Edge Link is a DIY solution to upgrade old industrial equipment

The industrial world runs behind everyone else, technologically speaking. Reliability, safety, and maintenance are the biggest concerns, which means tried-and-true control solutions reign supreme. Even new facilities are full of machines that rely on tech that is several decades old. Mukesh Sankhla’s Edge Link aims to bring that equipment into the modern era, without risky modifications.

Edge Link is a small device that fits onto a standard DIN rail inside any machine’s electrical cabinet. It can “speak” to many legacy machines and control systems via Modbus, RS-485, and more. Through those protocols, it can both receive data and send control commands — though, obviously, the specifics depend on the equipment in question.

At its most basic, Edge Link acts like an IoT gateway. It can log data and make that available on a network, so facilities managers can keep on eye on a machine’s status. It also allows for control along the same channels, if the equipment supports that. One could, for instance, remotely activate a startup routine before the morning shift gets in.

Data, such as sensor readings, transfer via MQTT messages and everything is organized through a structured UNS (Unified Namespace). That means Edge Link-equipped systems settle right into other systems that also take advantage of UNS, so they integrate nicely into the dashboards and cloud platforms a facility already uses.

But Edge Link also has real intelligence, thanks to the Arduino® UNO™ Q board it contains. That has the computing power to run local predictive maintenance machine learning models (built using Edge Impulse) that can make decisions on the edge — no outside network access necessary. One would need to be careful about how they implement that, but it would be ideal for tasks like safety shutdowns. For example, it could shut down machine B if it detects a problem with machine A. 

Sankhla even programmed a PLC Simulator, which has a complete Siemens S7-300 PLC digital twin to test with. Grab an UNO Q and you can use that to see how Edge Link works under different conditions.

More details on Edge Link can be found in Sankhla’s Hackster tutorial.