The M-Bus (Meter-Bus) is an established European standard (EN 13757-2, EN 13757-3) for remote meter reading. The M-Bus is a serial bus and employs a master/slave architecture. The M-Bus master can request data from several slaves (meters) on the network. The data transfer from master to slave is a voltage-modulated signal. The transfer from slave to master is a current-modulated signal. M-Bus devices can be bus-powered. The maximum number of nodes, which can be powered on the bus, depends on the M-Bus transceiver.

LOYTEC devices with M-Bus support are M-Bus masters and require an external transceiver for the integration of M-Bus meters. M-Bus data points can be created from an online network scan or offline by using M-Bus device templates, which have been previously created. The assignment of primary addresses to the M-Bus devices can be done in the Configurator tool. AST™ functions for alarming (alarm management), scheduling, and trending (historic data recording) also apply to M-Bus data points. Especially the historic data logging and cyclic polling of values is optimized for M-Bus meters.

More details on the integration of M-Bus devices can be found in the respective product manuals, which are available for download.