TRADE SHOW COVERAGE
Let The Music Play with sercos
A guitar has six strings. Humans need ten fingers, hundreds of thousands of sensory nerves and billions of neurons to play it. Machines just need
sercos.
During the recent Hannover Fair, an electronic guitarist debuted at the sercos booth. Mechatronic students at the University of Stuttgart, led by graduate engineer Jan
Schlechtendahl, implemented a system to play the instrument interpreting MIDI files using the sercos automation bus. They used an MLP industrial control from Bosch Rexroth and bus terminals from Phoenix Contact to actuate a group of lifting solenoids via sercos commands. Six pluck the strings and 24 operate the finger board. The system played a number of classical guitar tunes from its repertoire at the show.
The sercos guitar will go on tour, to be exhibited at a number of tradeshows around the world this year. The mechatronic students are working on a sercos electronic keyboard that will be accompanying the sercos guitar in the near future.
A CD containing 26 classical selections played by the sercos guitar is available. Listen to selections from the guitar’s repertoire:
Order a free copy of the CD.
News from Hannover Fair 2011,
by Scott Hibbard of Bosch Rexroth
Lots of news from sercos at the Hannover Fair in Germany. For one, an alliance was announced with ODVA, the organization that supports EtherNet/IP and DeviceNet. This builds on an existing relationship between sercos and ODVA, where CIPSafety from ODVA is used as the Safety Protocol for sercos. In an age where we have become accustomed to the number of EtherNet Fieldbus technologies increasing and forcing a user to chose one over the other, this alliance goes in the other direction, looking for ways the two standards can cooperate better. While each technology has their strength, and application areas that they excel in, often OEMs use both, and sometimes they are found even on the same machine. This alliance will look for ways the two standards can cooperate in common device definitions, information exchange, and connectivity. I think we'll see some exciting things from this alliance that will make life a little easier for those that use both standards!
Links to Press Information
- sercos international to Intensify Cooperation with ODVA
- Article on new ODVA Machine Initiative
- sercos/IP Library Released as Open Source Software
- New sercos III Protocol and Profile Test
- sercos Automation Bus on Track for Impressive Growth
Photos from Hannover Fair
The Sercos booth was very busy. According to Peter Lutz, Managing Director of Sercos International, this was the best Hannover Fair in several years.
View of Sercos booth showing the popular Sercos guitar demo.
This interoperability demo has a Manz controller as a master, controlling a low-voltage Manz drive, plus drives from Bosch Rexroth and LTi. It also controls Phoenix Contact I/O modules, including safety I/Os (yellow modules). The demo includes a Hilscher switch linking a Keba pendant over Ethernet to Sercos. The master controls a robot controller from Stäubli. The demo includes Automata Sercos components (not visible).
View of the booth showing the interoperability demo and panels from Bosch Rexroth and Schneider Electric.
Another view of the above.
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