Analysis of PLC Intelligent Gateway Functions: Data Acquisition and Remote Maintenance

Time：2025-08-19 17:54:12

Achieving the interconnection of all things in industrial scenarios is inseparable from data acquisition of industrial automation equipment. Among them, there are as many as dozens of common industrial on-site protocols for PLCs, and coupled with the fact that major PLC manufacturers basically have their own private protocols, data acquisition work on site always encounters various difficulties.

Due to the variety of on-site protocols and complex network environments, an IoT solution with strong compatibility is required. A common approach is to deploy a PLC intelligent gateway on the device side: use the PLC intelligent gateway to unify various protocols, then collect and aggregate PLC data, and forward it to the IoT platform, thereby realizing data interconnection between devices and remote monitoring and management.

In addition, in industrial sites, PLCs are responsible for controlling automation equipment, which affects the operation of the entire production line. Therefore, great attention must be paid to the working status of PLCs and their controlled equipment. However, for equipment distributed in projects across the country, the cost of sending personnel on business trips for on-site maintenance is increasing, and work efficiency is low, which affects the company's operating profits and after-sales service quality. Therefore, enterprises have an increasingly strong demand for remote maintenance of PLCs and need a set of solutions with strong compatibility and high cost performance.

This solution relies on the Wutong Bolian PLC intelligent gateway for data acquisition, feeds back the status of PLC equipment, realizes visual processing of various data, and can also perform remote control, configuration, debugging, and program uploading and downloading of PLCs. By setting alarm rules and creating a standard process for operation and maintenance work orders, when equipment fails, alarm information can be checked in a timely manner and measures can be taken. A remote maintenance channel is established to carry out work such as remote program uploading and downloading, and remote programming and debugging, so as to improve work efficiency and reduce operation and maintenance costs.

Main Functions

1. It supports direct connection through the PLC's own protocol, without the need for separate programming, and can also collect data from various instruments, sensors, CNC machine tools, industrial robots and other equipment.

2. It supports converting various PLCs such as Siemens, Mitsubishi, Omron, Delta, and Schneider into Modbus, MQTT, etc. to connect to Huawei Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, private clouds, and Wutong Bolian Cloud.

3. It supports remote configuration of gateway parameters and firmware upgrade, and can also realize wireless remote upload and download of PLC programs through the equipment maintenance express line, facilitating the debugging and management of PLCs.

4. It supports 5G/4G/WIFI/Ethernet and other methods to connect to cloud platforms or configuration upper computers, realizing functions such as local task management, threshold alarm, linkage control, operation and maintenance management, and data analysis.

5. It supports security protection functions such as data TLS security encryption, username/password and certificate authentication access, access control (ACL), and OpenVPN.

6. It supports customized development to meet data acquisition of non-standard equipment and private deployment of cloud platforms.