Today's Automation News Headlines from Automation.com

July, 2011 – Unitronics releases V100-17-PB1 PROFIBUS communication module. nication for the Vision350 and Vision130 series all-in-one controllers. Via an easy to use function block, the enhanced controllers installed with the new communication card can function in a PROFIBUS DP network as slave devices via GSD files. This enables the Unitronics controllers to be integrated into applications that have a PROFIBUS network, under PROFIBUS master devices.

Not only do these enhanced models give users with PROFIBUS networks the compatibility advantage, but all Unitronics controllers contain a built-in, user-friendly operator panel and a wide variety of onboard and expandable input/output options. Unitronics integrated controllers now give engineers and systems integrators the benefit of distributed slave control in a pre-existing PROFIBUS network with a bare minimum of budget, programming time, cabinet space and wiring.

Both series of controllers support many types of analog and digital I/O options, including high-speed I/O, PT100/Thermocouple capabilities, and weight measurement. These can be mounted locally or remotely, up to 1000m from the controller. The Vision350 can support up to 512 I/Os via on board and expansion modules, while the Vision130 model is expandable up to 256 I/O points. The Vision350’s 3.5”, 65K color touchscreen can show over 1000 displays, with 6MB for images and fonts, while the Vision130 model features a graphical screen and keypad. Both units can also display graphs according to historical values- to reflect trends of recorded data. With the new addition of PROFIBUS, other communication options include TCP/IP Ethernet, GSM/SMS, MODBUS and CANopen networking plus remote access for data acquisition and program download. Other core capabilities include a rich range of embedded features such as 24 independent PID loops, internal 120K datatable for datalogging and recipe programming, and SD card.