Serial in the industry

Serial protocols like RS232, RS422 and RS485 are still used in the industry. A lot of equipment purchased a long time ago is using these interfaces. Purchasing new equipment is not desirable or too expensive. A lot of standard equipment is available to make the transition between newer topologies like Ethernet and Serial happen, but the industry needs devices that can withstand certain environmental needs.

An industrial device should be mountable to DIN Rail and power able by DC directly. Black Box provides such equipment. We sort it into categories which show you what you want to do with the Serial Interface.

• Serial to Serial is about repeating, converting, switching or extending your connection.
• Serial to IP is about converting your connection into an Ethernet data stream.
• Serial to Wireless is about transmitting your connection without using cables.

Certain equipment is able to deal with protocols like Modbus or Profibus which are based on standard interfaces like RS485. In special RS485 splits up into Half- and Fullduplex, Point to Point and Multidrop. RS485 Multidrop allows you to build up a chain of communicating devices on a so called bus. The equipment you use for supporting this type of topology needs to be able to support it.

Correctly configuring the system and the equipment is essential. Black Box Free Tech Support will be happy to help and service. A universally useable system for your industrial switching needs of interfaces is the SM500 system you will find in Serial to Serial. It can be controlled by Dry Contacts, Ethernet, Web and SNMP and it is just switching contacts.