EVALUATION OF ETHERNET SERIAL PROTOCOL CONVERTER FOR SCADA SYSTEMS USING RASPBERRY PI

With recent developments in SCADA systems, Raspberry pi and TCP protocols, there is great potential for the conversion of Ethernet Serial Protocol for SCADA systems using Raspberry Pi. The converter intermediately acts as the SCADA server and communicate with the remote terminal units and buffer all the data locally available, so that, the data requested by the SCADA is delivered immediately. In this approach, the Raspberry Pi acts as an interpreter, where the messages exchanged between the SCADA and the RTU are only converted from one protocol to another. The approach with the highest update rate, from the SCADA's point of view, is going to be selected for the propose method. Raspberry Pi is a small single-board computer that has a variety of interfaces to connect it to the environment it is working it. Ethernet and SPI interfaces present in this device, and has been used to implement different applications using different communication mediums. In this study, the Raspberry Pi is going to be used to implement a protocol converter that allows older SCADA system to communicate with the RTUs, without the installation of expensive hardware and software expansions. Using SCADA systems, unauthorized access to valves and switches could be more tightly controlled while keeping a human in the loop; that is, human supervision and interaction were, and still are, part of SCADA systems. However, technological advances and the maturation of Raspberry Pi has pushed more of the supervisory function onto the computer systems that make up modern SCADA systems.