multiLink · first product · v0.9.0
Swap the scale.
Keep the software.
multiIO sits between an industrial scale and everything downstream of it. It reads the indicator's native serial protocol, normalises the reading, and publishes it over ten transports at once — or re-encodes it as a different indicator entirely, so the line software that only ever understood the old scale carries on as if nothing changed.
/dev/ttyUSB0 · 9600 8N1 · Mettler Toledo IND246 · MT-SICS
Hex
Ascii
Decoded reading
The expensive problem
The scale fails. The software that reads it can't be touched.
A weighing line outlives its indicator by a decade or more. When the scale finally dies, the replacement speaks a different protocol — and the MES, the batch system or the PLC logic that parses the old one is frequently unsupported, uncompiled, or owned by someone who left. Replacing that software costs many multiples of the scale.
multiIO's serial output makes the new indicator answer as the old one. Read a Rinstrum, emit Mettler Toledo. Read an A&D, emit Rice Lake. It streams continuously, or answers a polling host command-by-command where the protocol documents one.
The new protocol reaches software that cannot read it, so the integration work lands on whichever system is least able to absorb it.
The old wire format is reproduced on the port the software already listens to — and the same reading simultaneously goes north to MQTT, Modbus or a REST pull for whatever comes next.
How it works
One reading in. Every consumer served at once.
Each reading fans out to every enabled output independently, through bounded per-output queues. A slow or dead consumer drops its own backlog and reports it — it cannot stall the device reader or any other output.
The catalogue
Every parser written from the manufacturer's own manual.
Not one wire format on this list was inferred from a search result or a sample capture. Each was read out of the manufacturer's technical manual — field widths taken from rendered pages, because text extraction miscounts the spaces that fixed-width frames depend on. Where a manual documents no serial format, that model is left unimplemented rather than guessed at.
64
Scale models
47
Output formats
202
Catalogue entries
92
Manuals on file
Those first three are different numbers, and they are worth keeping apart. 64 is how many distinct indicators are supported. Most of them can be set to more than one output format — Continuous, SICS, a vendor emulation — and each format is a separate parser, so the catalogue holds 202 model × format entries. You pick your model, then the format its own menu is set to — so the number to check against your own site is 64, and the table below names every one of them.
| Family | Indicators | Formats | Entries |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rinstrum | 12 — 5000 · 5100 · 5200 · 5230 · C500 · C510 · 300 series · X300 · 400 series (four groupings) | 13 | 68 |
| Rice Lake | 13 — 920i · 720i · 1280 · 882is · 882d · 880 · 682 · 680 · 680HE · 480 · 482 · 380 · 120+ | 6 | 45 |
| Mettler Toledo | 8 — IND131 · IND246 · IND331 · IND360 · IND400 · IND560 · IND700 · IND780 | 5 | 22 |
| Cardinal | 7 — 185 · 185B · 190 · 201 · 205 · 210 · 225 | 6 | 20 |
| OHAUS | 6 — Defender 5000 · 6000 · 3000 · 2500 · T72XW · CE35 | 6 | 18 |
| A&D | 9 — AD-4401A · 4402 · 4404 · 4406A · 4407A · 4421 · 4412-CW · 4413-CW · FS-D | 3 | 11 |
| CAS | 6 — CCB · CI-200 · CI-2001A · CI-2001B · CRC100 · CRD | 2 | 7 |
| Fairbanks | 2 — FB1200 · FB2250 | 2 | 3 |
| Ian Fellows | 1 — CSW-20 | 2 | 2 |
| SMA | 2 levels — the SMA standard protocol, so any scale whose own manual claims compliance, whoever built it | 1 | 2 |
| Anything else | 1 — Configurable ASCII: describe the line, no code required | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 64 scale models — plus 2 SMA protocol levels, 1 configurable and 3 RFID / barcode models | 47 | 202 |
Model × format
One indicator, several wire formats
A single indicator is usually configurable to emit any of several formats, and which one a site chose is not reliably detectable from the stream. Each format ships as its own selectable entry, so the installer picks what the box is actually set to instead of hoping auto-detection is right.
Reconfigured on site
The long tail, without a new plugin
Indicators get reconfigured away from every documented default, and plenty of models have no manual to hand. Describe the line's fields in the console — widths, delimiters, status tokens — paste a real sample, and preview the decode before saving.
No hardware needed
A desktop simulator that drives the real plugins
A Windows and Linux app impersonates any catalogue entry by running that model's own parser, with every serial parameter settable and scripted weight profiles. Commission and demonstrate an integration before the scale is on site.
Deployment
One binary at the edge. No cloud dependency.
The same executable runs as a Windows Service, a systemd unit, a Docker container or a foreground console process, on x64 or ARM. Configuration lives in a single directory alongside it, and the browser console it serves ships every asset in the binary — nothing is fetched from a CDN, so it works on a plant network with no route to the internet.
Platforms
Windows · Linux · ARM · Docker
Published as self-contained builds for win-x64, linux-x64 and linux-arm64 — an industrial PC, a plant server, or a small ARM appliance beside the scale.
Access control
Closed by default, off the loopback
API keys and a browser login, TLS on both web planes, secrets encrypted at rest, and an audit trail on every configuration change. A listener bound off-loopback with no credential refuses to open rather than starting up exposed.
Operations
Backup, restore, and a port terminal
The whole configuration exports as one passphrase-encrypted archive and restores onto a fresh install. A built-in raw terminal shows live hex and ASCII from any port, so a wiring or baud problem is diagnosed on the spot.
Who this is for
Built to be embedded, not resold by the seat.
Systems integrators
Stop rewriting scale glue
Weighing and logistics projects each arrive with their own indicator, its own frame layout and its own stability quirks. The catalogue and the settled-weight handling are the parts you would otherwise rebuild, badly, under time pressure, on every job.
OEMs
Modern connectivity without building it
Ship your equipment speaking MQTT, Modbus TCP, OPC UA and REST without staffing a protocol team. Licensed to embed alongside your own product rather than sold around it.
End users
Retrofit instead of replace
Where the cost of a scale swap is dominated by the software that reads it, emulation is measured against that replacement cost — not against a per-node connector fee.
Where it is today
Version 0.9.0, and honest about it.
Pre-1.0 is deliberate. Everything below is either shipped and verified end-to-end against real hardware protocols, or it is named here as not done. You should expect the same directness from us in an evaluation.
Next step
Tell us what's on the line.
There is no self-serve trial and no published price list, because neither would be honest yet. Evaluations are run directly with us: send the indicator make and model, what currently consumes the reading, and what it has to reach next.
- If we already support the indicator, you get a build and the configuration for it.
- If we don't, send the manual's serial chapter — new formats are added from primary documentation, and that is how most of the catalogue got here.
- If you're retrofitting, tell us the format the existing software expects. That is the case emulation was built for.
- Pricing is quoted per engagement, against what the integration would otherwise cost you.