Keyence Corporation

Tomoki Hanada

Tomonari Torii

Koji Fukumura

Jiro Baba

Kaname Ishikawa

Provided is a photoelectric sensor capable of enhancing display flexibility of a display section mounted on the photoelectric sensor and making this display flexibility contribute to improvement in user's operability. In a Run mode, a current value is displayed in large-sized numerals on a display section. When switching is made from the Run mode to a setting mode and letter information is to be displayed in the setting mode, a current value is displayed in relatively small-sized numerals at the corner (e.g., lower left) of the display section.

Photoelectric sensor

Provided is an ultrasonic flow switch that can be used by simple setting operation. Input information regarding at least one of the pipe and the fluid is accepted, a flow rate of the fluid in the pipe is calculated, based on an output signal of at least one of the ultrasonic elements, and the accepted input information, and an on/off signal is outputted, based on the calculated flow rate and a flow rate threshold value decided beforehand. In a simple setting mode, only an outer diameter of the pipe, only a thickness of the pipe, or both the outer diameter and the thickness of the pipe is (are) accepted as the input information.

Ultrasonic flow switch

Provided is a photoelectric sensor that detects a workpiece by measuring light transmission time. A photoelectric sensor includes: a light emitting element which repeatedly generates detection light; a light receiving element which receives reflected light of the detection light; a binarization processing section which binarizes a light receiving signal; a waveform detection section which detects waveform data indicating a temporal change of the binarized light receiving signal; a waveform integration section which matches light emitting timing of the light receiving element to integrate two or more pieces of waveform data and generates integrated waveform data; and a workpiece discrimination section which discriminates presence or absence of a workpiece based on the integrated waveform data, whereby the reflected light is sampled at a high speed while a circuit scale is suppressed, to detect the workpiece.

The present invention provides a connected sensor system which can be easily used by the user and which can give an external input to each sensor unit without making the wiring complicated, and also provides a network unit and a sensor unit used for the connected sensor system. A cyclic communication memory of a network unit is arranged with an external input request region, and an external input signal is stored to a corresponding memory in a host control apparatus. By performing cyclic communication between the network unit and the host control apparatus, the external input signal is stored to the cyclic communication memory of the network unit. Accordingly, the external input signal is transmitted to each sensor unit connected to the network unit, and each sensor unit executes the external input function.

Connected sensor system, network unit, and sensor unit

An optical displacement sensor is described that is capable of correctly detecting a target object, even if the position of the target object is changed in an amount greater than the thickness of the target object.

Optical displacement sensor

It is an object to provide an optical displacement sensor and an optical displacement measurement device capable of improving the detection accuracy in detecting the presence or absence of a target object. An optical displacement sensor is constituted by a light projection unit for directing projected light to a target object, a light reception unit including plural light reception elements arranged in a linear shape for receiving light reflected by the target object out of the projected light Land outputting signals corresponding to the amount of received light, a received-light-spot detection portion for detecting a received-light spot on the light reception unit, on the basis of the outputs of the respective light reception elements, a number-of-spots determination portion for determining the number of received-light spots, on the basis of the result of the detection by the received-light-spot detection portion, a spot-position determination portion for determining a one-dimensional position at which the amount of received light is maximum, within the received-light spot, on the basis of the result of the detection by the received-light-spot detection portion, and an object detection processing portion for outputting detection signals indicative of the presence or absence of the target object, on the basis of the results of the determinations by the number-of-spots determination portion and the spot-position determination portion.

Growing community of inventors

Osaka, Japan

Tomoki Hanada