In our daily life environment, there are many billing systems that need to be charged according to usage. For example: electricity meter, water meter, natural gas meter. Traditionally, we use the toll collection staff to transcribe the amount of each instrument every month, and then summarize it to the head office for billing and billing. This behavior is rather annoying and a waste of manpower, and if staff mistakes transcribe erroneous data, it may cause user disputes. So now there are many instruments that can use RS485 connection to collect the measurement data of each instrument from a data concentrator. But RS485 connection, each network segment can connect up to 32 instruments, if more than 32 meters must use RS485 interface bridge to split the RS485 network segment. When we go through multiple RS485 interface bridges to complete the work of the entire RS485 data collection system, the system is often complicated. If there are system anomalies, it is not easy to find out the difficulties. The following is a case where the water meter transcription system in a certain region uses the S234io box to simplify the RS485 data collection system.
II: Use of S234io
S234io box is a serial port splitter with RS232 interface main serial port and three ground potential isolated RS485 interface. When we connect the RS232 serial port of the data concentrator with the main serial port of the S234io box, three RS485 serial ports that are isolated from each other and are isolated from each other can each receive their own RS485 water meters. When the data concentrator issues a query packet on the RS232 serial port, the request packet is forwarded to all RS485 network connection water meters via the S234io box. The designated water meter then responds to the meter data packet and returns to the data concentrator. Since the measurement data packets answered by the RS485 network connection water meter will only be transmitted back to the RS232 main serial port and then to the data concentrator via the S234io box, it will not be transmitted to each location of the RS485 network everywhere like a traditional RS485 bridge. Therefore, the tracking of the S234io box signal is quite easy, as long as the data transmission is abnormal, the locking problem is quite easy.
III: Application Environment Considerations
At present, we have a S234io box that can support three RS485 network segments, so it is suitable for the application environment of 90 water meter data concentrators. If the RS485 network can support 250 RS485 device software environment, we can first connect the RS232 serial port of the data concentrator to the main serial port of the S232 box, and then connect the three RS232 sub-serial ports of the S232 box with the three S234io boxes. We can support up to 9 RS485 segments and support up to 250 water meters.