Neuron Newsletter 2022-05｜Add 2 southbound drivers and 1 northbound application, Modbus TCP for custom expansion

In May, we released Neuron 2.0.1, which mainly fixes some of the issues found in version 2.0.0. In addition, this month we mainly focus on the development of new drivers, adding southbound BACnet/IP, KNXnet/IP driver, northbound Sparkplug application, and customizing the extended Modbus TCP protocol, which greatly improves the efficiency of point acquisition.

KNXnet/IP driver

KNX is a unified and manufacturer-independent communication protocol for intelligently connecting state-of-the-art home and building system technologies, including the management of heating, lighting and access control systems for family homes and office complexes for comfort and versatility High standard. KNX can be used to plan and implement energy-efficient solutions that reduce energy costs while offering more functionality and convenience.

We implement the driver to support the BIT/BOOL/INT8/UINT8/INT16/UINT16/FLOAT data type, as a KNXnet/IP Client for data acquisition and device control. KNXnet/IP driver supports two point addresses, one is KNX group address, the user can only write to it, and the other address format is KNX group address with a KNX individual address, the user can only read it .

BACnet/IP driver

BACnet is a communication protocol for smart buildings. It is a communication protocol defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). BACnet communication designed for intelligent building and control system applications, can be used in heating ventilation and air conditioning systems (HVAC, including heating, ventilation, air conditioning), can also be used in lighting control, access control systems, fire detection systems and related installation.

We implement the driver to support the BIT/FLOAT data type, as a BACnet/IP Client for data collection and device control. The OBJECT TYPE currently supported by BACnet/IP driver mainly include ANALOG INPUT, ANALOG OUTPUT, ANALOG VALUE, BINARY_INPUT, BINARY_OUTPUT, BINARY_VALUE, MULTI_STATE_INPUT, MULTI_STATE_OUTPUT, MULTI_STATE_VALUE. The protocol layer adopts asynchronous sending and receiving instructions, and supports a maximum of 255 instructions concurrently, which improves the collection and anti-control efficiency.

Sparkplug plugin

MQTT Sparkplug is an interoperability protocol for smart manufacturing and industrial automation use cases. Sparkplug provides equipment manufacturers and software providers a consistent way to share data structures to accelerate the digital transformation of existing industries.

The northbound configuration is similar to the MQTT plug-in. The MQTT Topic composition matches Neuron's Group, supports the reporting of subscription data in units of Neuron's Group, and supports writing operations to Neuron's collection devices on the Application side of Sparkplug. Data types already support all defined types for Neuron southbound devices.

Customized Modbus TCP driver

Device side support is required. The 2-byte length in the Modbus TCP MBAP is used to replace the single-byte length in the ADU to represent the frame length. The Modbus TCP frame can support up to 65535 bytes. The expanded protocol can collect more than 30,000 data points in one collection command, which reduces the number of interactions between Neuron and the device and greatly improves collection efficiency.

other updates

• Neuron integrates with eKuiper's Dashboard.
• The official website documentation has been optimized a lot and is still being improved.
• In response to some issues in the GitHub community, some optimizations have been made to Neuron's compilation and cross-compilation, which lowers the threshold for building an entry-level development environment.
• Refactored open source Modbus TCP implementation.
• Fixed issues found in testing in version 2.0.0.

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Original link: https://www.emqx.com/zh/blog/neuron-newsletter-202205