I/O and communication modules

Dear,

Specifications are asking that PLC have I/O and communications modules that can be replaced without the use of PLC programming equipment to configure to a fully working condition.

is this a standard configuration?

thank you!

charbel

It seems to be the trend in newer PLCs these days when using dip-switch or dials to set any unique addressing. I believe all my new systems do this now; simply adjust the module's dip-switches, drop it in where the old one was, and start back up. The configuration is defined in the PLC rather than the module so all it has to do is find the correct address.

Charbel said:

Specifications are asking that PLC have I/O and communications modules that can be replaced without the use of PLC programming equipment to configure to a fully working condition.

is this a standard configuration?

Click to expand...

That is typical of most modern PLC systems. However, you might run into a problem with this if your communications module is superseded by a newer revision in the future and therefore requires configuration changes in order to be compatible with the existing system.

Automation software and hardware vendors nowadays seem to snicker at the outdated concept of backward compatibility. There is far more profit to be made by implementing a planned obsolescence scheme instead.

Steve Etter said:

It seems to be the trend in newer PLCs these days when using dip-switch or dials to set any unique addressing. I believe all my new systems do this now; simply adjust the module's dip-switches, drop it in where the old one was, and start back up. The configuration is defined in the PLC rather than the module so all it has to do is find the correct address.

Click to expand...

I know this is true of Point I/O, but only if you use the 192.168.1.x private network--which is what anybody who uses it should be doing, but in real life it doesn't always happen. In that case you'd need some kind of bootp server to reassign the module after it's powered up.