Factories are now having a need to connect all their sensors to IT management platform for advanced monitoring and reporting.
- Most of the sensors in the factories use RS485/Modbus standard.
- The factories want to connect wirelessly and securely to sensors especially at remote areas or hard-to-reach positions.
Conventional Monitoring
For a long time, RS485 / Modbus protocol is the widely used for sensors and machines in industrial applications
- World-wide standard for industrial applications
- Wire-connection from sensors to PLCs.
However, PLCs have limited analytics capability and wire-connections have limitation to connect to a centralized monitoring system.
Advanced Monitoring with Analytics
After establishing LoRaWAN infrastructure with LoRaWAN servers and LoRaWAN gateways, we can connect any RS485 sensors and PLCs to LoRaWAN RS485 nodes:
- LoRaWAN RS485 nodes can collect data from any connected RS485 sensors and send wirelessly to centralized servers
- The data is encrypted and sent securely to servers with high security.
- Servers will display the data as graphs automatically with analytics capability.
This is how a LoRaWAN RS485 node will connect to RS485 sensors.
- Simple
- Standard
The servers will show the data as visualized graphs on the web and mobile apps.
We can have analytics on the Business Intelligence system for further insights and optimization.
Let’s make the factories connected. 🙂
Thanks for the guide.
I have a Dragino RS485-LN.
How could I configure Dragino RS485-LN to connect to my RS485 sensor?
Thanks a lot.
Hi Kerry,
You can connect to UART console of Dragino RS485-LN https://iotthinks.com/initial-setup-for-dragino-rs485-ln-node/
Then take a look at the AT+MBFUN, AT+COMMANDx and AT+CFGDEV in the below guide.
https://iotthinks.com/configuration-commands-for-dragino-nodes/
Enjoy.
Is there any difference if I use Dragino RS485-BL (battery model) instead?
The AT commands for both Dragino RS485-BL and RS485-LN are the same.
Please note that the RS485-BL (battery model) will go to sleep according to the value in AT+TDC.
OK, thanks a lot for your information.
One more question.
If I need to get the sensor data every 1 minute, should I use electric node (RS485-LN) or battery node (RS485-BL)?
For interval less than 30 minutes, you should use electric node.
For Interval around 15-30 minutes, the battery node with 8500mAh will last around 3 years.
Ok, I will register Easy LoRaWAN Cloud and try.
Thanks for your advise.