September 18, 2018 - Parker’s Electromechanical and Drives Division North America announced the release of the Automation Manager 1.4, an update that expands Parker Automation Controller (PAC) features and functionality.
While the PAC is Parker’s machine controls solution that combines PLC, HMI, and motion control functionality into a single device, Parker Automation Manager (PAM) is a single integrated development environment (IDE) used to program it.
Also of note is the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA), a machine-to-machine communication protocol that has seen wide adoption across the automation industry. OPC UA is considered an interoperable protocol that allows machines to exchange data between machine to SCADA, server, or between each other. Its adoption has been so widespread that many Cloud platforms have adopted it as a standard protocol, including Microsoft Azure.
Other features with this PAM 1.4 release include:
- Fully integrated Parker Drive Developer (PDD) package for the AC30 drives in PAM
- Extended PLCOpen4 support
- PAC clock can now be synced to an external clock
- Updates to the latest of Parker Libraries (PKR lib), including the ability to configure P-series and temperature control
