The F8650X protocol converter is a bridge, or industrial gateway, for storing and forwarding packets between LANs or between LANs and WANs at the link layer and for switching between different physical interfaces. If the Ethernet networks are of different types (e.g. Ethernet as well as Token Ring), it is not possible to connect the two networks by means of data link layer protocols alone, since they do not recognise each other’s frame format transmission method.

The F8650X has two gateways for each network type, which are connected to each other by the gateway, and therefore the gateway acts as a protocol converter. You can choose Profibus-DP Serial Gateway series products, through the supporting software can choose different types of serial ports (RS232/422/485/) Anybus Communicator provides a Modbus RTU master mode.

The F8650X in this mode polls one or more Modbus slave devices and maps the data retrieved from the devices to the gateway’s internal storage. The user can choose to use predefined standard Modbus commands, or use the gateway’s advanced data processing capabilities to define communication messages so that only the selected data is exchanged between the gateway and the fieldbus master. This functionality is well suited to using the temperature inspector as a slave and then utilising the gateway to read the data it collects in turn.