Connecting industrial equipment to the cloud is challenging: Many popular industrial protocols were not designed with security in mind so appropriate additional protection measures are essential, and the wide variety of existing industrial equipment means having to accommodate and adapt to a large array of legacy protocols, equipment specifics, and data formats.
As a result, an industrial IoT connectivity solution must not only be designed to ensure robust security boundaries and risk containment but also provide a flexible edge software platform for application-specific protocol translation and data conversion. Furthermore, the solution should be easily reusable across a wide range of use cases and equipment by means of easy and low-risk software updates and must be remotely manageable to ensure secure and reliable operation for decades to come.
The impAccelerator(™) Fieldbus Gateway is purpose-built to handle these challenges and make industrial IoT connectivity secure and efficient. It comes ready-to-use with the proven Electric Imp IoT Connectivity Platform and includes a range of fieldbus connectivity options such as LAN Ethernet and RS-485 interfaces – both providing electrical and protocol-level isolation for security and robustness. Further included are WAN WiFi and Ethernet connections to the cloud, a USB host interface, mikroBUS and XBee slots for hardware expansions, and a range of power options including Power-over-Ethernet (PoE).
For a full IoT connectivity solution simply add our ready-to-use open source drivers for LAN Ethernet, Modbus-TCP, or Modbus-RTU master or slave and any application-specific protocol translation or data conversion – and the Electric Imp platform does the rest: Authenticating and connecting the impAccelerator Fieldbus Gateway securely to the cloud, enabling rapid and reliable over-the-air software updates, and delivering ongoing platform and security support for the lifetime of the system. Due to the lightweight and managed design the fieldbus gateway is ideal for placement right at the edge, which minimizes the attack surface for possible traffic interference.
Developing and deploying secure and efficient industrial IoT connectivity solutions has never been easier (and quite frankly, more enjoyable). Order your impAccelerator(™) Fieldbus Gateway today or build your own based on our open source reference design.
Terrence Barr
Head of Solutions Engineering