Fieldbus I/O

Supports Industry Standard Fieldbus I/O Systems
Support for DeviceNet, EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT, Profibus, ProfiNet, and CC-Link
Master or Slave Devices Available (see details below)
Fully Integrated into Epson RC+ Development Environment

Fieldbus I/O is used in factories worldwide to reduce cabling costs, setup time, and promote standard device usage. However, there is not 1 accepted Fieldbus I/O standard. Instead there are quite a few different ones. The more commonly used Fieldbus I/O standards are: DeviceNet, Profibus, ProfiNet, EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT, and CC-Link.

Some of the more common reasons factories use fieldbus I/O as opposed to normal discrete I/O solutions are shown below:

Access to signals from multiple devices and multiple data from each device using one cable
Precise signal transmission since there is no need for A/D conversion and D/A conversion.
Less wiring costs, including signal relay board costs and installation area due to several dozen (or a hundred) devices connected on one fieldbus
More flexible modification and expansion of a system because multiple devices are simply added to one Fieldbus without additional wiring

Fieldbus I/O (Slave)

High-speed peripheral connectivity

Support for DeviceNet, PROFIBUS, CC-Link®, Ethernet/IP, EitherCat and PROFINET® networked peripherals (256-point I/O)

Fieldbus I/O (Master)

Bidirectional high-speed peripheral connectivity

Support for DeviceNet®, PROFIBUS®, and Ethernet/IP® networked peripherals (1,024-point I/O)