Hilscher North America has come up with a neat set of communication modules designed to make it easy for equipment designers and users to configure equipment for a specific fieldbus. The netJACK modules plug into a slot on a baseboard or motherboard and provide ready-to-go communications for 13 protocols, including CC-Link, CANopen, CompoNet, DeviceNet, and PROFIBUS slave devices. Real-time Ethernet modules can act as slaves, clients, or servers, depending on the protocol you select.
Equipment designers can provide a universal connection in controllers to let customers choose the netJACK interface they want. Then an equipment manufacturer (or the customer) can snap in a specific communication interface. This flexible bus arrangement also simplifies reuse of older equipment in systems that require a different bus type. The modules require no special mounting hardware. Cutouts and contacts on a motherboard accommodate the slide-in modules.
I like this approach to adapting equipment to several industrial-communication protocols as needed. In some systems, swapping communication cards might suffice, but such changes could require rewriting drivers or updating firmware. Because the netJACK modules all operate in the same way, they look the same to their host system. Thus, hardware and software remain stable.
Hilscher supplies the netJACK modules with two interface options for a host system: a PCI Express version for device vendors and OEMs and a dual-port-memory version for embedded systems. (Dual-port memories allow simultaneous read and write operations.) The company expects to have a fast serial peripheral interface version this year. These three interfaces already exist in a lot of industrial equipment, so engineers shouldn't have difficulty modifying a design to accommodate a netJACK module in place of a bus-specific circuit. As best I can tell, a programmer would write a universal driver for a PCI Express module, for example, and the module would handle all protocol configuration and management tasks.
The netJACK modules use the company's family of ARM processor netX chips that support all popular industrial-network protocols. After they handle communication protocols and conversions, the netX chips have enough processing power left to include special functions for customers needing large quantities of netJACK modules. Hilscher guarantees netX chip availability for 10 years.
If you use an industrial or fieldbus, would this type of communication module appeal to you? Tell us in the comment section below.
Thanks for the kind words. Having worked in the Automotive Industry, modular design was the mantra for all design engineers. The vehicle communication bus protocol back in the early nighties of Chrysler Vehicles were proprietary based and made it difficult for service mechanics to run diagnostics because of non -interoperability. Even with the PLC based automation controls in the assembly plants, networking different vendor's machines was quite a challenge because of different protocol standards and specs. The NetJack would have made our lives (the Electrical Plant Engineers) easy because of the modular approach to networking and protocol management.
Thanks for the kind words. Having worked in the Automotive Industry, modular design was the mantra for all design engineers. The vehicle communication bus protocol back in the early nighties of Chrysler Vehicles were proprietary based and made it difficult for service mechanics to run diagnostics because of non -interoperability. Even with the PLC based automation controls in the assembly plants, networking different vendor's machines was quite a challenge because of different protocol standards and specs. The NetJack would have made our lives (the Electrical Plant Engineers) easy because of the modular approach to networking and protocol management.
Thanks. The concept of plug in modules is to remove the complexities of building discrete circuit interfaces which always provides a challenge to the overall system integration phase of product design. The modular approach to equipment machine design just seems to make logical sense in the grand scheme of New Product Development. Nice article!
For years, I've been hearing suppliers talk about the possibility of having the engineer focus on the machine requirements, instead of the networking protocol. In the end, though, those suppliers were usually pushing one proprietary protocol. Seems like this plug-in module finally makes it possible to turn the vision to reality. Nice to see the optimism in your comment, mrdon.
Hi, mrdon. Exactly. The modular approach also simplifies the equipment design because engineers would not wonder if their communication interface worked properly. One less "unknown" to wrestle with when bring up a prototype or testing equipment in the field. --Jon
A plug in module such as this would definitely help equipment machine designers because of the interoperability with various fieldbus products and protocol standards available. The Hirshler plug in module will allow the equipment machine designer to focus on the functional requirements of the machine instead of the networking infrastructure which requires significant design/implementation time .
I am currently using the PCI slot mounted version Hilscher cifX card. They have versions that will handle a number of the industrial Ethernet flavors (Ehternet/IP, EhterCat, Sercos, etc.), and ones that will handle Profibus, Canbus, DeviceNet, etc.
Switching to a different network involves switching out the PCI card with the appropriate version for the desired protocol. The software basically doesn't change.
I haven't used the plug in style, because our products don't currently have a form factor where it would be usable. My experience with the cifX PCI slot version has been generally positive. I have used the Ethernet/IP version, and the Profibus versions, both connecting to Allen Bradley PLC's.
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