With the current products of the Q.series XE and the EtherCAT slave interface from Gantner Instruments, AMC, as a sales and system integrator, offers another possibility to integrate the measurement data from test and inspection systems into all industry-standard EtherCAT masters such as TwinCat, Koenig KPA and Acontis .
EtherCAT & areas of application
EtherCAT was developed with industrial automation in mind. Therefore, finding EtherCAT-enabled, high-precision data acquisition devices that cover a wide range of sensors can be a challenge. Modern manufacturers of data acquisition systems such as Gantner Instruments offer a wide range of measurement modules with a direct EtherCAT interface. There is no limit to the type of sensors you can use in an EtherCAT-based data acquisition system: thermocouple, Pt100, LVDT, strain gauges, IEPE/ICP©, piezoelectric charge, high voltage measurement up to 1200 VDC and even fiber Bragg grating sensors.
Two flexible system structures are available for using the Q.Series X. On the one hand the Q.station XT EC controller with the EtherCAT interface and on the other hand the Q.Series XE BC bus coupler.
Variant 1: Q.station XT EC controller with the I/O modules of the Q.Series X
With the help of the powerful edge controller of the Q.station X series for data acquisition, storage and data transmission, precise synchronization of measurement data, redundant high-speed data acquisition and parallel communication via TCP/IP and EtherCAT to higher-level applications, controls and services can be implemented. This system is designed for demanding measurements in industrial and experimental testing and inspection technology and for high-performance monitoring of long-term measurements. Using the modern data acquisition software environment GI.bench, the systems for data acquisition, data transmission and data storage can be set up and visualized.
Q.station XT EC
- Very high data rate up to 100 kHz per channel:
16 channels (4 channels per UART) at 100 kHz, 128 channels at 10 kHz - 64 modules can be connected
- Ethernet interface for configuration and data output:
1Gig-E, TCP/IP, UDP, up to 16MB/s Modbus TCP/IP, ASCII, High Speed Port Web Server, Web Client and email - Synchronization and time stamp of the measured values:
IRIG 2 based master-slave principle applicable to RS 485 standard system synchronization ±1 µs - data memory dyn. 500 MB, stat. 4GByte:
expandable via USB (up to 1,000,000 measurements/s) and SD card - 6 digital inputs:
encoder input for fast angle-synchronous measurement, frequency and PWM measurement, counter, status signals - PAC functionality with extensive library:
fast PID controller, sequence control, data logger, transfer function. math, bool links, function generators
Variant 2: Q.bloxx XE BC bus coupler with the I/O modules of the Q.Series X
With the I/O modules of the Q.Series X, all the usual analog and digital inputs and outputs are available that are connected to the bus coupler . Electrically, the DAQ-I/O modules in the XE variant use the LVDS interface, which is implemented by the bus coupler and with which up to ten of the modules can be addressed. The bus coupler has a USB interface that is used to configure the system using the ICP-100 software.
Q.bloxx XE BC
- Bus coupler for connecting the Q.bloxx EC modules: Conversion of the LVDS (Low Voltage Differential Signal) defined by EtherCAT to standard Ethernet
- Connection of up to 10 measurement and I/O modules: Supply and bus coupling of up to 10 modules (up to 80 measurement channels) via the rear industrial connectors
- EtherCAT IN/OUT 2x RJ45 socket
- USB interface for configuration:
- Micro-USB for configuring the Q.bloxx EC measurement and I/O modules using the ICP-100 configuration software
- Supply of the modules 10 VDC to 30 VDC
- M12 connector for the supply of the bus coupler and the max. 10 connected measurement and I/O modules