What communication protocols do you use?

mlohbihler

The philosophical objection to OPC is of course its exclusiveness to Microsoft operating systems (notwithstanding the availability of linux ports). The tangible objection is that companies have to pay the OPC fees to play in their park, which in my personal opinion puts the lie to their claim of openness. The same applying to LonWorks of course. When, like Serotonin, you are providing a free, open source product, the tendency is to hesitate to work pro bono with others with obvious commercial influences.

Still, the Java version looks promising. We'll check it out.

popeye

Rockwell / Allen Bradley PLCs. The protocol is called CIP, and it can be tranported over serial or IP links. It would be nice if Mango could talk to them.
Check out http://www.tuxplc.net/ - ther is a GPL library there for AB Comms

mlohbihler

Hi popeye,

Thanks for your input. Sadly, we don't have any AB equipment in our lab, which makes the development of a protocol implementation rather sketchy (developing only from documentation is hopeful at best). If there is simulation software available, or if someone were willing to loan us some equipment (free software = no budget to buy), we should be able to get this done.

Tohotom

Modbus (RTU, TCP),
M-Bus
BACnet (Ethernet, IP, MS/TP),
LonTalk,
IEC-60870-5-104.

Prodyut Bora

Clipsal (http://www.clipsal.com), a division of Schneider Electric, is into building automation. They have developed an "open standard" protocol called C-Bus (http://www.cbus-enabled.com/default.html).

Why don't you consider adding C-Bus to your list of protocols?

Regards

Prodyut

mlohbihler

Hi Prodyut,

Thanks for the suggestion. Sadly it may be some time before we get to this due to (paying) project work that is keeping us very busy. Of course, Mango is open source software, and so we encourage those with a development yen to feel free and implement new stuff. :D

Keith

Hi

1 wire. & Tcp/ip

mlohbihler

Hi Keith,

Thanks for the information. We in fact have code about 75% complete to implement 1-wire, but due to other (paying) project work, have not had time to complete the implementation. Watch the site for updates!

aslab

Do you support xml/SOAP?

mlohbihler

Do you mean web services? Currently no, not formally. But in which direction would you want support:

having Mango read data from a web service
having Mango post data to a web service
the ability to get data via a Mango web service
the ability to post data to a Mango web service

An existing protocol that is similar to 4) is the "HTTP receiver" data source, which listens for HTTP connections (GET or POST) and can parse the parameters into point values.

aslab

Primarily read data from a web service but posting would also be nice!!

esquizo

Hi. You're right about OPC but in Industry there are many closed or commercial solutions. With OPC we can use many protocols with the same OPC server ( Modbus, Profibus, Device Net, MPI, PPI, Unitelway, Control Net, .....).
There is a project in this page:
http://openscada.org
The project is called Utgard, and it's a pure Java OPC client, and the better thing, it's Open Source.

Best regards.

knigjes

+1 Allen Bradley

CouchPotatoe

@Prodyut Bora said:

Clipsal (http://www.clipsal.com), a division of Schneider Electric, is into building automation. They have developed an "open standard" protocol called C-Bus (http://www.cbus-enabled.com/default.html).

Why don't you consider adding C-Bus to your list of protocols?

Regards

Prodyut

Unfortunately the C-Bus protocol is not an open standard. It is however available to C-Bus Enabled partners. There is a subset of the protocol available as a 'public' document but it is restricted in its features.

There is a C-Bus to xAP protocol convertor and xAP is very much an open standard - and appears in the survey above. One of the benefits of xAP is that it is very simple yet powerful and its also easy to convert other protocols into xAP and hence integrate them into different applications. Most of the leading HA applications now have xAP plugins.

dusky

Hi

I use :
Modbus RS232
Modbus TCP/IP
Bacnet IP
Bacnet LON
SQL Sybase SQL Anywhere

BR

mlohbihler

Dusan, you're in luck. Mango supports them all. (Ok, not BACnet LON).

iyus

How about KNX ?

juanfetel

Good Day,

In our company we use:

LonWorks
BACnet (IP and MSTP)
ModBus
SNMP
KNX (Hope it will be included in the future)

jfhaugh

Modbus/RTU
Modbus/TCP

My company (greenHouse Gas and Electric) supports j2mod which also has support for Modbus/UDP (Modbus/TCP packets over UDP), but I don't personally use Modbus/UDP. I mention j2mod because j2mod is being used as the "base" for posting open source Arduino sketches that support Modbus/RTU and eventually Modbus/TCP and/or Modbus/UDP.

I'd like to do more with 1-wire, just haven't had the time.

I'm toying with creating new protocols, but there are intellectual property issues to resolve.