The invention relates to an automation device, with which a multiplicity of physically distributed functional units communicate with each other by means of a common transmission protocol. The device has a microcontroller (110), which is assigned at least one clock generator (120) and one memory unit (150), and which is connected at least to one data source (140), which is designed to output a data bit-stream to be transmitted. A sequential sequence of equidistant samples of a trapezoidal time profile is stored in the memory unit (150), such that it can be called up, in such a manner that the samples can be output either using the clock of the first clock generator or using the clock of the second clock generator, depending on the data bit-stream.