Data acquisition extends to long ranges

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Nov 9, 2001

Amplicon Liveline has a range of compact data acquisition and control modules manufactured by Technman for use in industrial and environmental applications.

Amplicon Liveline has a range of compact data acquisition and control modules manufactured by Technman for use in industrial and environmental applications - providing communications over distances as great as 1.2km, and further with the addition of the NPort Server Express.

The Control-It 5000 range is made up of: relay, isolated I/O, isolated input, and analogue I/O modules, offering end users reliability, flexibility, ease of use and all the benefits of an off the shelf solution for control and automation.

All may be interfaced with any PC using an RS232 port or the 5101 PCI coprocessor board, and up to 255 modules can be daisy-chained via one Control-It 5801 convertor using the OPTO22 standard.

The modules in the range may be combined in various different ways to provide the best possible control system in most industrial environments.

They are designed in robust, high quality, metal enclosures for reliability and ease of use, and are all supplied with a 3 year warranty.

Status LEDs are incorporated for each I/O channel and communication port.

The 5020 relay module supplies a remotely controlled set of 16 Type A relays, and the incorporation of a microprocessor controlled watchdog feature allows for the disabling of all outputs in the event of a power failure or loss of communications.

For economical operation of industrial equipment, the isolated 5030 module with eight optically isolated terminals supporting a wide variety of positive or negative switched pick-ups and sensors is ideal.

The module can also provide eight 5A Type A relay outputs, which may be used for alarm switching or control of external devices, including heating or ventilation systems.

The 5040 isolated input allows computers to sense and monitor up to 16 digital input devices - switches, photodiodes, proximity detectors and alarms.

The device is designed to contain fully floating circuitry in order to protect from surges and power spikes, as are all other modules in the range.

The 5050 analogue I/O modules enable the reading of 0-1V, 0-10V and 0-20mA analogue signals, in addition to J, K and T type thermocouple inputs when using the OPTO22 protocol.

Modules are available in both 16 single-ended or eight differential inputs, with two outputs allowing control of 4-20mA loads.

The range is also extended with the 5101 RS485 coprocessor board which plugs directly into a computer's PCI bus and handles all communications for the Control IT distributed I/O system at 10 times the OPTO22 speed.

It also provides automatic system polling and remote module identification without tying up the computer's resources.

Remote units are controlled using simple, sensitive commands, obviating the need for communications protocols.

A wiring adapter is also available allowing for easy interconnection to the appropriate I/O module.

The system is provided with drivers for Windows 95/98, NT and 2000.

There are also high speed DLL example programs in C++, VB and Delphi supplied, and for programming in OPTO22, a whole host of languages may be used - including Agilent VEE Pro/OneLab, by programming the COM port directly.