Gateways
Integrating intelligent sensor/actuator systems in the IT world often requires a change in the media and technology, e.g. from wireless sensor network technologies to IP communication.
In addition to the technological bridging, an integration and transfer at the data level is also required. Building on our own developed modular adapter circuit board for the BeagleBone Black, different communication modules and thus technologies can be connected to an embedded Linux system. For this purpose, the BeagleBone Black can serve as a pure technology adapter, e.g. from 6LoWPAN to IPv6, and also perform the data processing or data adaptation. The current version of the adapter circuit board supports RaspberryPI-compatible communication modules as well as TI communication modules. The additional option of also connecting USB dongles opens up a wide variety of communication interfaces and technologies.
The integration of data is decisive
The special challenge for integrating intelligent sensor/actuator systems in the IT world is the description of the data. For the ∞Industry 4.0 application case, our OPC UA server provides the ability to integrate sensors into the IT world quite easily. In addition to the externally accessible OPC UA interface, our software includes an LwM2M server to which sensors can autonomously register and then be mapped automatically in the information model of OPC UA. With its significantly lower hardware requirements together with the option of sensor self-description, the LwM2M serves as the basis for the communication interfaces of the sensor systems. Through generic and automated mapping of the data models, the sensors are created directly as OPC UA nodes upon registering at the server and are thus accessible.
Available as an I 4.0 test environment
We apply the gateway in our own development projects and also continuously develop it further. At the same time, the gateway is also available as an I 4.0 test environment and we support you during its application.
