Sg500 Industrial Gateway

Today, let’s briefly discuss what a gateway is, why it exists, what problems it solves, and what the mainstream industrial control protocol gateways are.

In the early stages of China’s development, there were no domestic products, and there were no domestic protocols in the industrial sector. China’s industry was entirely supported by the three major systems of Europe, the United States, and Japan. Each system had its own communication protocols and promotion teams, leading to different control systems in different sections of a factory or even a workshop. To improve energy efficiency, better control, and monitor production, factories had to unify all systems. This required the use of gateways to integrate different protocol systems for data exchange. The gateway collects and consolidates on-site data, which is then analyzed and recorded in the control board by the industrial gateway, enabling remote control, upgrades, communication, and real-time monitoring of industrial equipment. This is the background of gateway development; a gateway is a conversion device that enables communication between different protocols, serving as a bridge for people from different countries speaking different languages to communicate effectively.

We mentioned that in China’s industrial field, there are German systems represented by Siemens and Beckhoff, American systems represented by Rockwell Automation (AB), and Japanese systems represented by Omron, Mitsubishi, and Keyence. Siemens initially used the S7 MPI/PPI protocol, which had a low transmission speed and enabled short-distance download communication. To improve communication speed and diagnostic functions, Siemens later introduced PROFIBUS-DP, which could reach speeds of up to 12 Mbps, facilitate networking, and enable remote calibration. Currently, Siemens primarily promotes the 1500 and 1200 series PLCs with PROFINET, which offers faster communication, easier networking and maintenance, and richer diagnostic functions. American AB PLCs use the ETHER/IP protocol, while Japanese Mitsubishi uses the CCLINK-IE protocol. In 2020, Siemens dominated the domestic PLC market with a share of over 40%, followed closely by Rockwell Automation, Mitsubishi, Omron, and other vendors.

Overall, gateways in industrial bus systems serve as a link between the platform and industrial devices, facilitating the upload and download of information. They are used between systems or products with different communication protocols, data formats, or languages, or between products and cloud platforms. Simply put, an industrial gateway is an industrial communication translator.

In the next episode, we will discuss the practical uses of various gateways, how to configure and use them in detail. Thank you for watching.