empowering communication

Cloud communication with netX

Access data for IIoT systems – netX makes it easy

In recent years, communication protocols from the IoT world have become the standard for accessing OT data from the production plant. As a provider of I/O systems, controllers, drives, or even a machine builder and system integrator, you need a standardized solution to make this data available in your cloud or on-premises solution. MQTT and OPC/UA are the established technologies that our IIoT firmware extension is based on.

This means you won’t need a different firmware for netX-based systems, but can simply add the IIoT extension to your existing Hilscher firmware. It sounds easy, because it is.

Your benefits

  • A fully integrated solution based on the MQTT and OPC/UA standards
  • An IIoT extension makes data available simultaneously to the real-time data
  • Parallel data transmission of real-time and IIoT data at the field level

 

 

Hilscher’s firmware extension for netX

Easy integration

Our loadable firmware for our netX communication controllers is scalable. You can choose the functionalities you need for your device. The IIoT firmware is based on the full version and adds an OPC/UA channel to the real-time Ethernet protocol functions.

Channels 0 and 1 remain untouched. An additional second channel is provided for IIoT data traffic via OPC/UA, which also has a separate memory area in the internal DPM (Dual Port Memory). This allows the IIoT information to be easily processed alongside the PROFINET, Ethernet/IP, EtherCAT and Modbus/TCP real-time data.

 

Host application access:

From the host side, our firmware abstracts the OPC/UA data via our netPROXY technology, so that the host application can access data objects without having to deal with OPC/UA data formats. In addition to the OPC/UA server as part of the OPC/UA stack, user data can also be published via a web server. This can be easily configured via the web server API.

 

Configuring the IIoT firmware:

Configuring the OPC/UA server functionality is incredibly simple. There is an extension called OPC UA Configurator for our Communication Studio development environment. It allows you to integrate or create information models, define data objects and much more.

 

A schematic graphic showing the different layers of communication with netX in an IIoT application.
Your advantages:
Scalable firmware

Add IIoT connectivity to your devices

Less development costs

The IIoT add-ons allow you to reliably realize your goals quickly and easily

Flexible host system

Configure your host interface according to your device requirements

Related links

Smallest multiprotocol SoC

 

Hilscher offers hardware and software for industrial communication tasks from a single source. Our protocol stacks make your netX the most flexible communication solution on the market. Find out more in our overview.

Hilscher netPI Edge Gateway in use.

An overview of our Managed Industrial IoT platform: netFIELD is your IIoT edge infrastructure for implementing Industry 4.0 solutions. It enables you to make your machine data accessible and the necessary software and hardware centrally manageable.