Pipercameron, yes it can be done, provvided your terminal manufacturer has access to the proprietary communication protocols the bowsers use. That's another legal agreement required.
We designed the petrol pump and bowser control and displays to use an encrypted proprietary protocol circa 1985. Gilbarco did the same.
That was about two imperatives;
(1) For us(EMAIL LTD) it was about requiring one of our control terminals to be sold with every installation. We needed to protect that market from PC based POS (point of sale) solutions that were emerging so we made sure that no one could control a bowser except us.
(2) For our customers - the oil companies, it was to stop anyone from stealing real time fuel sales data from bowsers because that was highly valuable data.
The dream of the oil companies back then was to get a real time map of fuel prices and sales from all outlets across a city. If you have that data, you can respond in minutes when someone starts discounting, etc.
I still see old Email Ltd consoles at servos occasionally. Plenty of people tried to break that protocol. The whole field is now called "Forecourt control" - google it if you want to see the complexity.
Last edited by Sunfish; 27th Feb 2023 at 11:11.