Renesas Electronics Europe and Technologie Management Gruppe GmbH Announce Availability of a Remote-IO Toolbox for IO-Link, PROFINET and Ethernet/IP

The hardware part of the toolbox includes an uplink controller based on Renesas’　microcontroller (MCU) families, either the RX600 or the V850. The MCU operates the software stack of initially either PROFINET RT or Ethernet/IP to interface to the industrial Ethernet network. The MCU also operates the fieldbus integration to interface to the IO-Link master stack and the required tool communication module to interface to the device tool. The downlink interface is based on a stacked SPI protocol to interface to Renesas IO-Link 2ch master devices that build a maximum of 16 IO channels to sensors and actuators. Renesas’ optocoupler families provide the required galvanic isolation. The well-proven Elmos AG IO-Link PHY technology is incorporated in the 2ch IO-Link master devices together with Renesas’ 78K0R16-bit MCU that operates the master stack.

The software part of the toolbox comes from TMG and contains the stack software for PROFINET RT and Ethernet/IP, the tool communication and fieldbus integration and the IO-Link master stacks. In addition, TMG also includes its IO-Link device tool and a soft PLC demo to interface with a software controller to verify functionality.

The toolbox components can be used as a complete IO-package to provide customers a significant time-to-market advantage as the related hardware and software components together have already been used for the certification of PROFINET products, passed Ethernet/IP plugfests and all tests for IO-Link vendor declaration. Alternatively, customers can select those parts that are required from the toolbox to form their individual Remote-IO. It is also possible to modify parts of the software modules in accordance with customers’ own specifications.

All hardware components are supported by and available from Renesas Electronics Europe and all software modules are supported by and available from TMG.

The toolbox can be ordered through Renesas Electronics Europe for evaluation. For production, the software is once licensed through TMG with costs based on a royalty and a one-time fee.