IO-Link: What Is It, When To Use It, and How It Works (P246)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Thank you for tuning back in to the
automation podcast. My name is Sean Tierney from
Insights in Automation.
And this week on the show, we have
a special guest, somebody who hasn't been on
in four years. We have Michael Bone from
PI.
They're the folks who manage technologies like PROFINET
and IO Link. And Michael's come on this
week to talk specifically about IO Link. We're
gonna talk about what it is. We're gonna

(00:22):
talk about when you should use it, and
we're gonna talk about the technical details of
IO Link, like, all the things, like, engineering
minds like to know about. So I think
you guys are gonna enjoy this. It took
about two to three hours to edit this
one, and I really enjoyed going back through
it. You know, we recorded it, I think,
four weeks ago. So I hadn't seen it
in four weeks, but I really did enjoy
it. I really think you guys will enjoy
it too. And that brings up another point.

(00:44):
Organizations like PI and ISA and other organizations,
they're not vendors. They don't sell stuff. Right?
And so this episode is not sponsored by
a vendor.
And,
you know, as I was going through it
yesterday, I was like, you know, there's a
lot of great slides in here. I wanna
share it with the public. So I've decided
to sponsor this episode myself, and I'll use
this as an opportunity to tell you a

(01:04):
little bit about my company and the automation
blog, the automation school, and the content I
have planned to release this fall, including
content on these products right here, all focused
on IO Link. And I just actually did
a live stream with these, products in front
of me. I'll be doing more tomorrow, and
I'll be adding lessons to my,
courses as well on these products. So in

(01:26):
any case, but before we get to that,
let's go ahead and jump right into the
show and hear from Michael and learn all
about IO Link. I wanna welcome back Michael
to the show. It has been
four years. He was last on in podcast
76,
back in September 2021. So just going on
four years.

(01:46):
Michael, thank you for coming back on the
show.
If you could,
a lot of people may not remember four
years ago. Mhmm. So before we jump into
your presentation, which which I am so excited
about talking about IO Link again. But before
we jump into that, could you please tell
me a little bit about yourself and a
little bit about PI? Yeah. Sure. First of

(02:06):
all, my
pleasure,
to be back on on the podcast. It
was a lot, a lot of fun. I
remember that
back in in 2021,
and,
I'm glad to be be back doing it
again. I started with PI North America in
2011
as the technical marketing director.
And since 2016,
I've been the executive director running the show

(02:27):
and chairman of the board since last year.
I,
have the, let's say, pleasure to serve
as the deputy chairman of PI on a
global scale since 2015,
and I come from a
prior to working for PI, I worked for
a sensor manufacturer who had some interfaces on
there that that brought me an introduct to

(02:47):
to Profibus and Profinet.
And before that, I studied,
physics and and math at at Penn State
University.
Just, really quick for those. I'm I'm sure
many of you are familiar with with PI,
but, it was started in the late eighties.
Half a dozen
companies and universities got together, and they wrote
the PROFIBUS
spec, and that evolved into

(03:08):
the into into PROFIBUS DP and PROFIBUS PA
for process automation in the early two thousands.
PROFINET came under the umbrella. And the reason
I bring all this up is because
there are some newer technologies under our umbrella
that I I think the audience might wanna
know about. Of course, EyeLink is is the
one that we'll talk about today, and that
was in 02/2009.
But there are some others like Umlocks, which

(03:29):
is a location tracking standard.
There's one called MTP, module type package,
NOAA, NAMR open architecture, also under our umbrella.
And, basically, what we do is
promote, maintain,
write the specs, turn them into standards,
and the work on those specs is done
in working groups, which are staffed by volunteers,

(03:50):
engineers from member companies.
They donate their time to to develop the
specs,
for these technologies we have under our umbrella.
And we're a little bit unique in that
we're decentralized.
So
we have competence centers and test labs and
training centers located throughout the world. It's not
all just in one headquarter
kind of place,
and they're all independent. But they have a

(04:12):
contract or quality of services agreement with PI
that says, hey. If you have a question
about the technologies, go to a competent center.
If you want further training, go to a
training center. If you want to to test
the device, go to a test lab. And
then they are all working with regional PI
associations
of which we PI North America is one
of them. We were founded in 1994

(04:32):
by a guy by the name of Mike
Bryant. At that time, we were called Probibus
Trade Organization.
And we are the and now I didn't
come up with this this name. We are
the North American Rio League. This is a
an IO Link
designation, a regional IO Link interest group,
which means that we have a a separate
contract and and quality of services agreement with

(04:53):
the IO Link community
to to promote and and work with members,
specifically for IO Link here in
in North America. And we're nonprofit, member supported.
I got nothing. So you're talking about products
and and and stuff at the beginning. I
got nothing to sell today.
We're we're working solely on on technology.
You know, I do wanna throw out there,

(05:14):
though, you have a great update every month
about all the new products
that fall in the buckets of IO Link,
PROFINET, PROFIBUS,
and a lot of those new products across
our IO Link. So while they may not
have products of their own,
they do keep the, industry up to date
on who's joining up and signing up, for
these new these you know, the jump on

(05:34):
board and release new products that, that, you
know, meet these specifications. And you know what?
Maybe you're not using PROFINET because you're using
brand x or y.
You still probably use an IO Link. So
Oh, that's for sure. Very interesting very interesting
updates that you publish every month and, as
a blog. And, I know when I was
doing the news for a couple years, I

(05:55):
would always, go to your site to look
for new updates. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. I guess,
I got a slide on that at the
end, but the the you're referring to the,
the PROFINews.
Yes. The PROFINews. Yeah. Yeah. That's a that's
that's been a baby and a labor of
love,
for a while now. And and, oh, man,
it's it's it's incredible because every month, the
most when we track this kind of stuff,
obviously, the most popular article is the new
products. Well, because that's what, right, that's what

(06:16):
people want is the stuff they can buy,
the stuff they can use.
Yeah. Yeah. That's and we got another one
coming out next week, and every month, we
we push that out, and it's always
half a dozen or a dozen new products,
half of which are are IO Link. I
mean, it's just growing like crazy. Yeah. And
you guys have had some good articles. I
think you had a great series, and I'm
now I'm stretching it. So stretching the old
memory here. I thought you had a great

(06:38):
series on on, MTP,
which I really enjoyed. Did did I remember
that correctly?
Yeah. We we try and, you know, we
try and get some editorial content in there.
It's it calls it falls into, like, three
main buckets. What's new products? What are new
trainings and events that are coming up? And
then and then some editorial content.
I think I think what we're driving at
is I think we need to do maybe

(06:59):
an MTP podcast here at some point in
the down the road. Probably. Yeah. Down the
road. Definitely.
Definitely. I I'm still you know, I still
have a very casual understanding of it. But,
let me throw it back to you because
I kinda jumped in and interrupted your your
your, update.
No. It's good. It saves it saves us
at the end when when that slide, we
can just just jump over it. Now we've
we've got it covered, and it's and it's

(07:19):
an and it's an important one. But you
kinda you kinda gave me a nice lead
into the to the next one, which talks
about,
the Ireland community. And I'll start from the
bottom, work my way up as being fieldbus
independent.
I just wanna break in here for a
moment and thank you folks in the audience
who've signed up for my membership program.
Really, really appreciate you all. Eighteen months ago,
after reviewing ten plus years of being on

(07:41):
YouTube,
you know, it was pretty obvious that there's
no real revenue on YouTube. I mean, it
comes in at maybe 1%
of my monthly expenses.
And so that ad revenue there is just
not something to rely on going forward because
it's not something that's been reliable in the
past. And so I set up the membership
program both on YouTube and at the automationblog.com.

(08:03):
And I wanna thank all of you who
signed up. I, we have a $5 tier,
which I know most people sign up at,
and then we have a couple other higher
tiers. And so I just wanted to thank
you all for doing that. You are actually
the membership program's probably 3% of my monthly,
revenue. And so that's, you know, one or
two times more, than,
what the YouTube revenue was. So thank you

(08:24):
all for that. And I hope that, some
of you who are not part of the
membership program will consider becoming a member, supporting
my work so I can do videos that
are not always sponsored videos. Now I love
sponsored videos. I love it when a vendor
sends me a piece of hardware and then
sits down with me and teach me how
to use it so I can create a
video
ad free and share with you on how

(08:45):
to use that product, or maybe they just
come on the podcast and sponsor it to
make it ad free so we can tell
their story about their product or service. And
I I will continue to do that going
forward, but I would really also like to
do more
audience generated type of, content. So content where
you generate the idea and say, Sean, why
don't you try this? Or, Sean, why don't

(09:05):
you do this? And a lot of those
topics that the audience wants to see, they're
not necessarily topics that the vendor wants to
promote with advertising dollars. Okay? And so that's
the whole purpose of the, membership program. Like
I said, right now, it's around 3% of
my monthly income comes from and I'm talking
about the business income, not my personal income,
the business income. 3% of what the business

(09:26):
needs to, to move forward and pay its
bills every month. But, still, I that that,
you know, so many of you have decided
to jump in and support me. I just
wanted to stop and say thank you very
much from the bottom of my heart. And
if you're not part of the membership program
and you're doing financially well, please consider if
you enjoy. This is episode two forty six
of the automation podcast.

(09:48):
Every episode has been free. The audio has
been free for all 246
of them. And most of those episodes I
funded myself just by well, you can understand
how you fund something when you don't have
the income coming in. But in any case,
if you enjoy it, please consider becoming a
member, and we can branch out and do
other things together. And with that, let's go
ahead and jump back into this week's episode
and learn more about IO Link.

(10:09):
So like you said, yeah. I mean,
organizationally,
the IO Link community came to PI in
2009 and organizationally under PI because we have
the infrastructure for working groups and
and IP policies and contracts and things like
that. But the IO Link community has their
own steering committee, and from the from the
outset and from every IO Link event that
we do and everything that we do

(10:31):
is is independent
of,
of any Profibus or Profinet stuff. And we
try really, really hard to maintain that independence,
no matter what vendor you're using.
And there, at this point, we've got 500
companies in the IO Link community, and it's
really just growing by by leaps and bounds.
So we kinda track this stuff

(10:52):
by nodes
and all the IO Link companies.
They send
their node count to an independent auditor,
collects
the counts,
and gives us back an an an anonymous
total. So we don't know where or who
is selling them, but we get the total.
And you can just see this this hockey
stick exponential growth.

(11:14):
Particularly in 2023, there was some supply chain
over purchasing that that went on. I mean,
that's like we're looking at a a growth
rate of 89%
there, which is obviously unsustainable. But
still,
last year, 9,700,000
nodes were added.
Again,
because it's field bus independent,

(11:34):
it really has no competitor.
And that's what's kinda cool about IO Link.
I mean, you wanna do and and you
don't need
to choose a field bus and therefore get
IO Link. You can use any field bus
or industrial container protocol, and IO Link works
with it. You know, I wanna just, mention
for the audio listeners. If we go back
to 2012, it looks like
we're probably at the 1,000,000 mark or below

(11:54):
it.
And as you go to, you know, 2022,
you look like you're 35,700,000.
Is that 2022 or 2023?
Yeah. That's the 2022.
Exactly. 35,700,000.0.
Yeah.
And then at, the end of twenty twenty
three, we're at 51.6.
So you talked about that, you know, overbuying.
And then at the end of 2024, we're

(12:15):
at 61,300,000.0.
So you can just see from, you know,
2022 to,
2024,
you went from 35 to 61.
So the adoption, like you said, it's a
hockey stick. The adoption has really picked up.
And I think you you hit the nail
on the head because it is fieldbus independent.
It's a way to just get more information

(12:36):
out of our devices, like sensors and photo
eyes, you know, and it's just you know?
I mean, though, these chipsets that come in
these, devices now are just amazing.
And that's what, I mean, that's what the
whole point of this is.
You're you're not gonna put a
$5 ethernet chip, like, enter $5 ethernet interface

(12:56):
on a $15
proximity sensor. But
computing and memory has gotten really, really small
and really, really cheap that it's on just
about everything.
And so this proximity sensor not only can
tell you if, like, for example, let's say
it's on a conveyor belt. It cannot only
tell you if the box is there or
not, but it can tell you how many
blue boxes would buy or how many red

(13:18):
boxes would buy or if the box that's
going by is off kilter or or misaligned
or something like that. But how do you
get that data out in in inexpensively, and
here we are. IO Link is is the
way to do it. I'm sad to see
a lot of these sensors too come with
humidity, temperature, and all these other things should
be like, really? I can get that out
of my photo eye. But yeah. Multivariable. Exactly.

(13:39):
Yeah. Yeah. You know, traditionally, with an analog
interface, how did you get that? You couldn't
get it. Mhmm. But now with a digital
interface, which is what we're talking about, digitalization
in the last meter, now you can get
that informate that data, that information,
and do some pretty cool stuff with it.
Yes. You can. Yeah.
I'll talk a little bit about the architecture
a little bit here to kind of get
a little bit into the technical side of
things about

(13:59):
how IO Link works, but it they're kind
of some main devices, and that's the IO
Link masters and the IO Link devices.
And these IO Link masters are available for
we have here 16 different industrial Ethernet or
field bus systems.
21 manufacturers offer
central PLC, like an IO Link master built
into the backplane of the PLC if you
so desired.

(14:20):
And the number of devices that so that
hockey stick we showed before is just exploding.
I mean, we've got
60 something million sold,
and we have
tens of thousands of unique IO Link devices
from
hundreds of different device manufacturers that have implemented
this interface.
And for those that if there's anybody on
the podcast that wants to do this and

(14:41):
add this to their sensors,
there are a number of different companies that
help
with,
product design, either with the chips, the transceivers,
the software stacks, and then a number of
companies that help provide technical support in order
to do that.
So an IO Link system kind of
is made up of four parts. Like I

(15:02):
said, you have the IO Link master. That's
the gateway between the IO Link devices, the
IO Link interface, and the higher level communication
system, such as the fieldbus or the in
industrial Ethernet protocol or backplane.
You have the devices. This is the exciting
part. Your sensors, your switch gears, your valves,
your signal lamps, maybe some simple actuators, whatever
the case may be. You've got a IO

(15:23):
Link cable, just a three wire unshielded,
super simple
connection between the master and the devices. And
then every device has an IODD
or IO Link device description file,
and I'll explain how that gets used to
engineer and parameterize the IO Link system and
the and the devices.
And what this

(15:45):
kind of enables
you know,
traditionally,
communication only
reached the IO level.
You had connection between the PLCs
and the and the the the IO, and
then it kinda stopped there because all those
sensors and actuators
were not accessible.

(16:05):
They were analog, and you got your one
process data. You brought process signal, and that's
where it ended.
But with IO Link, what we do is
we enable that communication
bidirectional,
cyclic and acyclic, and that's the cool part,
all the way from
higher level systems, not only to the PLC
or especially from the PLC, but down all

(16:25):
the way down
to the simple sensors and actuators, which are
now accessible.
And you kinda touched on this before where
these chipsets have gotten really, really
smart and really, really powerful. And it's not
that
the
it's not that any of these use cases
that are
that are being solved with IO Link that
none of them are new. What's new is

(16:46):
the ease with which
they can be solved.
So because you can get all this extra
data out, things like OEE,
showing things like downtime tracking, track and trace,
predictive maintenance, for example, remote monitoring, recipe management,
SPC, all these things. It's not that these
use cases are
now being solved. The you know, we've we've
been doing this for a long, long time.

(17:08):
It's just the ease with which because
because it's a standard
and because all this stuff is standardized in
how it gets from the the the device
to the master and upwards to the controller,
it just makes it easier. If you spend
all your effort trying to gather and collect
and sanitize the data because every device is
different and, you know, that's just that's just
a mess, and the ROI disappears really fast

(17:30):
on any kind of project to do that.
But if we have a standard on how
to do that, then we make it very,
very easy to do, and everything can come
in,
quite nicely. And and and it just and
it just works a whole lot easier. You
start getting access to that data. And so
what we're starting to see is connections being
made. You know, you talk about the the
flattening of the

(17:50):
traditional automation
hierarchy where now not only is that IO
block or that sensor connected to a to
a PLC, but it's got some extra data.
Like you said, like, this little photo I
might have a a a temperature or
a a moisture,
you know, sensor also in there,
just because it's part of the the chipset.

(18:13):
But the PLC don't care about that. He
just wants to know about the, you know,
the information from the photo eye. So what
do you do with all this
extra beautiful information
that isn't necessarily processed data? Well, maybe the
MES wants to know about that. So how
do you get that? And in a running
factory, in a brownfield environment, rule number one
is
don't touch the running PLC.
Yeah.

(18:33):
And rule number two is
see rule number one.
That thing is running, and any minute of
downtime costs more than any one thing on
the on the factory floor.
Before we go on, I did wanna break
in here and tell you a little bit
about my website, theautomationschool.com,
where I do my online training. I also
do in person training. And you probably don't
know that that all started back in 2014

(18:54):
with a Kickstarter I ran for my first
PLC basics course. At the time, it was
called microprogrammable
controller
basics, and I ended up changing it just
the PLC basics. But in any case,
since then, I've had added a dozen courses
on a various number of topics, and you'll
find them all at the automationschool.com.
But what I really wanted to talk to

(19:15):
you about is why. Why did I do
that? Well, I had spent twenty five years
as a certified authorized Rockwell Automation distributor specialist
covering PLCs, HMIs, SCADA, MES,
and other stuff too. Right? And I knew
from visiting,
customers in the plant every single workday, almost
every workday,
that there was a real need for affordable

(19:35):
training. So the first thing is, you know,
large companies have large expensive,
large paychecks,
and lots of overhead, so they gotta charge
a lot. Right? And so
that was a problem because a lot of
the people I was working with, you know,
the controls engineers, automation engineers, high end electricians
and technicians,
they had to fund their training themselves. Their
company was sort of like, no. We trained

(19:56):
this guy back in the nineties, and then
he will have to get a better job.
So we're not spending money on training. And
so all these people were having to train
themselves, and it was unaffordable
to either,
you know, buy the the, vendors courses.
Or even if the the company did have
training dollars, it was unaffordable to send them
away for a week to a $3,000

(20:16):
course somewhere halfway across the country, probably $3,000
worth of travel and hotels too. Right? And
then they go where without one of their
smartest guys, right, one of their best people,
because you you that's usually who you're gonna
train and and uplift through the through the
organization. Either people are doing good on the
lower level, you wanna bring them up and
train them on automation.
And so
that's why I started the the, automationschool.com

(20:39):
because of the the try to provide I
knew the the courses would never be Hollywood
quality. I mean, this isn't Hollywood quality. Right?
But I knew it could be helpful and
and, you know, be affordable
by just filming them in my garage. Right?
And, you know, picking up some used equipment
and putting together the episodes. And the site
has grown so much. We have thousands of,
students from over a 150 countries. We have

(21:01):
hundreds of, vendors we work with. But the
other thing I did is, is made up
by one's own forever. Right? So more like
an ebook or an audiobook or an m
p three album. Right? And the reason I
did that and I understand why the vendors
don't do that because they're like, well, they'll
sign up one guy in the I and
e shop, and he'll share his password for
everybody.
You know, that could happen. Right? People could

(21:22):
rob a bank too. But I'm like, you
know, most people,
when they buy a course and I saw
this. I was on an independent platform for
a while, and on that platform, they showed
you how the progress of every student. Most
people buy the course well before they're ready
to take it. And I'm like, I'm not
gonna charge people a monthly fee or only
give them access to to a short window
if, you know, they have good intentions now,

(21:43):
but it takes them a while to actually
free up their schedule
to get into the course and take it.
So that's why my courses are buy one's
own forever. And it can you know, as
they grow, the price goes up because I'm
adding more and more content, and I do
split them out and make cheaper versions over
time. But, those people who buy in early,
they get the like, my s seven course.
Like, I think it originally came out at
40 or $50, and now it's $200 because

(22:03):
I've added so much to it over the
years. But in any case, same with ControlLogix
and CompactLogix.
And then the other thing too is I
want them to be able to take it
more than once. Right? So if you take
a let's say you take a ControlLogix course.
Right? You don't use it for a couple
years, you probably gonna have to take it
again. And I don't want you to feel
like you have to pay a monthly fee
to do that. It's like an ebook or
an m p three album. You bought it.

(22:25):
You bought access to it, I guess I
should say, and now it's yours. Right? And
the other thing too is I support my
students personally. Okay? So I check the website
every day for questions, every work day. I
should say, you know, I do take Sundays
off. So in any case, if you're if
it's a work day, though, and I'm working,
I'm not on vacation or traveling for business,
I'm up there. I'm answering questions. And I
should say, even when I'm traveling on business,

(22:47):
I'm I'm on there answering questions. So although
if I don't have any hardware, there's some
questions you can't ask. Right?
I guess I should have said some questions
you can't answer. But in any case, I
just wanted to share that with you. Theautomationschool.com,
a high quality
online courses,
five star rated, buy once, own forever, and
guess what? I'm updating all the PLC courses,

(23:07):
and if you already own or buy one
of the existing PLC courses, you not only
get the updated lessons that get added to
that course, you get the new course completely
free. So I'm not gonna charge you for
just an updated version of a class on
the same core on the same product. Right?
That would be kinda silly in my opinion.
So, I hope you guys appreciate that. Again,
if you didn't know any of this, if

(23:28):
you have any questions, if you go over
to the automationschool.com,
at the very top of the site, you'll
see links to contact me, set up a
meeting, leave me a voice mail, fill out
a form. You know, I have many ways
you can get in touch with me. And
if you have multiple people you wanna sign
up, I do have multiple seat discounts starting
at three seats.
And,
I do actually work with a number of
Fortune 500 companies who, you know, enroll maybe

(23:49):
10 people at a time to get that
discount.
And you know what? Unlike the big vendors,
if somebody you sign somebody up and they
all take the courses,
I'll let you replace that person for free
of charge. You don't have to pay anything
extra. If you sign up Joe and he
decides to quit or leave or not to
learn,
you can put Bob in his place. That's
not a problem. Now I have said some
situations where the same spot kept getting replaced

(24:11):
or replaced or replaced. At some point, I
do charge a maintenance fee to to switch
the names out. And then, hey. Look. If
Joe leaves and he took, you know, two
out of three courses, I'll prorate
refilling that seat with the new person. Right?
So whatever percentage of the lessons he took
versus the total number of lessons, I'll prorate
it. So, you know, we've had number of
cases where somebody goes through half of the
content then leaves, so we can reset that

(24:34):
seat for half price. And I that's something
you won't find,
any major vendors doing as well. So if
you have any questions about that, reach out
to me over at the automation school dot
com. And with that said, let's jump right
back into
this week's episode of the automation podcast.
In a brownfield
installation, what we're seeing these these cool little
edge gateways,

(24:54):
And what they'll do is they'll grab the
bus,
they'll collect some data, and pump it out
the other side via, you know, maybe an
IT protocol that that the IT guys wanna
know about or, you know, like an MQTT
or an OPC UA.
Of course, in a in a greenfield, in
a new installation where you've got a brand
new PLC,
yeah, get the data there. That guy has
all the brains, has all the all the
information in one ply in all in one

(25:16):
place, so get it from the PLC. But
in Brownfield,
I the edge gateways,
even some IO Link masters
are being
put on the market that have not only
an industrial Ethernet
interface, you know, just on one port, on
the same port, industrial Ethernet interface for control,
but that interface will also speak like a
higher level IT protocol like an MQTT or

(25:39):
an OPC UA, so you can get it
even from the IO Link master that data
is is accessible. So the different ways to
get it,
and, and that's kind of the whole point
is is getting that data from the sensors
to the to the master and then further
upwards.
We actually covered a product on the show
that
had two ports. It had one for your
fieldbus Yeah. And then it had a separate

(26:01):
one for your IT or your IOT or
your MQTT,
which I thought was so inventive too because
now the control system gets its data, and
it's under control. But reporting wise,
you know, that's kind of the best of
both both worlds. You don't have to have
two sensors. You can send it to data
both ways.
And, yeah, just it's the way you can
do with these things and, you know, a

(26:22):
lot of the sensors you probably have out
there, I've noticed that some vendors, every sensor
they sell is IO Link. So Yeah. You
may already have it installed and not know
it because the price difference to add it
to some products.
Once you get up to the fanciest sensors,
of course, not the simplest sensors, but once
you get up to the fanciest sensors, it's
it's, you know, there's a lot of horsepower
in that chipset. So, you know, they can

(26:43):
add IO Link for for pennies on the
dollar. So very interesting stuff, though.
Yeah. That's that's a good point. And and,
you know, of course, we could spend all
day talking about IT, OT,
and the segmentation of networks and all who's
who owns the IP addresses. And we I
mean, that's a whole separate topic. But in
cases like that, yeah, it's cool. You got
a separate port.
IT can do what they want on their

(27:04):
one port. And if but, hey, don't touch
me in the control realm because Mhmm. This
is my this is my realm.
And and you bring up another good point,
and that's kind of there's a I don't
I don't wanna say that, you know, there's
there isn't, like, a thick black line between,
okay, this sensor
is simple, therefore, should have IO link, or
this
sensor is complex, therefore, should have its own

(27:27):
industrial Ethernet,
interface. There's almost a little bit of a
gray area, but you're right. I mean Mhmm.
We kinda leave it up to the vendors
to decide. Hey.
My thing needs the horsepower
that and it's so complex that I need
something like, like, an industrial Ethernet protocol. But,
oh, you know what? This other central line
is tailored for low cost, and so, therefore,

(27:47):
I'm gonna put IO Link on it. But
that's, you know, that's up to them to
to decide.
So when we talk about IO Link in
terms of benefits,
we kinda like to make the analogy with
USB
because everybody knows USB. You got your USB
cable. You plug it into your computer on
one end. On the other end, you plug
it into your you know, you plug your
mouse in or you plug your keyboard in,
and you plug your key your printer in.

(28:10):
Automatically, it it uses the same cable. It's
always the same. Everything everybody's using that interface,
and we kinda see the same thing with
IO Link where it's just a unified, unshielded
three wire sensor cable, and it can use
be used
with all
IO Link devices.
Up until now,
you know, if you had

(28:30):
smart devices, right, memory and computing power is
smaller and cheaper. Up until now, to get
that
extra information out, you would need multiple cables.
The wiring is time consuming. It's expensive.
They're large,
costly to
to install and maintain.
But But with iolink, you just you just

(28:50):
plug it in. It's a simple m 12
plug,
and then you don't have all these spare
parts of different cable types. It's just one
cable
and,
easy to maintain, thin, flexible.
I've got a I've got an example here
I'd like to highlight, and I'll try and
talk through it for those that are that
are listening instead of instead of viewing.
This is an example of 256
IOs via 16

(29:13):
fieldbus
modules. So, like, fieldbus like remote IOs or
whatever the case may be. So we're connecting
them to a PLC out in the field.
And to do that, we would need 16
fieldbus modules in order to do that. These
are just let's let's call them simple
DI, you know, digital input proximity sensors. Mhmm.
Mhmm. With IO Link,

(29:34):
we can do that via just one fieldbus
module. So that's just one IP address or
one
IO Link master. So already you're cutting out
15 of those more expensive
devices.
And then we use what are called so
called IO Link hubs,
which bring those DI signals,
put it all on one IO Link connection,
put it into IO Link master, and send

(29:55):
it out the other side. And with that,
we can connect if you imagine these 272
IOs
as shown here via just one
fieldbus module. So it's showing just huge, huge,
huge
savings simply on cost alone,
due to the wiring.
And, that that one cable, it fits all
sensor types. So simple sensors, like a proximity

(30:16):
sensor all the way up to
complex devices like pressure, temperature,
signal lamps, and even simple actuators
all use the same IO Link cable.
So where an IO Link device would be
giving you not just on or off, but
a lot of other information and some of
that analog information.
If all you had was a dumb device,

(30:37):
well, now I can put 16 of them
or so, you know, some number of them
together
Mhmm. Bring them into a hub. And each
since each device only has an on or
off,
where a regular IO Link device would have
lots of other information, you can now just
join them all together and say, okay. Here
we go. Here's inputs one through x.
It's, almost like multiplexing, put it all together
on one and then Mhmm. Pump it out

(30:57):
the other side. Yeah. Perfect.
The other way we relate IO Link to
USB is kind of in the the identification
and parameterization.
So if we look at how you
plug your printer into your computer, you plug
it in, and automatically, your computer says, oh,
okay. I know that that's a
HP something something desk check printer and and

(31:19):
okay. How do you wanna do you wanna
do color or black and white? Do you
wanna do
full duplex? Do you wanna do
back and white, back and front on on
the printing? And the same is true for
for IO Link. So you plug in that
IO Link sensor into your IO Link master.
It reads it. It says, hey. The dialing
says, hey. This is who I am. This
is my type. This is my serial number.
Every device has a vendor ID and a

(31:40):
device ID.
And then the IO Link master goes up
and gets the IODD
file, and I'll show that here in a
little bit, and then you can start that
parametrization. And it's just like
it's just like a USB. It's it's,
no special knowledge is required. You can format
changes very, very easily. You can even do
them on the fly, for example, with an
HMI on the on the machine.

(32:00):
And, the identification
methods
make sure that you don't
plug in a wrong device into an IO
Nialink port,
which could stop the machine.
It'll it'll it'll recognize that and prevent,
incorrect connections.
It allows you to exchange devices very easily
of the same type or the the same

(32:22):
same manufacturer,
same same device.
So just like USB, it it it kinda
works in that way. And then the other
way, it's kind of like USBs in the
diagnostics, and this is a really, really powerful
part of IO Link. So when your printer
says, I'm out of paper or I'm out
of toner or there's a paper jam, it
sends that signal, standardized signal to the to
the computer,
to your computer, your PC, and you know

(32:44):
exactly what what to do, how to fix
your your printer, why your printer isn't working
the same as true for IO Link. We've
standardized these diagnostics.
So this is a, a photo eye saying,
hey, under voltage or over temperature or
the the window on the photo eye has
gotten dirty, so signal quality is deteriorating.
So we standardized all this,

(33:04):
so that these diagnostics all come in the
same way, and, you can, you know,
fix any any problem as fast as possible
to to to,
minimize downtime.
And in the case of things like signal
quality, hey. The the the window's getting dirty.
This enables things like
preventative maintenance. Oh, I know I'm going into
a planned shutdown next week.

(33:26):
Now's the time to go out and clean
those sensors kind of thing,
because I know that they're I know that
the signal's going is deteriorating. So some cool
things like that,
that wouldn't be possible with a traditional analog
signal, which we're showing here. And it also
makes really
no sense. I mean, in this example, what
we're showing here is a generic this is
a pre pressure sensor. You know, it does

(33:47):
its measurement.
It then does some amplification, and then to
stabilize the signal, it does an a to
d, puts it into a micro,
which does some temperature compensation linearization. But then,
traditionally,
prior to IO Link, what you do is
then do another data a to send it
out via
zero to 10 volts or four to 20
milliamps, whatever, into the into a, an a
to d

(34:08):
card on the backplane of the PLC,
I mean, this is just this is just
crazy.
It's it's time consuming. It's,
the the signal is still susceptible to interference.
The the analog inputs on the cards on
the PLC are expensive. There's manual calibration of
the signal.
But with IO Link, it just makes sense.
You take that signal right from the micro,

(34:28):
pump it out digitally via an IO Link
inexpensive
interface to your,
to your IO.
And,
we use that unshielded
three wire inexpensive cable,
and then you get all those parameters and
diagnostics. And, really, that's the point of using
IO Link is all that extra data, all

(34:49):
that extra information that that comes along with
the the process data.
Yeah. And so those of you who are
listening, I mean, what we saw there was
to to shoot out a four to 20
milliamp signal or zero to 10 volt signal,
it had to convert it from the digital
value that was inside the device
to analog,
then I have to pump it out. And,
you know, we always have to worry about

(35:09):
noise and, you know, shielding and all that,
you know, depending on the length of the
run. And then
in the PLC analog card, it's converting it
from analog back to digital, so you have
that zero to 32,000
value or zero to 64,000,
whatever your PLC does. And so IO Link
does eliminate that. It eliminates the noise of
your traditional analog. And I know I've met

(35:30):
so many customers say we have no noise
issues on our analog, and that's great. But
not everybody's in that same boat. So you're
eliminating that d to a and then a
to d, and that's that's you're keeping everything
digital. So you're not only getting a cleaner,
more accurate value from your device,
you're also getting all those additional pieces of
information and the ability
to be maybe configured to products. Some of

(35:52):
these products
need to be changed based on the type
of product they're sensing, you know, the type
of fluid going through, the recipe that's being
drawn,
the lighting, the colors. So all those different
things,
you you know, with a typical analog signal,
you're not gonna be able to send back
and do a configuration to it. So, go
ahead. Back to you, Michael. No. You're right.
Exactly. We we have I I took this

(36:12):
line out of this deck for the for,
you know, for for brevity, but we show
examples
of of particularly food and bev, right, where
you have batches, different I'm running a different
batch. I'm running a different product. I need
a different
label on the on the bottle or whatever
I'm running through the the the machine.
You reconfigure that via the HMI. It sends
all that stuff down to the sensors. Okay.

(36:34):
Now I know I'm looking for
I should be sensing this instead of this.
Yeah. It could be a clear bottle sensor,
the clear bottle detector
that the bottles change colors. So it's has
a different setting, or it could be background
suppression depending on the color of the product.
You need a different setting or a color
sensor. Maybe you're making different products and the
different colors, and so, you know, all this

(36:54):
is now configurable
through your PLC, through your control system, through
your HMI, which I just think is so
cool. Yeah. It's it's it's super cool.
Alright. Let's get a little bit technical here.
I think for some of the engineers, that
might be nice. The IO Link signal
and 24 volt power supply,
like like we talked about before, it's it's
an m 12 connector. So you've got five

(37:15):
pins.
Your pin one is your high, pin three
is your low, and then pin four is
your CQ line. That's that's where the IO
Link digital
signal lives.
It's serial. It's bidirectional. It's point to point.
And then we also have on that same
pin four, if you so desired, you could
also
parameterize your device via IO Link, set it

(37:36):
all up, and then put it in what's
known as a CO mode or simple IO
mode. And I'll show that on the next
slide too if maybe you've just got a
digital IO,
that you want
a fast switching interface.
So pins
one and three are our power. Pins two
and five are freely assignable.
So for example, if you wanted to use
that pin four for your IO Link signal

(37:57):
and then separately have your own
DI or DQ line, you could do that
using a three wire, four wire, five wire
cable. And then what's cool also in IO
Link and we're starting to see this more
and more
is we call this port class b, same
m 12 connector, same five pins,
but pins two and five provide a separate
power supply

(38:18):
for additional power because
and this is cool. We're starting to see
more and more IO link just, like, simple
actuators
Mhmm. On the market.
And that's really neat. So let's say you've
got some simple linear actuator, not not a
complex, you know, driver, you know, or motor
or something like that, but a a simple
linear actuator.
You can drive that via IO Link if

(38:38):
you just gotta move something really, you know,
maybe maybe even within connected to the same
ports,
on the master as some other sensors, and
so you can do that logic in the
master itself, you know, simple simple stuff like
that.
But that's also possible with IO Link where
you can drive it,
not just sense it, but also
actuate it with with IO Link. So that's
that's some cool stuff that's coming down the

(38:58):
line.
You know, and I found that all the
IO Link devices I had here, they came
with the SIO mode already set up. So
I was able to use the photo eyes
and the proxies and all the other devices
just as simple
IO devices and without even touching the IO
Link side of it, which I think is
cool because, you know, in in many cases,
you just need a photo eye to get

(39:20):
up and running. Right? Yeah. And that's and
that's how they come out of the box.
So out of the box, it's in that
CO mode.
And I think you you kinda touched on
this before. Maybe many customers have IO Link
devices Yeah. On their machine. They don't even
know it Mhmm. Because they took it out
of the box. They needed that photo. They
plugged it in and away they went.
But there's also that all all that extra
stuff. If they wanted to, they could get
down into the IO Link part of it.

(39:41):
Mhmm. Maybe to reparameterize it, or what if
you got to
change,
you still wanna use the CO mode. You
just want that digital input. What if you
wanna change the switching distance, for example, something
like that?
I don't want it to switch at one
meter. I want it to switch at two
meters or whatever.
So all that all that can be configured
via IO Link.

(40:01):
So on the if we if we talk
about the the IO Link communication itself,
there are three transmission speeds, comms one, two,
and three.
Comm one is
4.8 kilobits per second. COM two is 38.4
kilobits per second, and COM three
is 230.4
kilobits per second.

(40:21):
IO Link masters support all three
comm modes,
but devices are free to choose based on
what they're sending. If it's temperature, maybe you
don't need COM three because that's changing more
slowly
than something like like like we're talking about
a proximity sensor, which may want to send
that a little bit more quickly and uses
that that COM three mode. Many, many devices

(40:42):
use COM three mode because still two hundred
two hundred thirty kilobits per second, that's, you
know, that's not gonna that's not gonna kill
you. And then a typical cycle time,
because this is the question we get all
the time, is what kind of cycle time
can be achieved? It's about a millisecond at
at com three. So if you're, you know,
trying to go submillisecond,
you know, maybe IO Link is not is

(41:02):
not the solution at that point.
But for many, many applications, that one millisecond
cycle time
can
can, can accomplish whatever they need to. And
then what's cool is that from the EyeLink
master's perspective,
it'll have eight or 16
sensors connected to it. Each device can be
set independently. So on this port this device,

(41:22):
I'm talking at this comm rate and this
cycle time.
This other port number two, I'm speaking at
a different
transmission speed and a different cycle time and
so on and so forth,
you know, so that you're not sending data
unnecessarily
that is simply just
being sent for the purposes of being sent.
And that's and that's pretty cool.

(41:43):
And a lot of times, you don't because
you're not reading a digital on off,
you don't the speed, you're you're actually getting
a value, and that value
a lot of times your PLC
is not gonna be running faster than a
millisecond scan time.
So if you're getting your value updated,
you know, faster than the PLC,

(42:04):
then that's a then then that's really what
you need. Do you know how fast is
your PLC running?
How fast can your program controller use that
value?
And, you know, I'd be hard pressed to
see a lot of applications where they're breaking
that one millisecond update rate. The other thing
too is just because we're talking at the
speed doesn't mean the actual calculation
is even possible in a millisecond.

(42:25):
So, you know, temperature changes, things that that
sensors there's limit limitations to the physical world.
You know? And, you know, I I don't
know if anybody's ever said this to you
before, Michael, but when I first saw the
whole comm thing, I thought that was confusing
because having grown up with PCs,
I always thought of comp one, comp two,
comp one group. Right? And these are really
just bought what I would call from the

(42:47):
old days, sewer rates. Right? Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
Insight why why they is it just maybe
because it was the standard started overseas or
any idea why they went with CALM?
I'm not gonna lie to you. That's the
first time I've gotten that question. Really? Okay.
Why they're called that yeah.
Let's just let's just rewrite this. They call
it BOD one, BOD two, BOD three. I

(43:07):
know. It's just so weird. But, anyways,
sorry sorry, audience. I just have That's a
good one. That's a good one. Nope. I'll
take that one back.
Alright. So IO Link data comes in a
couple different flavors.
You have your process data. That's your bread
and butter, what you're using to run the
run the factory.
Transmitted cyclically
in a Telegram,

(43:29):
the
the data size is defined by the device,
and it can be up to 32
bytes
for each device, both input and output.
Along with that comes a value
bit indicating whether the process data is valid
or invalid, and this can be transmitted
is transmitted cyclically with the the process data.

(43:50):
And then you have things that happen acyclically.
These would be device data like parameters,
identification data, diagnostic information,
and these happen on request of the IO
Link master. Obviously, a lot of that happens
during startup,
but also can happen during runtime
if, as shown here on the slide with

(44:11):
the with the last case, events
can be error messages. So the
the, the device will set a flag.
Hey.
There's a short circuit or so, and then
the the master can pull
that device for more information, more diagnostic information,
based on that event flag that's that's set

(44:32):
by the set by the device.
And so,
the the question we always get
at this point is, how do I make
this all work? How do I
integrate this stuff into my into my plant?
Before we go any further, I did wanna
jump back and tell you about a service
I'm doing that I don't think I've talked
about very much,
and it's comes in two different flavors. First

(44:54):
of all, I've actually had some vendors and
companies reach out to me and say, Sean,
I know you don't wanna travel all around
the country with all your equipment. Right? That's
not what you do, but we want you
to come out and teach us something. Would
you come out and do a lecture? We'll
set up our own equipment.
And, can you come out and just run
us through some of the products and teach
us some of your knowledge, and you don't
have to worry about bringing all the equipment

(45:14):
with you. And so that's something I really
don't talk about much, but I do wanna
tell you that if you're looking for training
and you need it on-site, of course, you
do have to pay for my travel time.
But if you do want me to come
out for a day or two days or
for a week and do training
on any of the products I train online
now. Now if you want me to come
out and do training on a product I
don't already have a curriculum on, I can't
do it. The building the curriculum is where

(45:36):
all of my costs is on the training.
Right? I shouldn't say that. The web service
in in in the back end does cost
something every month as well, but most of
the time it goes into and that's really
what being self employed is it's time. Right?
Most of the time goes into build building
the curriculum. So if you have a need
for somebody like Sean, we can't do a
webinar. We can't do a Teams meeting. We

(45:57):
we can't do online training. We want you
to come out. And, again, I just got
a call on this yesterday.
Yes. I can do that. As long as
the curriculum I'm gonna teach you is something
I already have existing.
And, I'm not gonna hand out lab books.
We can buy you lab books if you
want. People sell great lab books for $80.90
dollars a pop. If you want lab books,
I'd be more than happy to include that
in the quote. But in any case, I

(46:18):
that's one thing I do. The other thing
I've been doing with vendors is they've hired
me to come out and interview them at
their trade show. So, usually, what happens is
somebody will sponsor a podcast for $5.99.
They'll come on. We'll do the interview. I'll
edit it all up. I'll put their links
in. We'll talk about the thumbnail, and then
we'll release it ad free. Right? And so
that covers my cost of producing that episode

(46:40):
roughly. Right? We just raised it from $4.99
to $5.99 because most of the shows were
were actually upside down on, so we need
to raise it a little bit to make
sure we're covering our cost. But in any
case, sometimes vendors have, you know, they have
their own trade show, and they may have
all of their product specialists there. And they're
like, hey, Sean. We would like to do
six or seven interviews at the trade show.

(47:00):
Would you come out and actually record them
there? We'll pay your flight. We'll pay your
hotel and your expenses to get there and
back. And so that's another thing I haven't
talked about much that I'm doing. I'm working
with some, you know, top five vendors to
do that, and I've done it in the
past. And so I did wanna explain it
to you if you're a vendor listening or
if you are,
talking to your vendor, like, you should have
Sean come out and interview all your people.

(47:21):
You have them all in one place. Let
them know that they can contact me about
doing that. Again, you can contact me at
theautomationblog.com,
LinkedIn, YouTube,
theautomationschool.com,
pretty much any way you want. You can
write me snail mail if you want.
But in any case, I do wanna share
that, and we also have in person training.
I think I've talked to you guys about
this quite a bit. We do custom in
person training for as little as two people,

(47:43):
$900 a day up to four people. And
so if you wanna get some people in
here, we can actually do Allen Bradley and
Siemens in two days back to back. One
day Allen Bradley, one day Siemens. So if
you wanna learn two PLCs
in two days back to back now I
do have somebody ask me, hey, Sean. Where's
your schedule of upcoming courses? And back in
my previous life of twenty five years, we
were always trying to sign people up and

(48:03):
then canceling,
you know, events and classes
because, we wouldn't get enough people to meet
the vendors minimum. So I don't wanna do
that. So I don't have actually any dates
now. I have been talking with doing a
intensive POC boot camp,
but, you know, I just got so much
things going on in my life right now
that I don't think I could pull that
together this fall. But in any case,

(48:24):
if you need some training, you wanna send
your people here, we can even start at,
like, noontime and then end the final day
at noontime so you can get your flights
and travel and all that. We're one hour
away from Albany, New York, and that's a
great little airport to fly in and out
of. Actually, I'm flying out of it in
November. They'll go to a trade show,
to interview vendors, vendors, product people. But in
any case, I just wanna break in. There's

(48:44):
something about my company. I don't think I
ever talked to you guys about much, and
so I just wanted to insert it here
since I'm sponsoring this episode and eating the
cost to produce it. I wanted to share
that with you. And now,
I won't be back until the end of
the show, so please enjoy the rest of
this episode. Send any feedback you have to
me, and, we'll talk to you at the
end of the show.
And it kinda works like this. So you

(49:05):
have your
IO Link
device, which has an IODD file, which we
mentioned earlier, that gets ingested by a parameterization
tool. The parameterization tool
comes with the IO Link master. Could be
a separate piece of software.
In some cases,
could be a web page
built into the IO Link master itself. Depends

(49:27):
on depends on the vendor.
But then what happens after that, how that
data goes from the IO Link master to
the controller,
the PLC,
is
fieldbus specific. So you have your own,
fieldbus
file, you know, GSD or EDS or ESI,
whatever the case may be, which is ingested

(49:47):
by the engineering tool of the of the
PLC and kind of outside way outside the
scope of of of IO Link.
And so the EDS file, the GSD file,
and and that is the that data then
gets sent via fieldbus, and that's the sum
of all the IO Link device data from
all the ports on the IO Link
master,

(50:08):
where that IO Link communication
as
as defined by the IODD file,
configures the port for the master and for
the devices. And so an IODD file
is provided by the devices, and every device
manufacturer must provide an IODD for their device.
It can be downloaded from the IODD

(50:29):
finder, which is a website,
and, it it describes
what the entire device does. It describes the
process data length, the process data structure,
the parameter the name of the parameters, what
range to expect, the data types, the addresses
of the parameters in the in the in
the indexes and subindexes.
It can talk about GUI information,

(50:51):
pages on which a parameter shall be displayed,
names of parameter pages, all this kind of
stuff is in an IODD file. It's a
it's a zip file
where you have that IODD
as an XML. So that's how we format
the file. So it's it's both and this
is the key part, both machine readable and
and human readable. It's got a little picture
of the device, picture of the manufacturer logo.

(51:13):
And with your permission,
maybe I can show the IODD finder. It's,
ioddfinder.io-link.com.
Mhmm.
Looks simple enough. Let's say we wanna look
at a I'm gonna type in something here.
Max ref.
Let's pick this. So this is just a
this is a reference design,

(51:34):
not an actual product that that, an end
user would employ in their in their factory,
but
a reference design of something that maybe a
device manufacturer would use.
And it's shows the manufacturer name, the article
name number, the product name, the device ID.
All that stuff
is ingested by the parameterization tool, which then
uses that information to go up to this

(51:54):
IODD finder
and grab the IODD
file shown here, which can be downloaded if
you wanted to look at it yourself. But
in the past few years, we implemented what's
called an IODD
viewer, which is pretty cool,
which takes that nice XML file and parses
it.
So in human readable form,
if you wanted to compare

(52:15):
quickly, hey. I'm an end user. I wanna
compare
the IODD file from device vendor a to
device vendor b to kinda see what kind
of features they have. You could do that
all very easily,
and that's shown here in the IODD viewer.
What's really what's really neat about
this IODD finder
is that it has two ways it it

(52:37):
it gets accessed.
That's this website that I just showed here.
So as in humans are are accessing it,
but it's also
accessible via API.
And we we track the the traffic to
the Audi divider,
and the vast, vast majority of the traffic
comes via API. So these are
IO Link masters that

(52:59):
just had a device connected to them.
Parameter is I'm sorry. Parameterization tool that has
a you know, or connected to the IO
Link master that had device connected them. They
go up to the AudiD finder, and they
pull down that IODD file for the device
that was just connected so that now they
they can be,
configured.
And that's really, really cool stuff. So all
these IODD files are in one spot, in

(53:19):
one database
up there for for viewing or via the
IODD viewer or for access
from any number of IO Link tools out
there.
So when we're talking about API access, we're
talking about the tool we're using to configure
the master. So it could be a web
page built into the master, or it could
be a separate software program. Do I have

(53:41):
that correct? Yeah. Right. So the parameterization tool,
yeah, is usually is usually a software
package that'll run on your computer
connecting to your,
IO Link master that parameterizes
the IO Link master. Yeah. Excellent. Or through
the network somehow. Maybe through the network. Yeah.
Goes out and grabs that
IODD file from the IODD finder to,

(54:03):
you know, to parameterize that port in that
device.
Which is excellent because in previous
iterations of smart networks and smart devices,
you always have to go searching a vendor's
website, and then people would get the wrong
file, and then I would be in the
field saying this is never gonna work because
you get the wrong device file. If they

(54:24):
can't give you the right device file, you'll
never get it to work. You know? And
so this is much better having the organization
have everybody require everybody who has IO Link
to put their
IODD files in the one place so everybody
can always find it. And so the software
tools can find it automatically for you, which
is just a huge a huge change

(54:44):
versus what we went through in the nineties.
Exactly. We came on a CD or something
or what I mean, God only knows.
I'm gonna switch gears a little bit here,
talk about two topics subtopics within the IO
Link domain, and one of them is IO
Link wireless.
This is,
what we call is bridging the gap.

(55:06):
So it's an IEC standard, six eleven thirty
nine as of November
2023,
and it's
enabling connections that
simply weren't
possible
before
for IO Link.
And in an example here, we're showing a
a smart machine tool
where the IO Link sensor is integrated into

(55:28):
the chuck of the lathe.
Now that guy is spinning at 6,000 RPMs.
That connection
simply couldn't be possible couldn't be done any
other way
than with IO Link wireless or, let's say,
independent movers. So you've seen these moving systems
where you've got the either floating or on

(55:48):
a on a rail the other track systems
exactly. If you integrate the smarts of IO
Link onto the movers themselves instead of using,
SCARA or Delta robots to do the to
I mean, that's you're saving huge amounts of
cost Mhmm. That way if the if those
guys can move on their own, and they
use IO Link wireless to do that.
Slip rings where certainly sending power,

(56:09):
is is well known, but sometimes
communication can be tricky via slip ring. Mhmm.
Yeah. End of arm tooling, like robot robot
end of arms where you have a you're
gonna change the tool at the end of
the arm.
It's more lightweight,
saving on on
robot cost that way. Less fewer
lighter robots can be used,

(56:32):
but it's it's, it's cool. It the architecture
looks pretty much the same,
where you have
your field level, your IO,
and instead of wired connections, it's it's simply
a wireless connection.
Is that wired? It's it's wireless. And and
what's different about IO Link Wireless is that
it was built for industry. So I think
in the past, people have been burned by

(56:53):
wireless technologies that made some promises that didn't
maybe
you know, they they couldn't meet the the
the the the rigorous environment and and requirements
of
of industry, but that was different. It was
built for industry from the start. So it
uses the two point two point four gig
license free ISM band.
And what we do is a
is this frequency hopping

(57:15):
so that
we use the same IO link,
you know, data structure.
We do this frequency hopping, and it's it's
a cycle of five milliseconds. So you're not
going to get that one millisecond time that
you get via wired IO link. We do
a five millisecond
cycle time, and then it's using this frequency
hopping method. It's basically

(57:35):
cable grade,
connection,
10 to the minus nine error probability.
You can have hundreds of wireless devices in
a machine, and it's deterministic. It's designed it
is designed from the outside for both for
control, of course, but, of course, also for
for monitoring and maybe, like, a brownfield. You
wanna
you can't
get IO Link to a sensor or something

(57:57):
that you can maybe use IO Link wireless
to get access to some some hard to
reach sensor.
Well, you know, I thought that I think
this is so interesting. We actually had a
company on, I think, a year or two
ago, who does IO Link wireless, and that
was the first time I had heard of
it.
And he said, yeah. Hundreds of devices. Right?

(58:18):
It's pretty amazing,
especially if you have a lot of a
lot of things, the smart devices
that need to be, you know, free from
the network, need to be wireless. Maybe, you
know, the slip ring communications has been a
problem for years and years.
This because this is frequency hopping, it eliminates
a lot of the,
problems with,

(58:39):
you know, interference. Right? Yeah. Right. Exactly.
And and,
you know, it's just and I I highly
recommend people look into this if you're if
you're challenged. You can't run a wire to
every sent every sensor or every device.
This is definitely some very interesting technology.
And just like with,
so we we I I didn't mention it

(59:00):
explicitly, but when we're talking about IO Link
wiring, there's a 20 meter limit
Mhmm. For wired IO Link.
And we, you know, we talk about the
same thing for IO Link wireless that you're
not gonna be going
hundreds of meters wireless,
via via via IO Link wireless. So we
we stick to that 20 meter limit for

(59:20):
IO Link wireless as well.
Great for a cell. Great for a robot.
Great for a robot tools. Right?
But, yeah, this is not gonna replace your
Wi Fi or your LTE or anything like
that. Yeah. If you're or if you're in
a, you know, a tank farm or something,
you're not going long distances
Mhmm. Across across a a plant like that.
Alright. In the last couple minutes,

(59:43):
one more thing I wanna talk about. This
is pretty new.
That's you're not gonna find devices out or
at least many devices out on the network
like this,
but this is functional safety
for IO Link.
So IO Link safety is really clever name.
IO Link safety because today,
you've got if you wanna do functional safety,

(01:00:04):
you've got your FSCPs
or your functional safety communication
protocols like FSOE or SIP safety or PROFIsafe,
whatever the case may be. Mhmm.
You connect it out to your remote IO,
but every single
device needs a different interface. If it's a
relay, it needs a maybe a DO. If
it's a
estop, it needs a DI. If it's a

(01:00:24):
analog signal, it needs its own functional safe,
analog input.
With IO Link safety, we can get rid
of all those separate interfaces. Just use IO
Link for that, for any kind of safety
measure functional safety measuring sensor, functional safety switching
device. Maybe if the drive has a safe
input on it that it that it that
it could use, all that can be done

(01:00:46):
with a functionally safe IO Link master and
IO Link
safety. And, it's
it's the same concept as as IO Link
where we're transmitting
this data via IO Link, but we transmit
both safety and standard data from a device.
You can migrate,
IO Link safety and OSSD, so output switching

(01:01:06):
signal devices
can be
done in the same product.
The masters also offer generic IO Link standard
operation.
They also they offer the OSSD mode. And
it's cool because you don't need any switches
for safety addressing.
The the watch log time is set automatically.
You can exchange devices without a specific tool

(01:01:26):
just like with regular IO Link, and then
it's just that regular IO Link connection of
20 meters, flexible, no shielding,
inexpensive.
And this is this is pretty new stuff.
We just just and I'm talking, like, this
month,
got the the TUV, the TUV certification for
IO Link safety.
So we're we're expecting this to ramp up
quickly over the next couple of years again

(01:01:48):
for the same reason that IO Link,
grew so so fast, and that's the no
comp no competitor, and, you know, you're saving
on a lot a lot of costs by
by using it. Does it simplify the wiring?
Because in your photo
on the screen, you show the safety sensor
with the two, let's say, two,
relays. Right?
Mhmm. And, you have to acquire both of

(01:02:09):
those up to the to the input, the
safety input. Right? Functional safety digital in.
With IO Link safety, are we running just
one cable?
Just one cable. Yeah. It's the same same
IO Link cable. Exactly. Yeah.
So just like with, let's say, SIP safety
or a PROFIsafe,
where you're still just running one Ethernet cable.

(01:02:30):
Mhmm. Here, we're just running one IO link
cable. So you're you are simplifying installation, I
think.
Yeah. And it's and and it uses some
of the similar concepts, mainly that that whole,
black channel principle,
that we know from all that all the
that all the functionally safe,
protocols use that,
what you care about is making sure

(01:02:51):
that that signal gets from one end to
the other. Now it's a whole heck of
a lot easier
with IO Link because IO Link is
point to point,
not going over a network.
So,
that that becomes a whole heck of a
lot easier, but it's yeah. That's great. I
mean, it's just one one wire. You you
don't have to okay. Did I plug it
in?
You know? Is it normally open, normally closed?

(01:03:12):
Do you have both? Do you have three
of them? It's just that one IO Link
connection.
Alright. I think I'll wrap it up quickly
here.
So a lot of this focused on end
users, people installing
IO Link in their machines or in their
in their factories.
But for the if any listeners are
sensor manufacturers, device manufacturers, there are really two

(01:03:34):
main ways to get an IO Link device
certificate.
There's, the membership route, and then there's a
license model for those that may, for whatever
reason, choose not to become a member.
And,
with the license model, you I'll start on
the right hand side to work backwards. You
implement IO Link,
request the test in an IO Link test
center, then you get your IO Link vendor

(01:03:56):
ID from PI, and then you get your
product tested at the test center. And then
every device has a manufacturer
declaration.
And when I mentioned the IODD finder before,
when when a device manufacturer uploads that IODD
file to the IODD finder, they also at
least in the last couple of years, we've
we've we've asked and required them to do
that. They also upload the manufacturer declaration. So

(01:04:16):
end users can see,
hey. The manufacturer has tested this device, certified,
and, and they can rest assured that it's
it's gonna work as specified per per the
IO Link specs and standards.
And then in the in the license model,
you gotta purchase a license per device and
acquire patent rights.
Just about nobody goes this route,
but it was

(01:04:37):
initiated for
political reasons. Some
companies
or company,
didn't wanna join PI,
but
just about nobody,
does that. And most go the membership model
route where you join, get your IO Link
vendor ID,
implement IO Link, and then we allow members
to self test using any number of testers
that are out on the market.

(01:04:57):
And then you can sign the manufacturer declaration
yourself, which is basically self certification.
If you wanna learn more, these slides were
taken
from
a slide deck that's presented
couple times throughout the year at an IO
Link one day workshop. And this is a
this is a a very special
Sean Tierney,

(01:05:21):
resource.
We don't,
you know, display this everywhere. But if anybody
wants to get access to this stuff, they
can go to, io-link.us/2020five.
It'll ask for a little password. The password
is twenty twenty five, and you can download
the the training class manual,
the so, the full slide deck that is

(01:05:41):
that is performed
and and really demonstrated at these
IO Link workshops. So like I said, we
do four of these throughout the year. We
did two already, one in Seattle, one in
Philly, Philadelphia, and then we've got two coming
up in October, one in Vancouver, British Columbia,
and one in Richmond, Virginia. So if anybody's
listening and and in those areas,
it's a free class.

(01:06:03):
You get lunch. You get
a day of learning all about IO Link.
We do a lot a lot of demonstrations.
We get down into the the bits and
bytes a little bit. And then what's cool
is at these events, a bunch of vendors,
maybe a dozen or so show up with
products.
So if you wanna walk the room, it's
kinda like a little bit of a micro
fair,
and they support the event, which is how

(01:06:24):
end users are able to come and get
a free class and get a free lunch.
So go to iolink.us/events.
And if you're in in those areas, we
welcome you to to join us at at
one of these classes.
And that's my that's my plug. Yeah. Yeah.
And I I just wanna focus in on
this for those who are driving. So Vancouver,
British Columbia,

(01:06:45):
October 1.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Richmond,
Virginia.
Right? East Coast people.
October 28 in i0-link.us/events.
So just wanted to say that again because
sometimes they're driving, they're like, well, I didn't
hear it or you know? So, hey. Look.
If you're on the East Coast with me
and you're near Richmond,

(01:07:06):
October 28, sign up early. Don't sign up
often. Just sign up once. But but, you
know, if you have friends you wanna meet
there, you don't have them do that. And,
it's great that the vendors come and make
the events possible.
Yeah. And it's it's nice just to get
that one out. So many so many of
us are so busy. It's nice to get
that one on one with the vendors. I've
actually been with the vendors at these shows,
and it's the the audience that it's attendees

(01:07:29):
usually have some awesome questions. And a lot
of times, they ask you about things
not even related to it, but, you know,
they just see you, so they wanna talk
to you. So definitely wanna shout out to
all the vendors who are gonna be there
as well. Yeah. It's it's it's it's a
great I mean, it's learning.
It's it's product if you want it to
be, but the content like this, is it's
not salesy at all. I mean, it is

(01:07:50):
a it's an it is an educational event.
But if you do wanna talk to the
vendors, then that's that's great. They're there to
help you out. Because at the end of
the day, you can't you can't buy an
IO link. Right? I mean, it it's just
a standard. It's just a what you can
buy are the products that use it. And
so that's why, we work together with the
vendors to to do to put these events
on.
Yeah. It's awesome. Yeah. And they're and they're

(01:08:12):
I mean, it's it's really impressive
that they're willing to get in a room
with, really, their competitors
and and do this and put this together.
The last one I wanna mention is profuse
news, but we talked about that at the
beginning. This is that monthly
newsletter that we that we send out to
130,000
of our closest friends,
and maybe you're
receiving PROFINews. If not, you can go to

(01:08:33):
the website. It's simply profinews.com
and, subscribe to PROFINews,
where those new products, particularly IO Link products
are mentioned and and,
and highlighted.
Yeah. One thing I like about this is,
you know, if you get too much email
like me from sources you don't want it
from,
You know, it's nice that you can go
to the website and pull it down when

(01:08:55):
you wanna see it. Right? So so maybe
it's you've been a couple months. You wanna
see what's new on IO Link. You can
go up there. Their website is excellent.
You can go and look at all the
articles, all the different, new products that have
come out. And you don't have to if
you you know, I know a lot of
people like the newsletter subscriptions. I'm one of
those,
Gen x's who don't, and and it'll at

(01:09:15):
least you know, I want, like like, I
wanna hear from Michael. I wanna hear from
Tom. I wanna hear from students like Daniel
I was emailing yesterday. You know, I'd
I'd every vendor, there's, you know, hundreds we
follow. If I had a newsletter from each
of those, it would my inbox would be
full. So but in any case, it's excellent,
guys. It's it's no fluff. It's really.

(01:09:35):
And and I've discovered new vendors from just
following that list. You know? These people I
didn't didn't know from my past. And, in
any case, highly recommend you guys all check
it out at least once or twice a
year if you don't want the email.
I appreciate that. Yeah. And, like and and
like I said and and right there at
the top, there's a button that says product
news. Click that, and then there'll be
every month's worth of new products section article

(01:09:57):
that we published for our newsletter.
There's some great articles up there too. So,
thank you very much for publishing them, and
keep up the great work on those. I
know we enjoyed them during the couple years
I was doing the news. We would, go
up there on a regular basis.
We're gonna send out issue number 251,
next week. Oh, wow. So every month, that's,

(01:10:19):
you know, do the math. Twenty years worth
of
crazy. Crazy. Job. Good job. Keep it up.
That's all I got. Once again, thanks thanks
for having me, Sean.
Michael, I really appreciate you coming on, and
that was a great update. And thank you
for including some real technical details in there.

(01:10:39):
We will be,
using the opportunity of having this
episode
to
go ahead and,
cover more IO Link products.
So,
we have had a number of vendors send
us products, but with non sponsored products.
So it's it's hard to find time to
use things when when,

(01:11:01):
know, everybody says, well, play with it in
your free time. I think we've all heard
that. And, but in any case so we
have new lessons coming. We have new videos
coming. We have new demos coming. So stay
tuned, folks. But, again, Michael, thank you so
much for coming back on the automation podcast.
Let's not wait four years. Let's say you're
back on in a few months to talk
about MTP

(01:11:21):
and, because I think that'd be cool and
then maybe Noah later on. Yeah. But thanks
again for coming on the show. Really appreciate
it. Oh, my pleasure. My pleasure. Well, I
hope you enjoy this episode, and I wanna
thank Michael for coming on the show and
bringing us up to speed on IO Link.
We hope to get Michael back on in
the coming months to talk about MTP
and Noah,
and some of the other things that they've

(01:11:42):
added to their portfolio since we had them
on four years ago. But with that said,
I also wanna thank all the members out
there who've joined my membership program. I look
forward to today where we can grow that
above the two to 3% mark and actually
start doing content dedicated
for,
what the members are asking for. Right? So
you guys can ask, hey. Cover this, cover
that, and we can actually afford to do

(01:12:03):
that. So thank you all the members out
there. I know you just love to support
the channel, and, you know, you really are
very busy like most of us are. So,
in any case, I just wanted to take
a minute to thank you. And I also
wanna thank all my students over at the
Automation School. Did you know I've added a
bunch of new, lessons lately? So especially to
the POC classes. So in any case and
I got a bunch more planned this fall

(01:12:25):
and a lot planned on IO Link. So
you're gonna see a lot of content from
me at IO Link, both on the lunchtime
show that I've been doing,
as well as in some upcoming episodes of
the automation show and the automation minute. So,
it's something I've wanted to do for a
long time, and the stars are just aligned.
So, we'll be covering IO Link a lot
both on the blog, on the channel, and

(01:12:45):
over at the automation school as well. And
with that, that's all I got to say.
Thank you very much for making it to
the end of the show. I wanna wish
you all good health and happiness. And until
next time, my friends,
peace.

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