Building out any sort of industrial installation today means working with a variety of devices of different manufacturers, form factors, and communication protocols. Integrating these devices so that they can perform their tasks and provide insight about on-site conditions is crucial, but it can be a major challenge because of the range of standards in play. Fortunately, there are companies dedicated to helping devices communicate, with products that connect devices at scales ranging from within the same machine to across the globe. Let’s examine a couple of situations in which products can get machines talking and cooperating.
Modern, automated conveyor belts rely on a multitude of scanners, sensors, and drives to move product where it’s needed. All these devices can use different protocols, making it challenging or impossible to fully integrate them with your existing infrastructure. That’s where specialized gateways come in. These gateways allow protocol translation between dozens of standards, meaning the controller you already know can work seamlessly with auxiliary devices, even if those devices aren’t natively compatible.
Imagine you want to improve the automation of your conveyor system by adding barcode scanners to identify materials being moved and a controller to handle the system’s logic. You have a controller on hand that uses Ethernet/IP, but the drives already being used to move your conveyor belt only support Modbus, and the barcode scanners use old-school serial instead of anything based around Ethernet. HMS Networks offers Anybus gateways for situations like this, with products that convert from EtherNet/IP to Modbus TCP and from EtherNet/IP to serial so all three protocols can work together.
To view the full list of supported protocols and Anybus product offerings for each pairing, check out the Anybus Gateway Selector.
Sometimes machines move. Not just their bearings, drives, or tools—sometimes the whole system needs to move, or even moves continuously. Some of the most obvious examples of this are automated guided vehicles (AGVs). AGVs present their own challenges in integrating different onboard devices with different protocols, but they also have an additional, inherent challenge in being mobile. How do you maintain communication with a machine like that? Some limited options include rail- or cable-based guidance systems, but these increase startup costs and limit flexibility down the line.
Anybus Wireless products offer an alternative. Devices like the Anybus Wireless Bolt provide options for replacing Ethernet cables with wireless connections, adding wireless capabilities to an existing network, or even communicating wirelessly with protocols like CAN.
Visit Anybus’s Wireless Solutions page to view additional applications and the full selection of product options.