FROM INDUSTRIAL CONTROLLER TO IIOT-HUB: NEW DEVELOPMENT OF RTSOFT SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT CENTER

The RTSoft Software Development Center has completed a project to expand the functionality of the IEC 61499 runtime environment for an intelligent IIoT hub. The project was implemented in the interests of the customer - a foreign manufacturer of controllers for the automation of buildings and industrial enterprises.

The use of the IEC 61499 runtime environment makes it easy to create distributed systems that meet the architectural requirements of modern Industry 4.0 applications. In accordance with the IEC 61499 standard, an open source platform is used for the development of measurement and control systems.

In general using IEC 61499 allows:

• create distributed applications for monitoring and control systems;

• speed up the development with the use of high-level constructs of the FBD IEC 61499 language;

• use standard language constructions for control systems IEC 61131 languages;

• get efficient, productive applications with fast response time;

• use standard functional blocks for interaction according to popular IIoT and APCS protocols.

Within the framework of the project, components were developed to support the Modbus RTU, Modbus TCP and CAN protocols in the IEC 61499 runtime environment. The hardware platform of the IIoT hub used in the project is built on the basis of an ARM processor and an OS of the Linux family. 

In the future, this technology stack can be used to build software for programmable logistics complexes (PLCs) of domestic development and software for intelligent data collection and procession unit. It is particularly worth noting its advantage: the small size of the execution environment combined with flexibility in building distributed systems, as well as the ability to generate source C++ code for the target system based on a program written in the IEC61499 function block language.