multiIO / Supported devices / Fairbanks
Fairbanks Scales indicators
The FB1200 and FB2250, across two format cores — both of them Fairbanks' renderings of other manufacturers' formats, catalogued under the models that emit them.
2
Models
2
Output formats
3
Catalogue entries
More is documented and not yet built: Weigh-Tronix and Condec output on both models, the FB1200's remote display and poll modes, the FB2250's default continuous, and the whole FB2560.
Models and the formats they offer
| Model | Output formats | Default baud |
|---|---|---|
| FB1200 | CARD (Cardinal 738) · FBANKS | 9600 |
| FB2250 | FBANKS ★ | 9600 |
The formats
Each one is a separate parser, because which format a site chose is not reliably detectable from the stream — you pick what the box's own menu is set to. Example frames below are produced by that format's own encoder and read back through its own parser.
FBANKS
FBANKS — the Fairbanks and Toledo format
What the manuals themselves call the "Fairbanks and Toledo Format", and byte-for-byte the Mettler Toledo standard continuous telegram: STX, three status words, a six-digit weight, a six-digit tare and CR.
Leading zeros are not suppressed and the weight field carries no decimal point — its position comes from a status word, so a parser that assumed a fixed scale would be wrong on every frame from a differently configured box. Because a terminal transmits one displayed value plus tare, gross, net and tare are derived rather than read.
Example frame — FB2250, a stable 12.34 kg gross reading
<STX>,1·001234000000<CR>
02 2C 31 20 30 30 31 32 33 34 30 30 30 30 30 30 0D
17 bytes · decodes back to 12.34 kg
Verified against: FB1200 Operator Manual 51513 Rev 6 §6.5.1 · FB2250 Operator Manual 51214 Rev 17 Appendix I.B
CARD (Cardinal 738)
CARD — Cardinal 738 emulation
Fairbanks' rendering of the Cardinal 738 format: polarity, the displayed weight, a motion or overload character, a unit letter and a gross/net letter.
⚠ Framed the other way round from FBANKS — this record opens with CR and closes with ETX, so the CR that ends an FBANKS frame begins one of these. Anchoring on the ETX is what keeps the two apart on a port where somebody has changed the setting. The manual is also emphatic that the decimal point is always sent even when trailing, so a parser requiring digits after it would reject an integer-resolution scale's every frame.
Example frame — FB1200, a stable 12.34 kg gross reading
<CR>+000012.34··K·g··<ETX>
0D 2B 30 30 30 30 31 32 2E 33 34 20 20 4B 20 67 20 20 03
19 bytes · decodes back to 12.34 kg
Verified against: FB1200 Operator Manual 51513 Rev 6 §6.5.2
Is your indicator here?
If it is, it works out of the box — pick the model and the format its menu is set to, and readings publish over MQTT, Modbus TCP, OPC UA, REST and six more transports at once. If it is not, describe the line's fields in the console and multiIO decodes it anyway, or send us the manual's serial chapter: that is how most of this catalogue got here.