The purpose of this manual is to provide the instructions to quickly and easily install and operate the cLAN equipment (with firmware V2.0+)
The installation of the cLAN also implies the installation of middleware and eventually any other application depending on the intended use for the system.
The cLAN can be used combined with the GRD
The cLAN has multiple uses. These are the most common uses that will guide you to read this manual.
There are hundreds of types of sensors that can be contacted directly to the cLAN inputs to measure different types of variables. Depending on the cLAN model, sensors could be used to deliver signals in 0-10V, 4-20mA or pulses, or simply connect different devices to their inputs/outputs. The cLAN can also be configured as Modbus master and queries can be made to different slaves to expand its inputs/outputs.
The cLAN works as a datalogger, creating records with timestamp with the value of the built-in or external I/Os and sending them to the Middleware (MW)
The MW will forward all the incomming records to an external database (MySQL or MS SQL)
You can also create a WEB site to show the value. Or you can use Exemys Telemetry service to connect your cLAN to our MW and web site (www.exemys.com/m2mserver)
The cLAN can also be used to do a local control over its inputs/outputs using the script programming feature.
Note: The WEB server and the database engine are not provided by Exemys. You can use Apache HTTP Server and MySQL. Both of them are free tools.
For this type of solution the following procedure must be followed:
The cLAN can work as a SNMP agent. This allows the user to get the valor of the digital an analog channel from a SMNP manager.
It can send SNMP traps also. They can be triggered by a change on a digital input or if an analog input goes over a high/low value.
For this type of solution the following procedure must be followed:
This solution allows you to remotely access the cLAN's serial port as if it were physically connected to the serial port of our computer.
You can think of it as an alternative to the telephone modems but with several advantages.
There are two way to do it:
To access the remote serial port you must install the “Redirector of serial port” software. This software creates a virtual serial port that lets you use an existing software and connect to the remote equipment as if it were connected in a physical serial port of the computer.
Middleware is here only a link between the Redirector of serial port and the cLAN serial port.
For this type of solution the procedure below must be followed:
If the protocol used by the serial port of the remote equipment is Modbus, the MW can be configured in a special mode that will allow the optimization of the queries.
The Middleware has the capability of sending the Modbus query received to a particular cLAN depending on the ID of the Modbus slave of the received query.
This simplifies the communication between the user software and the Modbus slaves since they work as if the were connected to a unique Modbus network.
The master can establish the link using Modbus TCP, Modbus RTU or Modbus ASCII over TCP.
For this type of solution the procedure below must be followed:
Using script programming is possible to use the cLAN as a protocol converter. It can be programmes to parse new protocols over it's serial port. The acquired data can be read using Modbus RTU/ASCII on the other serial port, por Modbus TCP on its Ethernet interface. Some typicall aplications are using the cLAN to get Modbus data from scales, water quality analyzers, oil quality analyzers, card readers, weather stations, etc.
2020-11-20