Fake Driver

The FakeDriver is included as a way to quickly see data published to the message bus in a format that mimics what a true Driver would produce. This is an extremely simple implementation of the VOLTTRON Driver Framework.

Fake Device Driver Configuration

This driver does not connect to any actual device and instead produces random and or pre-configured values.

Driver Config

There are no arguments for the driver_config section of the device configuration file. The driver_config entry must still be present and should be left blank.

Here is an example device configuration file:

{
    "driver_type": "fake",
    "driver_config": {},
    "registry_config":"config://registry_configs/fake.csv",
    "interval": 5,
    "timezone": "US/Pacific",
    "heart_beat_point": "Heartbeat",
    "publish_breadth_first_all": false,
    "publish_depth_first": false,
    "publish_breadth_first": false
}

This sample fake device configuration file can also be found in the volttron-lib-fake-driver repository as fake.config

Fake Device Registry Configuration File

The registry configuration file is a CSV file. Each row configures a point on the device.

The following columns are required for each row:

• Volttron Point Name - The name by which the platform and agents running on the platform will refer to this point. For instance, if the Volttron Point Name is HeatCall1 and the device configuration is stored as devices/pnnl/isb2/hvac1, then an agent would use pnnl/isb2/hvac1/HeatCall1 to refer to the point when using the RPC interface of the driver or actuator agents.

• Units - Used for meta data when creating point information on the historian.

• Writable - Either TRUE or FALSE. Determines if the point can be written to. Only points labeled TRUE can be written. Writing to points labeled FALSE will cause an error to be returned when an agent attempts to write to the point.

The following columns are optional:

• Starting Value - Initial value for the point. If the point is reverted it will change back to this value. By default, points will start with a random value (1-100).

• Type - Value type for the point. Defaults to “string”. Valid types are:

  • string

  • integer

  • float

  • boolean

Any additional columns will be ignored. It is common practice to include a Point Name or Reference Point Name to include the device documentation’s name for the point and Notes and Unit Details for additional information about a point. Please note that there is nothing in the driver that will enforce anything specified in the Unit Details column.

BACnet

Volttron Point Name	Units	Units Details	Writable	Starting Value	Type	Notes
Heartbeat	On/Off	On/Off	TRUE	0	boolean	Point for heartbeat toggle
OutsideAirTemperature1	F	-100 to 300	FALSE	50	float	CO2 Reading 0.00-2000.0 ppm
SampleWritableFloat1	PPM	10.00 (default)	TRUE	10	float	Setpoint to enable demand control ventilation
SampleLong1	Enumeration	1 through 13	FALSE	50	int	Status indicator of service switch
SampleWritableShort1	%	0.00 to 100.00 (20 default)	TRUE	20	int	Minimum damper position during the standard mode
SampleBool1	On / Off	on/off	FALSE	TRUE	boolean	Status indicator of cooling stage 1
SampleWritableBool1	On / Off	on/off	TRUE	TRUE	boolean	Status indicator

A sample fake registry configuration file can be found in the volttron-lib-fake-driver repository as fake.csv.

Installation

Installing a Fake driver in the Platform Driver Agent requires adding copies of the device configuration and registry configuration files to the Platform Driver’s configuration store

• Create a local directory for editing config files (if one doesn’t already exist):

mkdir myconfig

• Save copies, in myconfig, of the example device config file and registry file from the volttron-lib-fake-driver repository.

• Edit the fake.config and fake.csv files, if desired.

• Add fake.csv and fake.config to the configuration store:

vctl config store platform.driver devices/campus/building/fake1 myconfig/fake.config
vctl config store platform.driver registry_configs/fake.csv myconfig/fake.csv --csv

• If it is not already installed, install the Platform Driver agent:

vctl install volttron-platform-driver --vip-identity platform.driver --tag driver

• Install the volttron fake driver library:

pip install volttron-lib-fake-driver

• If you have a Listener Agent already installed, you should start seeing data being published to the bus as soon as the driver agent is started.