Allen-bradley Company, LLC

Donald A Westman

Ronald Edwin Schultz

Raymond R Husted

Wayne C Van Sickle

Michael D Yoke

Michael S Pelley

Kathleen B Mathews

In an industrial controller associated with independent I/O modules for exchanging signals between a controlled machine and the controller, a control program executed by the controller is associated with an I/O map identifying functionality of the independent I/O modules. At initialization of the controller, function keys are transmitted to the I/O modules, the latter which confirm that they are capable of the functions expected by the control program. The I/O modules may change their function according to the function keys and may accept functions not identical to those performed by the I/O module if the I/O module performs at greater functionality.

Method for operating inductrial control with control program and I/O map

A programmable controller has a rack that houses and electrically connects a number of I/O modules and a processor module. The processor module includes a external communication network interface, a system memory, a processor section which executes a user-defined control program and a I/O interface that handles the exchange of data with the other modules. The I/O interface has circuitry for pre-processing data from defined input modules, thereby relieving the processing section of certain tasks. The shared memory contains information defining the input module from which to obtain data for pre-processing and the bits of that data to be examined for specified logic level transitions. The stored information also designates the frequency at which the data is to be read from the defined input module and how many occurrences of the specified logic level transitions must take place before the I/O interface signals the processor section that the pre-processing is complete.

Programmable controller processor with an intelligent functional module

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Mentor, OH, United States of America

Donald A Westman