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Benefits of EtherCAT RIO for Applications
EtherCAT RIO delivers numerous benefits to many different applications, including deterministic expansion, synchronization, and more. Read this white paper for details and examples.
Deterministic Expansion
The need for expansion I/O often arises when designing a real-time system with large channel counts or widespread floor space. Expansion I/O gives you the ability to add distributed measurements or expand the original application. However, building your own synchronization architecture to maintain the determinism of this control system can quickly become messy and unscalable. Real-time Ethernet I/O technologies, such as EtherCAT can simplify these applications.
Synchronization
Accurate synchronization is particularly important in cases where widely distributed processes require simultaneous actions, such as coordinated motion between motion axes, or real-time test applications. EtherCAT RIO can achieve precise synchronization (less than 1 µs) between all of the I/O nodes in the system.
Applications
Real-Time Test
“Using an EtherCAT distributed I/O chassis, we can change sensors and wire them to the chassis before the fuel cell is brought into the test cell. Therefore, the test stand can operate while a technician wires the next fuel cell to be tested, which saves time and resources.”
Distributed Monitoring
“We added a remote EtherCAT chassis to the CompactRIO system to measure multiple environmental parameters, such as multipoint temperature and hygrometry, related to the paint deposition station. We added a second EtherCAT to monitor the eight turbines in the blasting station.”
Condition Monitoring
“The main objective of the large-scale condition monitoring and management system (LSCMMS) we created is to have a distributed, scalable, real-time system to monitor various pieces of equipment across many deployment sites. We selected the NI cRIO-9074 real-time processor and the rugged, 8-slot NI 9144 EtherCAT slave chassis due to their deterministic, distributed, and scalable design, which suits the system requirements.”
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