Connect equipment that was never built to be connected
The Pointnode Edge Gateway reads your existing controllers over Modbus TCP, Siemens S7 and OPC UA and carries the data outward to Pointnode. No PLC firmware change, no inbound firewall rule, no VPN into the site.
Getting an asset onto Pointnode used to mean a controller that could publish to us. That is fine on a new machine and no help at all on the thirty-year-old crane, the drive in bay two, or the energy meter that already holds exactly the number you want and has no way to send it anywhere.
The Pointnode Edge Gateway is a small appliance that sits on the plant network, reads what your existing equipment already holds, and carries it out to Pointnode. Nothing on the machine changes.
What it can talk to today
- Modbus TCP — holding registers, input registers, coils and discrete inputs, from PLCs, drives, meters and protocol gateways, including devices behind a serial converter.
- Siemens S7 — data blocks, marker memory, process inputs and outputs on S7-300, S7-400, S7-1200 and S7-1500.
- OPC UA — certificate-verified, encrypted sessions, with values addressed by name rather than by an index that can move when the server restarts.
Each has a setup guide with a worked example: Modbus TCP, Siemens S7, OPC UA. Serial Modbus over RS-485 is not available yet; the gateway refuses it outright rather than accepting a configuration that would return nothing.
It reads. That is all it can do.
There is no write path from Pointnode to your plant, in any of the three protocols — no control, no program access, no setpoint changes. This is not a permission that could be granted later or a setting somebody could tick by accident: the code that would change a value in your equipment is not in the product.
How it sits on your network
- Outbound only. The gateway dials Pointnode. Nothing dials the gateway. No inbound firewall rule and no port forward — if somebody asks you to open one for us, that request did not come from us.
- An approved list of what it may reach. Commissioning records the exact address and port of every device the gateway is allowed to open a connection to. A typo in a configuration screen cannot turn it into something that probes your network.
- It buffers when the link drops. Readings are held on the gateway rather than discarded the moment the site loses connectivity, and delivered when it comes back.