Emalytics Connector¶

Overview of the Emalytics Connector provided by the Phoenix Contact.

Overview¶

The Emalytics Connector is an industrial PC enabling data connection between local devices as well as local data sources and the Emalytics Collector cloud platform. It supports most IP-based industry bus communication standards and is able to automatically ingest data from your plant, building or district using auto-discovery of all available datapoints and devices for easy set-up.

The Emalytics Connector operation is fully plug-and-play from the customer perspective. Once connected to the internet, the Emalytics Connector registers with the Emalytics Collector platform and Phoenix Contact staff carries out all necessary configuration remotely.

Hardware¶

All Phoenix Contact Emalytics Connector are small industrial PCs that are hardened against splash water, extreme temperatures, vibrations, and shocks. They can be mounted on standard DIN rails and have been designed, assembled, and approved according to German standards.

We use the following hardware as the basis for our Emalytics Connector:

• BL2 BPC 2100

Security¶

Connecting your building to the cloud - through our Emalytics Connector or any other means - is the basis for providing many value-added services. Securing this connection and protecting the exchanged data is crucial. For this reason, the Emalytics Connector and its software have been built with security and data protection as first-class design principles.

Learn more? Check our dedicated security section on how we approach IT security and take a look at the Emalytics Connector subpage for admins.

Edge Computing¶

All Phoenix Contact Emalytics Connector are equipped with multiple cores, a generous amount of RAM and plenty of fast SSD disk space. With these powerful resources, Emalytics Connector can run advanced edge computing use cases that go well beyond simple data collection, e.g.,:

• Edge controls: The Emalytics Connector can run control algorithms locally. Running locally achieves sub-millisecond frequencies and can even provide real-time guarantees. Futhermore, local algorithms can serve as dependable fallbacks when cloud-control fails, e.g., due to intermittent connectivity.
• Data processing: The Emalytics Connector buffers all collected data locally for several weeks and can thus handle even very long connection losses without losing data. Using the local buffer, the Emalytics Connector can also serve as a local database in order to provide collected data to other consumers in the local network. When connecting the Emalytics Connector to the platform, e.g., through LTE, the Emalytics Connector can pre-process and compress collected data to reduce network overheads.
• Over the air updates: The Emalytics Connector can be used as a gateway to ship firmware updates to devices on the automation network.

Integrations¶

The Emalytics Connector can communicate with to a variety of third-party systems via standardized protocols and APIs. These are integrated as plugins which are divided into four categories:

• Loggers collect measurement and meta data from a data source, e.g., sensor readings from the building automation network.
• Publishers send data collected by loggers to a data sink, e.g., to an MQTT broker or database.
• Subscribers wait for commands from another controller, e.g., to write a setpoint for a room temperature.
• Writers act on received commands and execute them on the target system, e.g., write a setpoint on a BACnet device.

The following integrations are available:

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