IoT Mixing Plant Monitoring System Case Using PLC Gateway

"In the past, manual inspections were required during the production of mixing stations. The large amount of dust pollution and noise generated during the transportation of materials and mixing made the workers miserable. But if the IoT mixing station monitoring system smart park project is implemented, workers will no longer have to go to the site to endure the noise and dust."

Industry Pain Points

The traditional concrete mixer is difficult to maintain and the labor cost is high.

The equipment is widely distributed and the management personnel have different professional levels, which leads to accidents from time to time.

Failure to provide early warning, untimely manual maintenance, and missed the best time for equipment maintenance

There are many manufacturers and a large number of products, resulting in uneven standards for the same products and poor sales.

Case Introduction

In the IoT mixing station, all employees operate in the central control room hundreds of meters away from the production site. Not only can the production situation be clearly seen, but also the important parts of the mixing equipment can be monitored in real time, so that the IoT equipment can collect and transmit data to the IoT monitoring system. Employees can remotely control the equipment through the gateway, timely and accurately meet the requirements of product quality monitoring, progress monitoring, etc., and truly realize unattended operation.

Unmanned Mixing Plant System

The PLC built into the mixing station collects data from sensors such as temperature and material level, and then transmits the data to the intelligent gateway through the serial port. The gateway then uploads the data to the mixer management platform through 4G, where data analysis and processing are performed to display information such as the mixer's feeding/discharging time, mixing time, and working status. At the same time, the gateway can also send collection control instructions from the management platform to the mixer to achieve intelligent management.

Introduction to Mixing Station Smart Gateway

The BL10X series of smart gateways are front-end smart data acquisition devices specially designed for data acquisition applications in unattended mixing plant systems. They can read data from various monitoring points in the area, support access to various industry-specific protocol devices, have multiple PLC protocols built in, can access multiple brands of PLCs, and upload data to multiple MQTT cloud platforms via 4G or Ethernet. They have the features of remote monitoring and network-disconnected transmission, ensuring data integrity, and supporting multiple data encryption protection functions.

Advantages of gateway data collection

Rapid collection of equipment data

Can collect various sensor signals through network port and serial port

Support multiple protocols

Supports conversion of various PLC protocols, Modbus RTU, Modbus TCP, DL/T645, BACnet/IP, BACnet MS/TP and other protocols to Modbus TCP, OPC UA, MQTT, BACnet/IP, Huawei Cloud IoT, Amazon Cloud IoT, Alibaba Cloud IoT, ThingsBoard, Sparkplug B, Barium Re Cloud and other protocols.

Redundant design

It has two power input interfaces, you can choose any one of them, and both have anti-reverse connection protection design

Remote upload and download

Support remote upload and download of PLC programs, convenient for debugging PLC

Remote Control

Supports active data reporting, scheduled data reporting, data threshold abnormality alarm, and linkage trigger control

Data caching and breakpoint resume

Support offline cache backup and network recovery to ensure data integrity

Solution Value

Quick fault location: When a mixer equipment failure occurs, the mixer fault can be repaired promptly on site to avoid further losses.

Remote control: remotely switch the control mode of the concrete mixer, remotely control the start and stop of the pressurized mixer, and control the working status.

Get a clearer and more intuitive understanding of equipment distribution: It can display key information such as various mixer equipment information, alarm information, energy consumption indicators, etc.

Simple alarm management: When the mixer has current or voltage over-limit, material over-limit, or equipment protection, the gateway can notify the management personnel by phone or text message, and link control switches and other equipment

Remote monitoring: Remotely monitor the concrete mixer's material weight, feeding/discharging time, mixing time, motor current/voltage, motor speed and other working status data.