I am trying to interface a Scada System with a Fire Alarm Panel for time synchronisation. The Scada is NTP and the FAP is Modbus. Does anyone know of a cheap Protocol Gateway that allows them to talk to each other ?

mucho thanks
gc05

 

gc05,

NTP, as far as I know, is a network protocol for time-synchronization --- in other words, for setting the clock/calendar of each computer on a network.

While some SCADA systems undoubtedly use NTP to synchronize the clocks of all RTU's and PLC's, I'm not familiar with any SCADA systems that use NTP as their main protocol.

Can you provide more information about both the SCADA system and the Alarm Panel?

 

The main protocol for the Scada system is modbus and the clock sync is NTP. However, we are trying to send both the Fire Alarm data via the Scada System, and accept the clock sync signal into a standard Fire Alarm Panel. However, the FAP has only one port, and we are trying to accommodate both fire data via modbus & the clock NTP signal. Hope this is enough info for you.

thanks very much

gc05

 

There is no practical limit to the number or protocols that can be sent via a single Ethernet port. Some Modbus slave devices feature a Modbus/TCP server, an HTTP Web server, an FTP server, and a Telnet server -- all running thru one Ethernet port.

The protocols are separated and distinguished by the logical TCP or UDP port number. For example, NTP uses logical UDP port 123, Modbus/TCP uses typically logical TCP port 502, and Web servers typically use logical TCP port 80, etc...

You may have a add an Ethernet switch to physically link together multiple devices, though.