Sense
Poll real equipment over real protocols, and keep the quality of every reading, not just the value. A failed read is bad quality, never a zero, and a dead sensor does not trip every low alarm.
Two products, licensed separately
Automation loops for the real world.
Most home automation is a toy, and most industrial automation costs a fortune and needs a team to configure. HotLoop is two pieces of software that close the loop between what a sensor says and what a machine does, and neither one changes what it can do based on who you are.
A loop, running
TT-101 · modbus tcp · holding:40001- Error
- +0.00
- Output
- 50%
Normal
Inside deadband. No alarm raised, nothing paged.
A simulation running in your browser, so drag the setpoint and watch the loop close. In the Gateway, every write crosses one gate, out of range is rejected and never clamped, and the refusal is audited.
7
Protocols the Gateway speaks natively. There are no placeholder drivers.
51
Node types in Flow, each labeled by how closely it matches Node-RED.
25.1MB
The whole Flow image, against 717 for Node-RED. One box, one run, and the caveats are on the Flow page.
The loop
Sense, decide, act, and around again.
That loop is the whole idea. It is the difference between a rule you set once and hope still works, and something you can trust to run while you are not watching it.
Decide
Alarms follow ISA-18.2, including the state most homegrown systems miss, an alarm that cleared on its own before anybody saw it. Automation rules are compiled when you save them, so a broken rule is caught in the editor and not at 3am halfway through a sequence.
Act
Every write, from the UI, the API, an automation, or an agent, crosses one gate that cannot be routed around. Out of range is rejected and never clamped, and every refusal is audited.
The products
Two tools, built for different jobs.
HotLoop Gateway
Not yet publishedAn industrial automation gateway. It polls equipment, keeps the history, raises alarms, runs automations against them, and exposes the whole plant to agents over MCP. One static Go binary that runs as a non-root user with every capability dropped.
- Seven native protocols, and a verification table that says which ones have never touched a real PLC.
- A historian on TimescaleDB, with a native-partitioning fallback when the extension is missing.
- An MCP server with 13 tools and 4 resources, over HTTP and stdio.
Source-available under the HotLoop Community License. Free for individual use, and business use goes through Embernet.
About the GatewayHotLoop Flow
Version 0.1.0 is publicA flow engine in one static Go binary, and Node-RED's idea with a different runtime. Flow files stay Node-RED v1 compatible, and every inbox is bounded, so a fast sensor cannot quietly inflate a pod until the kubelet kills it.
- 51 node types, each labeled full, partial, divergent, or Flow-only, with the difference spelled out.
- Refuses to start without authentication, and ships its
execnode disabled. - Bounded queues, a goroutine per node, and a race detector that comes back clean on every package.
Apache-2.0, free for everyone, businesses included.
About Flow What we refuse to fake
Every integration says how far it has actually been proven.
Most integration pages list logos. Ours has four tiers, and one of them is empty on purpose.
Certified 0
Proven on real plant equipment, by someone who was standing there. Nothing has earned this yet, and we would rather say so than round up.
Verified live 5
Ran against a real target, and the row names exactly what. That is not the same as certified.
Decode tested 2
Thorough frame-level tests, and never run against a physical PLC.
Gateway mode 9
No driver, by choice. Reached through the gateway a site already has.
Licensing
Which license applies to me? Two products, two licenses.
Flow is Apache-2.0, so anyone can run it, businesses included, with no agreement. The Gateway is free for individuals, and a business that wants it goes through Embernet for support and a warranty.