Fieldbus

DeviceNet, PROFIBUS, CANopen, ControlNet, EtherCAT, and other industrial communication protocols can be directly supported by INtime programs. Real-time applications written for the INtime environment have direct access to I/O and memory, giving you the flexibility necessary to build time-critical applications that require intimate interaction with hardware.

Following are examples of fieldbus hardware that have software subsystems available directly from TenAsys or our partners and are provided as real-time drivers and/or libraries with APIs designed specifically to support their unique hardware.

Industrial I/O interfaces

DeviceNet, PROFIBUS, CANopen, ControlNet, and other industrial communication protocols can be easily incorporated into INtime applications using either direct I/O or real-time device drivers with the Hilscher CIF line of industrial control I/O.

GPIB (IEEE-488) bus access

Real-time applications can incorporate support for IEEE-488 (GPIB) peripherals when using the National Instruments PCI-GPIB and PCI-GPIB+ I/O cards. Support is provided in the form of a real-time shared library (.RSL) and header files (.H) that implement the NI-488.2 board-level API.

The INtime implementation of the NI-488.2 board-level API (e.g., ibcmd, ibrd, ibwrt) is directly derived from, and fully compatible with, the National Instruments board-level API. A compatible subset of the National Instruments device-level API is also provided within the same real-time shared library. Existing applications written to use the NI-488.2 board-level DLL for Windows can be directly ported to the INtime environment for use with the INtime RSL.

EtherCAT fieldbus

Profimatics GmbH, an embedded system developer and TenAsys partner, has developed a real-time EtherCAT master for INtime. Their software allows you to utilize a standard Windows PC platform as the EtherCAT master in a deterministic EtherCAT fieldbus network.

An EtherCAT fieldbus utilizes the speed and cost effectiveness of Ethernet hardware to implement a fieldbus network that provides greater performance than traditional fieldbus solutions. For example, 1000 distributed digital I/O points can be queried within 30µs, 200 analog values in 50µs, or 100 axes of motion can be controlled in 100µs. EtherCAT is particularly well suited for PC-based control technology. A PC-based system master requires no special plug-in card and can be implemented on any existing Ethernet controller.

Please visit the Ethercat Technology Group website for detailed information regarding the EtherCAT fieldbus standard.