Babel Buster BB3-6101-MQ Modbus to MQTT IoT Gateway

Description

Allow Any Modbus Device to Play as a “Thing” on the Internet of Things!

The MQTT “publish” action in the Modbus to MQTT gateway, in controls terms, is most closely associated with sensors. Your hardware has collected sensor data, and you want to send that sensor data to a server or to other control devices. To send that data, you “publish” it to the MQTT broker.

The MQTT “subscribe” action, in controls terms, is most closely associated with actuators. The “subscribe” action would also be associated with control setpoints. You can never force data into a device via MQTT. The device, in our case the BB3-6101-MQ, must subscribe to the source of data effectively asking to be informed of changes. Once you have subscribed to an MQTT source of data, then when received, you can use that data to control actuators or update setpoints.

The BB3-6101-MQ Modbus to MQTT IoT Gateway is capable of more than just transferring data between Modbus devices and the MQTT broker. It includes Script Basic built in to provide easy-to-use local programming for data analysis and local decision making. This capability is referred to as Edge Computing in IoT terminology.

One of the many things you can do with data that has been published to the AWS MQTT broker by the Babel Buster BB3-6101-MQ is analyze and visualize the data. The graph illustrated above represents data published by an BB3-6101-MQ, and the steps taken to get this graph – without writing any program code – are outlined in the user guide.

The data flow in the BB3-6101-MQ Modbus to MQTT gateway is illustrated below. Data is collected from Modbus devices by the Modbus engine which stores that data in local registers or data objects. The Modbus data is automatically updated on a continual basis. Meanwhile, the IoT engine is looking at its set of publish and subscribe rules to decide when to publish data from the local registers to the MQTT broker. These rules are also created by the user and data will be published according to the criteria set up by the user.

The BB3-6101-MQ can be Modbus RTU master or slave (user selectable), and Modbus TCP client and server (concurrently). Maps created via templates in the BB3-6101-MQ’s web UI will read and write other Modbus devices, copying their data to local registers when read, or sending data from local registers to those devices when written. Holding registers can be integer, unsigned integer, or IEEE 754 floating point, single or double precision. The BB3-6101-MQ also supports character strings as a series of registers having two ASCII characters per register.

BB3-6101-MQ Works Equally Well as Stand-Alone Remote Monitoring Device

The BB3-6101-MQ includes a secure local email client that will directly email you notifications of alarm events. The event rule template has all of the same power and flexibility as the MQTT publish template. You can implement stand-alone remote alarm monitoring on multiple data points, and send different notifications to different people.

The email message template lets you fully customize the message that is sent. You can use any email account including Gmail to send emails from the BB3-6101-MQ. The template includes variables which insert real time data from the BB3-6101-MQ as the email is sent.

The BB3-6101-MQ includes local data logging capability that can be used instead of sending data to the cloud. You select which data points are logged to a local CSV file. This file is then emailed to you periodically. You select logging rate and when files should be sent. You also have the option of logging at a slower rate most of the time, but then log faster when an event of interest is in progress.

The Babel Buster IoT Gateway becomes more useful when control functions can be combined with monitoring. One element of control that is often useful is the ability to schedule things to happen at certain times on certain days. The scheduler makes that possible.

Scheduling is done in a very generic and simple way. A register you select will change value according to a schedule you provide. From there, you can use the client to write that register to some external Modbus device to cause action according to your schedule.

Full product information, data sheet, online user guide, tutorial videos, and more available by clicking here.