xAP Industrial automation

[robin walters]

Hello,
I would like some information on hardware options using xAP in an industrial automation project. The installation is an agricultural grain dryer and associated conveyors/ gates etc. with approx 70 inputs and 40 outputs. We have completed trials on 'netion' cards with 8 x output relays but ideally need something a bit more 'industrial' with terminals and maybe din rail mounted.
Does anyone know if any of the Mitsubishi PLC range are compatable with xAP??
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

[Kevin]

Hi there,

I'm not aware of any xAP code for Mitsibushi PLC's and really not any heavy duty DIN embedded xAP relay type devices with anything approaching that volume of I/O either. If you have experience with these PLC's then coding a simple xAP BSC schema implementation may be very do-able - especially if you miss out the wildcarding support.

The Netioms have 16 outputs so you could take the outputs into some commercial DIN mount relays - or indeed use the Weiland or Phoenix Connector style individual stackable DIN modules which offer very high density.

The DIN mount Barix Barionet also has firmware for embedded xAP - and you can attach ModBus and other extra I/O to the base processor to expand the I/O.

http://www.Barix.com

There are also some 'IHC' modules which I believe are made by a Danish company called Lauritz Knudsen , possibly associated with Schneider . These controllers have appeared under many OEM brands including SquareD in the UK and usually all are called IHC. Again it's DIN based module system and there are assorted input and relay output modules connected via RS485. There is a 'provisional' xAP gateway for IHC but it relies on a reverse engineering of the RS485 protocol which seems dependable but may not truly meet your quality assurance needs for your project.

There is a standalone 1-wire xAP embedded interface and also a ModBus embedded xAP gateway due pretty soon.

Are there budget issues here because C-Bus could offer an (embedded) solution and a few others too... I'm assuming this must be a PC less ie embedded solution.

K

edit .. One thing I must stress is that xAP is a broadcast UDP protocol and so the delivery of the command to the device is not confirmed. It is very very unlikley a message would be dropped but it's not impossible. Using BSC you can always tell if a command was received and actioned by the confirmation 'xapbsc.event' message returned , so your controller can confirm and adapt accordingly should the expected behaviour not be adhered to. But if you have safety critical requirements here you should consider if UDP meets those needs.