smartLink product family from Softing offers extended functionalities for Plant Asset Management

By Tiera Oliver

Associate Editor

Embedded Computing Design

August 15, 2022

News

smartLink product family from Softing offers extended functionalities for Plant Asset Management

Two product releases from Softing's smartLink family offer enhanced functionalities for Plant Asset Management and the implementation of Industry 4.0 connectivity in industrial networks.

The smartLink product family from Softing enables end customers to make efficient use of connectivity at the interface between OT and IT. The products allow simple and scalable integration of device data into plant asset management applications. The new versions of smartLink HW-DP v1.20 and smartLink SW-HT v1.20, which are now available, offer enhanced functionalities for data transfer and connectivity.

smartLink HW-DP - Integration of Industry 4.0 applications in PROFIBUS and HART systems
smartLink HW-DP enables access to process, asset, and diagnostic data from PROFIBUS devices and HART devices connected to PROFIBUS remote I/Os, as well as secure export to any system inside and outside the user's own network. The new version v1.20 now adds support for providing asset and diagnostic data from field devices via MQTT. This allows integration into typical IoT system architectures, such as the Namur Open Architecture (NOA) or the IoT reference architectures of large cloud platforms.

smartLink SW-HT - Data access via Emerson AMS Device Manager and other HART IP-enabled Plant Asset Management applications
smartLink SW-HT allows access to configuration and diagnostic data via Emerson's AMS Device Manager or other HART IP-enabled Plant Asset Management applications. smartLink SW-HT has so far supported Schneider Electric M580 controllers and drop I/Os as well as Allen-Bradley controllers and remote I/Os. Version v1.20 now also connects Emerson AMS Device Manager to HART devices connected to R.Stahl IS1+ remote I/O. More and more modern remote IOs are using Ethernet as a connection to the controller. smartLink SW-HT takes this trend into account by providing an Ethernet connection for tunneling HART commands to remote IOs. As a Docker container, smartLink SW-HT can be managed via Kubernetes-based management platforms or services of the major cloud platforms.

Both new product versions expand the possibilities for end customers to implement open, standards-based, and scalable system architectures with the smartLink product family and to integrate connectivity into IT-managed edge solutions.

Softing will present smartLink HW-DP and smartLink SW-HT at Achema 2022 from August 22 to 26, 2022, in Hall 11.0, Booth E16.

For more information, visit: https://industrial.softing.com/

Tiera Oliver, Associate Editor for Embedded Computing Design, is responsible for web content edits, product news, and constructing stories. She also assists with newsletter updates as well as contributing and editing content for ECD podcasts and the ECD YouTube channel. Before working at ECD, Tiera graduated from Northern Arizona University where she received her B.S. in journalism and political science and worked as a news reporter for the university’s student led newspaper, The Lumberjack.

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