How To Manage Drivers in the Device Portal

How To Manage Drivers in the Device Portal

Here's how to turn drivers on and off in the Device Portal.

This article will explain how to add manage drivers in the Device Portal.

Why Do I Need to Manage Drivers?

Drivers are small pieces of code included in your Tulip Edge Device that allow the Edge Device to communicate with 3rd party devices such as barcode scanners, footpedals, cameras, and much more.

A driver needs to be "enabled" to allow the Edge Device to communicate with a 3rd party device.

However, enabling all of the drivers on a Edge Device can dramatically reduce the performance of the Edge Device. So, it is necessary to configure your Edge Device to only enable drivers for devices that you are currently using.

Configuring Drivers in the Device Portal

Open the Device Portal dashboard page and click on the "Configure drivers" button.

The Driver Configuration page looks like this:

This pages allows you to turn drivers on and off.

By default, the drivers for all Factory Kit devices are enabled.

If a device is highlighted in green, it is currently enabled and able to be used with the Edge Device.

Some devices are more complex and require configuration, while other devices do not.

An example of a simple device is the usb-footpedal, a USB device which only needs to be "enabled" to work on the Edge Device. To turn the device on:

1. Click on the "USB-Footpedal" option
2. Click the "toggle" switch.
3. Click "Save".

For a more complex device, refer to this guide on the generic serial driver.