ESF introduces a model based on the concepts of Drivers and Assets to simplify the communication with the field devices attached to a gateway.

A Driver encapsulates the communication protocol and its configuration parameters, dealing with the low-level characteristics of the field protocol.

An Asset is a logical representation of a field device.

Drivers and Assets in ESF Administrative UI

ESF provides a specific section of the UI to allow users to manage the different instances of Drivers and Assets.
Using the ESF Web UI the user can instantiate and manage Drivers

but also can manage Assets instances based on existing drivers.

The user interface allows also to perform specific reads on the configured Assets' channels clicking on the Data tab for the selected Asset.