ARCHITECTURE / OPEN COMMUNICATION
A conceptual view of how supervisory systems, controllers, field devices and third-party equipment may communicate. Final topology must be designed and validated for the actual project.
REFERENCE TOPOLOGY / 01
Protocol choice depends on device capability, distance, network design, cybersecurity policy and the required data points. A gateway does not automatically make every function interoperable.
BACnet IP
Commonly used to exchange building-automation data over an IP network. Plan device discovery, addressing, BBMD needs where applicable, segmentation, time synchronization and access controls with the network team.
Typical planning questions: Who owns the VLAN? Which devices initiate communication? Which objects and write permissions are required?BACnet MS/TP
A master-slave/token-passing serial network often used for field controllers. Trunk layout, polarity, termination, biasing, baud rate, device instance and MAC planning all matter.
Typical planning questions: What is the bus length? How many devices? Where are repeaters or end-of-line components needed?MODBUS TCP / RTU
Modbus is frequently used for meters, drives and packaged equipment. Integration depends on the register map, data types, scaling, byte order, polling rate and read/write permissions.
Typical planning questions: Is the register map supplied? What values and units are expected? Who validates the mapping?BEFORE PROCUREMENT
List each subsystem, protocol, device, points, direction of control, owner and acceptance test. This reduces surprises during commissioning.
Discuss an interface review ↗