In the home, the world is moving forward at a pace unseen before. Long gone are serial devices such as modems and parallel interfaces like Centronics. Ethernet and USB came along and these were consigned to history. In most homes, even the PC is under threat from tablets and phones these days. But in the factory environment, we are cautious about moving away from the familiar systems we have and the costs involved in changing to the latest technology can take years to get approved by management. That said, the future is coming and IoT and Industry 4.0 are heading our way with newer technology and better features but also new challenges.
We have fantastic new PLCs available from many sources with PROFINET controllers on them. Unfortunately this doesn’t help the majority of the process industry as there are almost no PROFINET devices for them to use. If you want to use a PROFINET controller and PROFIBUS PA devices then the only option (until now) has been to get a PROFINET to PROFIBUS DP gateway and then another gateway to PA. This is a rather tortuous and expensive way of making it work and unsurprisingly, there hasn’t been a lot of interest in this solution.
So what is the answer?
To address this, Softing have come up with a solution in the form of the “pnGate PA”, which is a clever little box that is both a PROFINET device and a PROFIBUS PA “master”, designed especially for the process industry. This will allow you to upgrade your PLC to one of the new PROFINET breed and still retain access to existing PROFIBUS-PA devices.
What can it do?
The pnGate PA can be a gateway for FDT/PDM activities or it can be a permanent gateway allowing you to use PROFIBUS PA devices with a PROFINET Network.
How does it work?
There is a tool included with the device that loads the GSD files for the PA devices which are then processed to create a GSDML file which is placed into a TIA port so that the PA devices appear as “sub devices” of the pnGate PA gateway.
Why would I want one?
You can replace two devices with one pnGate PA; the PN/DP Gateway and the DP/PA coupler (assuming you have no DP devices of course)
If you would like to try one or buy one in your network, then please get in touch with Hitex where we can help you get on-board with PROFINET.
