ABB S500 I/O modules run with various controllers

S500 remote I/O

The availability of different fieldbus communi

cation interfaces makes it easy to use S500 I/O

modules as remote I/O for nearly any PLC and

PC. The S500 remote I/O station consists of a

communication interface and I/O modules. The

smallest configuration can be just the communi

cation interface with the onboard I/O channels.

Communication interfaces are available for the

following fieldbuses:

• PROFIBUS

• PROFINET/PROFIsafe

• EtherCAT

• Modbus TCP

• CANopen

• ABB CS31 System Bus

Easy engineering

The electronic configuration files that are

provided by ABB for different fieldbus systems

make it easy to configure the S500 remote I/O

station in your engineering tool. The files such as

GSD and GSDML are available for download at

www.abb.com/plc. For Modbus TCP remote I/O

stations a dedicated configurator is included in

Automation Builder and for larger applications a

Bulk Data Manager tool can be used.

AC500-eCo CPU as S500 remote I/O

When the AC500-eCo compact CPU is used as

remote I/O, it can be programmed with  Automa

tion Builder for local intelligence while communi

cating via the open protocols Modbus TCP or

Modbus RTU with a CPU that will then be the

master of this intelligent remote I/O station. The

AC500-eCo CPU can be expanded by I/O modules

from the S500 and S500-eCo range.

S500 remote I/O with Modbus TCP

ABB provides a configurator in the Automation

Builder tool, which allows the configuration of

Modbus TCP I/O stations with the communica

tion interfaces CI521-MODTCP or CI522-MODTCP

in the same style as the AC500 configuration. For

larger applications a Bulk Data Manager tool can

be used. The configuration can be stored in the

communication interface, which allows using

the configured station with any PLC or PC that

supports Modbus TCP. This e.g. allows the use

directly on other controllers or monitoring

systems as e.g. ABB Ability™ Data Center Auto

mation or external systems.

Thanks to the Modbus feature that allows

several masters to exchange data with the same

slave, it is possible to use the I/O station as

shared devices with up to 10 PLC CPUs.

The Modbus masters can access the process data

of the I/O stations in two different ways:

• Fixed mode: each I/O module in the station

uses a separate register address range, which

requires separate Modbus read/write opera

tions for the modules in the station.

• The dynamic mode allows to pack the data of all

I/O modules in the station in one data structure

that can be exchanged in one single read/write operation.