HMS Industrial Networks presents the Edge gateways, a gateway family for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). With the new Anybus .NET gateways, real-time data from machines can be transferred to IT applications based on the .Net framework. .Net developers receive data directly from the PLC system and can use it in statistics, analysis or maintenance applications. The first .Net gateways are available for Profibus and Profinet.

The basic prerequisite for the Industrial Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 is that production and IT systems can communicate with each other. Fieldbuses and Industrial Ethernet networks are used at the production level, which are designed for real-time requirements and are normally separated from the IT infrastructure. The Anybus .Net gateways are links that can exchange data from Profibus or Profinet networks with IT platforms that use the .Net framework. Communication is largely automated in a three-stage process.

The transfer of real-time production data to IT systems opens up a wide range of possible applications, such as predictive maintenance, transmission of key performance indicators (KPIs), analysis of machine data, data collection and processing for production statistics, etc. All of this is possible without disrupting production processes.

How it works

The .Net gateways not only enable data exchange between production and the IT system, but also make the data understandable for the IT side. The exchange of information between the production level (OT - Operational Technology) and the IT level (IT - Information Technology) is defined in a template in the form of a table. The template defines how the production data is made available to the IT application. The HMS code generator automatically generates a customer-specific high-level C# API (events and post methods) based on the template, which can be used directly in the .Net application. At the same time, a GSDML file is also generated for easy integration of the gateway into the PLC system.