What is an Industrial Gateway?

An industrial gateway primarily aims to achieve the following goals:

- It should withstand industrial environments.

- The device should be able to communicate with other industrial equipment, such as VFDs, energy meters, multifunction meters, inverters, etc.

- Most importantly, it should communicate with the internet.

01 Solution

To communicate with different industrial devices, various industrial protocols are available, such as Profibus, CAN, Profinet, AI bus, internal bus, etc. However, in this project, we will use a well-known protocol called Modbus, which operates on the RS485 serial bus. The device has an RS485 port, so we can use Modbus RTU, Modbus ASCII, and, through Wi-Fi and Ethernet, we can use Modbus TCP IP.

 02 Product Features

- Supports industrial voltage levels from 6 to 35Vdc.

- Onboard Wi-Fi and Ethernet for Internet connectivity.

- 100Mb Ethernet interface.

- ESP32-WROOM-32D WiFi/BLE module (dual-core functionality).

- USB connector for easy programming of ESP32 using Arduino IDE.

- Half-duplex RS485 communication port.

- Onboard EEPROM IC for data storage.

- Automatic data flow control for RS485.

- Two programmable LED indicators (used as TX and RX LEDs).

- Selectable RS485 transceiver voltage levels (5V & 3.3V).

- Industrial enclosure with DIN mounting and compact PCB size.

03Product Applications

- Industrial energy meter monitoring.

- Monitoring and controlling solar inverters.

- Real-time measurement of industrial temperature and humidity values.

- Monitoring pneumatic pressure and flow hardware data.

04Hardware Information

- Partial schematics and PCB of the gateway product.

Images- Main chips used in the product's production BOM.

 05 Application Areas

Industrial smart gateways are one of the core devices in the industrial internet, responsible for connecting devices, collecting data, analyzing data, controlling devices, and enabling intelligent management of equipment. With the rapid development of the industrial internet, the role of industrial smart gateways is becoming increasingly important.