Coupling a specialty system, such as a metering system, to multiple control systems

A hydrocarbon metering system, comprising:

• a processor;
• a memory coupled to the processor;
• and
• a communication port coupled to the processor, the communication port configured to couple to a backbone communication network of a control system;
• the memory stores programs that, when executed by the processor, causes the processor to:
• communicate with one or more flow computers;
• perform hydrocarbon metering based on the communication with the one or more flow computers;
• and
• selectively:
• participate, over the communication port, as a processing unit of a control system of a first manufacturer, the control system implements a first proprietary communication protocol between processing units, and the control system configured to control a physical process involving hydrocarbon flow;
• and
• participate, over the communication port, as a processing unit of a control system of a second manufacturer, different than the first manufacturer, the control system of the second manufacturer implements a second proprietary communication protocol between processing units, the second proprietary communication protocol is different than the first proprietary communication protocol, and the control system of the second manufacturer configured to control a physical process involving hydrocarbon flow
• wherein when the programs participate, the programs cause the processor to:
• scan a distributed processing unit of the control system executing function blocks that control a least a portion of a physical process, the scanning to identify a function block directed to data points of the metering system;
• and if a function block directed to data points of the metering system is found
• create a corresponding function block within the hydrocarbon metering system and execute the function block.

A processing unit comprising:

• a processor;
• a memory coupled to the processor;
• and
• a communication port coupled to the processor, the communication port configured to couple to a backbone communication network of a control system;
• wherein the memory stores programs that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to selectively:
• participate, over the communication port, as a processing unit of a control system of a first manufacturer, the control system implements a first proprietary communication protocol between processing units;
• and
• participate, over the communication port, as a processing unit of a control system of a second manufacturer, different than the first manufacturer, the control system of the second manufacturer implements a second proprietary communication protocol between processing units, and the second proprietary communication protocol is different than the first proprietary communication protocol;
• wherein the first proprietary communication protocol and the second proprietary communication protocol have identical physical and data link layers of the open systems interconnection (OSI) model, but implement different layers above the data link layer of the OSI model.