Challenge

FESTO is a German company founded in 1925, a global leader in industrial automation and energy efficiency. Present in 176 countries and with more than 30,000 customers in Brazil, the company develops solutions that reduce energy consumption in industrial environments, from compressed air systems to energy monitoring and management modules.

To demonstrate one of these modules to clients and partners, the process was inevitably complex: physical equipment, cables, connections, and a structure that needed to be set up for each presentation. 

Because of this, FESTO needed a way to take this module anywhere without bringing the infrastructure along. The natural path was mobile, but there was a technical obstacle, since the energy efficiency module communicates via MODBUS, an industrial protocol without native support in mobile applications. Integrating the two worlds would require building this bridge from scratch.

Transformation_

Evo Systems developed a Flutter app with MODBUS protocol integration, establishing direct communication between the smartphone and FESTO's energy efficiency module.

The central technical challenge was to make a protocol designed for an industrial environment work stably and reliably in a mobile app. The integration was built to ensure real-time reading and control of module data via mobile phone, without any loss of reliability compared to the original protocol.

The user experience layer was designed to avoid adding complexity for the end user. The app operator doesn't need to know what MODBUS is—they need to see the module data clearly and interact with it intuitively. Therefore, the app was designed so that the technical sophistication of the integration doesn't appear as friction on the screen.

The result is an Android app that connects to, reads, and controls the FESTO energy efficiency module without any additional equipment besides the mobile phone itself.

Benefits_

• Demo structure: multiple devices, cables and physical connections → an Android phone with internet
• Mobility: A demonstration is possible in any context, without needing to build a prior structure.
• Operational complexity: significant reduction in the preparation and execution of each presentation

Industrial technologies like MODBUS have existed for decades and function well in the environment for which they were created. What rarely happens is for this technology to become accessible outside the factory floor, without depending on physical infrastructure and without requiring specialized technical knowledge from the operator.

The app developed for FESTO simplified access to the product. And this difference is what determines how many demonstrations take place, in how many contexts, and how quickly.

Tools used_

• Flutter (Dart)

Flutter enabled the development of the Android app with the MODBUS integration layer, uniting the user interface and communication with the industrial module in a single codebase.