SERCOS N.A. Welcomes Four New Members

Four leading industrial companies have recently joined SERCOS North America as OEM Members. 

The Aagard Group, LLC of Alexandria, Minnesota designs, engineers and manufactures automated packaging machinery, including wrap around cartoners, servo case packers and complete combination systems. Card-Monroe Corporation of Chattanooga, TN specializes in custom built tufting machines. Industrial Fiber Optics of Tempe, AZ manufactures fiber optic products for automation, industrial, medical and sensor industries worldwide. Industrial Sales Management of Jackson, MI provides distribution and support services to European manufacturers of industrial motion control products. 

All of these new SERCOS N.A. members bring specialized expertise and design skill to their respective areas.

License-Free, FPGA-Based Single Chip Controller Introduced

SERCOS International introduces Easy-I/O, a free IP core software for low-cost FPGA chips, which allows SERCOS III to be integrated into basic I/O slave devices with minimal development and integration effort. Typical target applications of Easy-I/O are encoders, measuring sensors, valve clusters, 24V digital I/O and analog I/O.

Easy-I/O can be very easily integrated in hardware designs. A free version of the core is provided for the Xilinx Spartan-3 XC3S250E device in a TQ144 housing. It supports 16 digital inputs and 16 digital outputs.

SERCOS International is offering Easy-I/O as a freely downloadable IP core at www.ig.sercos.de/easy-io. Interested companies need to register online, but there are no license fees and a membership in the SERCOS organizations is not required.

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SERCOS and ODVA Announce CIP Safety™ on SERCOS

SERCOS International and ODVA announced that SI will adopt CIP Safety as its functional safety protocol for SERCOS. ODVA will extend the CIP Safety Specification to include safety profiles for SERCOS devices. SI and ODVA will jointly develop and establish conformance testing for devices implementing CIP Safety on SERCOS to help ensure compliance with the collective body of specifications and enable interoperability of these devices in multi-vendor systems.

A SERCOS technical working group is extending and adapting the initial "SERCOS safety" concept to include CIP Safety. 

Read the SERCOS/ODVA press release

Read a technical press release

SERCOS III I/O Profile Specification Completed

SERCOS announces the completion of an I/O profile for SERCOS III. This specifies a powerful device profile for decentralized I/O modules, which can be used for block I/Os as well as modular I/Os. It also supports hybrid devices that combine several functionalities in one single device, e.g., two-axis controller with I/O and master functionality.

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Soft Master Implementation Supported for SERCOS III

SERCOS International recently announced its support for a soft master implementation for SERCOS III. This will make SERCOS III the only bus on the market that offers both hardware and software based master implementations. This would allow SERCOS III users to choose between a software-based interface using off-the-shelf hardware, such as a PC; or current SERCOS III FPGA hardware, which requires minimal development effort and has minimum burden on the CPU. Via such a soft master, control systems and other automation devices that act as master within a SERCOS III network will be able to exchange real-time data with any SERCOS III slave device using a standard Ethernet Controller. 

SERCOS International is willing to work with any company that is interested in developing such a soft master concept.

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