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العربية Connect · Modbus
Modbus meters and PLCs, connected to the cloud
Energy meters, PLCs, and building equipment that speak Modbus don’t publish MQTT on their own. A small edge gateway polls them over Modbus RTU or TCP and publishes the readings as JSON over MQTT — Kilo’s MQTT connector takes it from there.
Connect · Modbus
How Modbus equipment reaches Kilo
Install a Modbus-to-MQTT edge gateway
An industrial PC, DIN-rail computer, or vendor appliance near the equipment polls registers over Modbus RTU or TCP on a set cycle.
Publish readings as JSON
The gateway applies scaling factors, converts units, and publishes JSON to topics like plant-3/line-a/meter-04/data — to your own broker or a Cloud MQTT endpoint.
Map registers to metrics
Register each meter or PLC as a device, extract its ID from the topic, and map payload keys — kWh, kW, voltage, current — to normalized platform metrics.
Connect · Modbus
Modbus integration specs
- Modbus RTU and TCP
- Serial and Ethernet Modbus equipment both work — the edge gateway owns the polling side, the platform consumes the MQTT stream.
- Edge normalization
- Scaling factors, unit conversion, and bitfield decoding happen at the gateway, so the platform receives clean, human-readable values.
- Energy metering
- Per-meter kWh, kW, voltage, and current readings aggregate into one digital twin per meter — the basis for sub-metering and energy dashboards.
- BMS equipment
- Chillers, AHUs, boilers, and meters exposed over Modbus integrate through the same bridge pattern — one pipeline for the whole plant room.
- Reliability options
- QoS 1 delivery, last-will status messages, and local buffering during broker outages are standard features of commercial edge gateways.
Connect · Modbus
What your Modbus data feeds
Connect · Modbus
Modbus integration FAQ
Does Kilo speak Modbus directly?
No. Kilo’s native connectors are LoRaWAN/mioty, MQTT, and vehicle trackers. Modbus equipment connects through a Modbus-to-MQTT edge gateway — a well-established industrial pattern with plenty of hardware and software options.
Which edge gateway should I use?
Common choices include Modbus-to-MQTT bridge software, vendor gateways from industrial suppliers such as Advantech or Moxa, and custom Node-RED flows. Anything that polls Modbus and publishes JSON over MQTT will work.
What should the payload look like?
Flat or shallow JSON per device works best — for example one status object per meter on a topic like site/meters/EM-4492/data. The connector parses every key automatically, and nested objects flatten to dot-notation paths.
Can I get alarms on meter readings?
Yes. Once registers are mapped to metrics, the rules engine evaluates them in real time — threshold breaches, abnormal consumption, offline equipment — and alarms escalate through email, SMS, and push until someone reacts.
Put your meters on a dashboard this week
Start free and bridge your first Modbus meter — or book a call and we’ll design the edge-gateway topology for your site together.