There are many ways to connect an asset with IoTs and there is a solution for any
scenario.
Let’s dive into some of the most common situations.
Here are some key things you should know before connecting your asset with
an IoT.
Digital and analogue signals are the most common signals that can be harvested from an industrial asset.
Digital signals are binary (0 or 1) and the IoT device’ inputs can be configured as follow:
Digital outputs are available from configurable controllers, relays, auxiliary contacts, (…)
Analogue signals are not a constant voltage signal unlike digital signals. The commonly used analogue signals are 4-20mA signal and 0-10Vdc Signal. Depending on the field conditions the output signal can vary between 4-20mA or 0-10Vdc. For Example, if you are monitoring a temperature of oil owing through a cooler using a temperature transmitter of range 0-200 °C, the transmitter will give a signal between 4 and 20mA proportional to the temperature in the cooler.
Analogue signals are available from configurable controllers and sensors.
Modbus RTU is an open serial protocol derived from the Master/Slave architecture originally developed by Modicon (now Schneider Electric). Our IoT devices support RS485 and RS232 protocols.
The Modbus RTU protocol uses a Master/Slave technique to communicate between devices. The Master is the IoT device and the Slaves are the industrial machines.
RS485 supports multiple slaves while RS232 supports only one slave.
To use the Modbus RTU protocol, your machine must have a Modbus RTU communication. The datasets available from your machine are programmed from your manufacturer and we keep an updated list of known manufacturers/machine in our library.
Modbus TCP (also Modbus TCP/IP) is simply the Modbus RTU protocol with a TCP interface that runs on Ethernet.
A Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) is an industrial computer adapted for the control of manufacturing processes, such as assembly lines or robots.
PLCs are modular and can be designed for many arrangements of digital and analog signals, and they can be monitored by connecting an Edge Compute Device to your PLC network.
