HMS Industrial Networks Serial EtherNet/IP Linking Device

HMS Industrial Networks has released the first product in a family of EtherNet/IP linking devices. The Serial EtherNet/IP Linking Device allows users to connect any serial device to a Rockwell ControlLogix or CompactLogix PLC. The main advantage of the device is integration with Rockwell’s Studio5000 Logix Designer.

The serial EtherNet/IP linking device makes it possible to include any automation device with a serial RS-232/422/485 application interface in an EtherNet/IP-based network architecture. It supports all kinds of serial protocols, including Modbus, DF1, produce/consume, ASCII and custom protocols.

Contrary to an in-chassis module which is physically connected to the PLC, the linking device can be mounted close to the connected machine. This means that it is possible to establish a connection via a single ethernet cable instead of multiple network-specific cables. The linking device supports the ODVA device level ring (DLR) for ring topology.

Users access serial protocol configuration through their existing Studio 5000 software. All configuration is made inside Studio 5000, where there is support for process variable data tags and manual and automatic generation of named and structured Studio 5000 controller tags without any required user logic.

Since the linking devices are stand-alone (distributed), they do not affect PLC backplane performance (PLC execution time), even when a large amount of data is transferred. The PLC simply scans the linking device as if it were any other I/O device on the network.