Protocol conversion is one of the more complicated tasks for industrial applications, particularly since industrial devices often transmit data using their own proprietary protocols.

A company in Eastern Europe is using Moxa's UC-7420 embedded computer to connect devices and deploy protocol conversion software for their industrial application. The devices in question are scales for weighing meat. The scales use the UC-7420 to connect with a TTY-loop in the supermarket over an RS-232 interface, but with a proprietary protocol. For this reason, the engineers designing the system needed an intelligent protocol converter to simplify handling of the data transmission between the device end and front end.

Moxa's UC-7420 embedded computer works well as a front-end controller for collecting data from devices, and Moxa Protocol Converter (MPC) is a helpful software tool that frees programmers from needing to spend a lot of time writing code for protocol conversion. Using Moxa's solution, data that uses the devices' proprietary protocol can be easily converted into Modbus/TCP format, and then transmitted over the Intranet network and on to the control center.

Using the UC-7420 for this application has the following benefits.

• Fanless and no hard-drive design for a longer MBTF
• Moxa Protocol Converter (MPC) simplifies protocol conversion
• Front-end data controlling facilitates system performance and operation

» Back to index