the NiagaraAX station and the Mercury panel.
- Expand the MercuryNetwork node and the device node in the Nav tree, and double-click the Points extension.
- Below the Database pane, click Discover.
Unless you have a special use for input points, this procedure assumes you are most interested in discovering portal and output points.
- To discover the points, use the drop-down list to select type of point and click OK.You will need to discover the three types of points separately. Portals are different from standard input and output points and take a little longer to discover. Be patient.
- Expand the Portal folder, select and drag the discovered points to the Database pane.You cannot drag the folder labeled “Portals” to the Database pane. You can only drag the individual points. However, beforehand you could use the “New Folder” feature in the Points Manager, say for each portal, then run the Discovery from that folder.Note
For portals, the discovery process automatically adds “Portal 1,” “Portal 2,” etc. in square brackets to the name to ensure that the name is unique.
- Change the Name, Facets and Description to make them meaningful and click OK.
- When changing the point Name, make sure that it is unique within the parent container.
- BooleanPoint is the default Type for inputs and portals. Boolean Writeable is the default for output points. Do not change these values.
- Do change Facets to something more useful, such as On and Off.
- Description can provide additional information, for example, it could be used to explain what “IsLatched” means.
The points appear in the Database pane.