Moxa’s new E1200 unit has two built-in Ethernet switches tailor-made for daisy-chain type configurations. The ioLogik E1200 industrial remote Ethernet I/O’s two embedded Ethernet switch ports allow information to flow to another local Ethernet device or connect to the next ioLogik in the daisy-chain. Applications such as factory automation, security and surveillance systems, and tunnel monitoring can make use of daisy-chained Ethernet for building multidrop I/O networks over standard Ethernet cables.
The ioLogik E1200’s built-in Ethernet switch ports can be cascaded to other Ethernet devices at the same location. A typical situation is a remote site that has a few sensors, devices, and Internet connectivity. A roadside cabinet serves as example. The IP camera monitors activity on the street and an Ethernet I/O device handles environmental monitoring, intrusion, and alarms, and triggers the camera to take snapshots when needed.
The traditional approach for this kind of remote monitoring application requires an additional switch or hub for connecting the Ethernet I/O device to the IP camera. A better approach is to connect another Ethernet device such as a PLC controller or an IPC in the same cabinet and use the industrial switch embedded in the ioLogik E1200. Not only does this solution reduce the number of failure points associated with an additional switch or hub, but it also reduces the amount of wiring needed for power, signals, and the network. Space inside the cabinet can also be saved.
Several approaches are available for controlling the ioLogik E1200 over an Ethernet network. As a traditional I/O solution, the ioLogik E1200 allows a central scada system or field controller to poll the I/O channel status via the standard, open Modbus/TCP protocol. Except for the default fixed Modbus/TCP address, the ioLogik E1200 provides the capability of letting users define the address by themselves. In addition, the MXIO(.NET) library makes it easy for programmers to integrate their own software to the ioLogik in the field. Moreover, the unit can leverage the benefits of the active technology with the free Active OPC Server package to seamlessly connect to any Windows-based scada system.
Active OPC Server Lite is a free software package provided by Moxa that operates as an OPC driver for an HMI or scada system. Active OPC Server Lite, with its non-polling architecture, supports the standard OPC protocol, but also offers active communication with Moxa’s ioLogik series of Ethernet I/O products, providing instant I/O status reports with ‘Active Tags’. The event-driven active tags result in faster I/O response times and help reduce traffic on the network.
OPC Server Lite and ioLogik products provide the flexibility of configuring the ioLogik E1200 to use dynamic IP addresses. The ioLogik E1200 connects directly to the Active OPC Server Lite instead of being polled, which makes dynamic IP addressing and WAN Access to the Ethernet I/O device possible, and adds even greater flexibility by allowing connections across firewalls. I/O devices for traditional data acquisition applications are not capable of using this approach.
Patented ‘Auto Tag Generation’ eliminates the headache of specifying target IP addresses, I/O channels, and data formats one by one, or editing and importing configuration text files since Active OPC Server Lite creates the tags for the target ioLogik automatically. One of the biggest payoffs is that users no longer need to be trained to install and configure an OPC system, since setting up Active OPC Server Lite is done automatically with a single click of the mouse.
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