Aerotech Automation1 Industrial Ethernet Support

Industrial Ethernet (IE) is enhanced with determinism and real-time control for use within an industrial setting. All Automation1 PC-based and drive-based controllers support Modbus TCP/IP IE protocols, while Automation1 drive-based controllers support EtherCAT IE protocols. Supporting IE protocols makes Automation1 controllers highly expandable. Data items on the IE networks are mapped to registers in the Automation1 controller, making the networked devices directly accessible to the Automation1 controller and vice versa. Expanded control of both protocols (and more) is planned in Automation1.

Description

Key Features

EtherCAT support for Automation1 drive-based controllers

MODBUS SUPPORT for all Automation1 control hardware

Enables expansion of your control architecture

Allows for integrating Automation1 into larger automation systems

Enables expansion of I/O on a machine controlled by Automation1

Automation1

Automation1 Industrial Ethernet support is part of the user-friendly Automation1 motion control platform, which includes the following:

Development Software

Controls

Motor Drives

Fiber-Optic HyperWire® Communication Bus

Modbus TCP/IP

Modbus TCP/IP is an extension of the Modbus family of vendor-neutral communication protocols used for supervision and control of automation equipment. Specifically, it provides a network and transport layer in an Internet environment over the TCP/IP protocols for the Modbus application layer. The most common use of the protocol is for communication with Ethernet-based PLCs, I/O modules and other simple field buses or I/O networks. The Modbus TCP/IP protocol is an automation standard.

EtherCAT

EtherCAT stands for Ethernet for Control Automation Technology. It is a real-time communication protocol over standard Ethernet hardware / networks. In EtherCAT, the network topology has one central controller that manages the communication of up to N (65.535) other devices. EtherCAT devices transfer data “on the fly,” enabling high speed, high throughput communication over the Ethernet physical layer.