Aventics introduces Smart Pneumatics Monitor for valve electronics

September 30, 2016 - With a new extension module for AES valve electronics, Aventics now incorporates pneumatics into industrial environments for the Internet of Things. The “Smart Pneumatics Monitor” collects the data of serially controlled valve systems and sensors connected via I/O modules. These are then processed locally and made available to ERP and MES systems.

The Aventics electronic module evaluates the data locally and uses it to generate information about the status of the system. Via drag & drop on a graphical interface, users define the components of the pneumatics system they want to evaluate. Once defined limits are reached, the electronics automatically send messages to ERP and MES systems, as well as maintenance technicians or other staff. The Smart Pneumatics Monitor thus supports predictive maintenance concepts and helps to increase system availability.

The limits defined in the software are based on Aventics' many decades of application experience. This provides users with the advantages of predictive maintenance directly without having to define tolerance ranges or limits themselves.

Moreover, the sensor data collected via the I/O modules also enables monitoring and optimization of the pneumatic systems' energy efficiency. The electronics use pre-installed algorithms to process data such as the pressure and flow in the maintenance units. This data can be used to generate and regularly transmit energy reports for the monitored systems.  The Smart Pneumatics Monitor also issues warnings if limits are exceeded or irregularities are detected.

In addition, the Smart Pneumatics Monitor can directly transfer all collected data via standard Ethernet to upstream devices such as PCs or servers. This prevents the machine or system control from an overload of data traffic that would negatively impact its performance. Aventics delivers the module with an integrated OPC UA server, one of the first globally accepted IoT standards for machine-to-machine communication, and supports the widely applied MQTT format. For individual requirements, the Smart Pneumatics Monitor can also be tailored to customer-specific applications.