Niagara 4 Driver Setup Guides (Video)

What a Niagara 4 driver does

Niagara talks to the outside world through drivers. A driver is a pair of software modules, a runtime JAR and a Workbench JAR, that adds a network type to the station. Once installed you add the network, discover or add devices beneath it, then create proxy points that read and write the device's values. Everything above that point level (alarms, histories, graphics, analytics) works the same whichever driver the data came from.

Tridium ships drivers for the open protocols: BACnet, Modbus, LonWorks, KNX, SNMP and others. Proprietary systems need a third-party driver, and that is where Tyrrell Products' driver range comes in.

The Tyrrell Products driver range

Our drivers cover the integrations UK integrators are asked for most. Each is licensed per station through the shop, built for each Niagara maintenance release, and backed by the engineers who wrote it.

• Gent fire alarm: monitor Gent Vigilon panels, devices and events in Niagara
• LoRaWAN for Milesight: decode Milesight sensor payloads straight into points
• MQTT broker and MQTT service: publish and subscribe Niagara data to IoT platforms
• SMS service: send alarm text messages through a cellular router or modem
• Trend IP and Trend emulator: integrate or replace a Trend 963 front end
• Xovis: bring Xovis people-counting and occupancy data into the BMS

Installing a driver: the steps every video follows

Download the driver package that matches your exact Niagara version. Drivers are compiled for a specific release, so a 4.13 driver will not load on 4.15. Copy both JAR files into the modules folder of your Workbench installation and restart Workbench. Then use the Software Manager in Platform Administration to install the runtime module on the JACE, IONA or supervisor that will run it.

Licence the driver on the host before you add the network, otherwise the network goes into fault. Add the network from the driver's palette, configure its connection (IP address, port, serial settings or broker URL), discover devices and add the points you need. Finally, set the poll scheduler and tuning policy so values update at a sensible rate without flooding the device.

Choosing the right integration

If a device supports BACnet or Modbus, the native Tridium driver is usually the simplest route. A dedicated driver earns its place when the protocol is proprietary (Trend, Gent), when payloads need decoding (LoRaWAN, MQTT JSON), or when it adds features the open protocol does not expose, such as fire panel event text. If you are unsure which route suits a project, our team will recommend one before you buy.