Automation Canada - Automation in 2021 - 29

WHY IO-LINK IS LIKE AN
INDUSTRIAL VERSION OF USB
BY COLIN CARTWRIGHT, SYSTEM SALES MANAGER, MURR CANADA
In those days, serial ports were just one of many different types of
connectors you would find on the back of a PC. In addition to that 9-pin
DSUB connector, there was another 25-pin DSUB serial connector, an
AT keyboard port, an RJ45 Ethernet port, a parallel port, a VGA port, a
joystick / MIDI port, sound ports, and possibly a SCSI port or another
type of propriety port that enabled you to connect external devices like
floppy disk drives, hard drives, and scanners.
Things improved a little when IBM introduced PS2 ports for the
keyboard and mouse, but even then, the back of every PC was a real
smorgasbord of different connectors and there were no real standards
between device manufacturers.
That all started to change when Intel released the first version of the
Unless you've been hiding in a cave for the past few years, you're
probably running into a lot more sensors and I/O components offering
IO-Link to communicate with the PLC. With all this IO-Link buzz in the air,
I'd like to explore all the exciting possibilities that IO-Link brings to
automation and industrial connectivity with you, over the next few
months. Let's start with a quick introduction to IO-Link and its similarities
to a connection technology we use every day.
Way back in the early 1990s there was a strong possibility that if you
wanted to connect a computer mouse to a PC, you'd need to have a
basic understanding of RS232 serial communication to get it to work.
Back then, computer mice were still being connecting to a PC with a
9-pin DSUB connector using RS232 for communication. If you didn't
know how to set up your serial ports with the correct speed, parity, and
stop bits you could literally be there for hours trying to get your mouse
to work.
CANADIAN AUTOMATION
Universal Serial Bus (USB) connector. Yes, we are talking about that
same USB connector that you can find on every single computer and
many other devices these days. First introduced in 1994, USB was
quickly and unanimously adopted by the whole PC industry and
ultimately became the standard connector for everything from mice and
keyboards to hard drives and printers. The Universal Serial Bus replaced
all those clunky legacy connectors on the back of PCs and really
standardized the way we connect external devices to our computers.
USB truly was a revolutionary technology that changed the whole PC
connectivity industry for the better and it still continues to evolve today.
I think IO-Link is the industrial equivalent of USB and will be just as
revolutionary. In fact, if you study IO-Link and USB in detail, you will find
a lot of similarities:
- USB and IO-Link were developed to be universal and standardize
the communication between controllers and external devices.
- USB and IO-Link were both designed to provide point-to-point
" one device per port " connectivity.
- USB and IO-Link are based on simple serial communication.
VOLUME 3, ISSUE 4
30
https://www.murr.ca/ca-en/
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