Industrial control device and method for insertion and removal of a module under power without interruption
AssigneeRockwell Automation Asia Pacific Business Ctr. Pte., Ltd.
InventorChew Earn Kong
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Disclosed is an industrial control device including a point-to-point backplane/point module architecture providing RIUP (Removal and Insertion Under Power) functionality where data communications between modules is maintained after the removal of a point module from the backplane. According to an exemplary embodiment, a backplane includes a plurality of bypass switches controlled by respective point modules, whereby data communicated bypass a removed point module interface and point-to-point data communications are provided to an inserted point module after an initial routine is executed by a microcontroller associated with the inserted point module.
Claims20
An industrial control device comprising:
- a plurality of I/O (Input/Output) modules, each I/O module including a microcontroller operatively connected to a first data communication channel, a second data communication channel and a RIUP (Removable and Insertion Under Power) control signal line, wherein the first data communication channel, the second data communication channel and the RIUP control signal line include backplane interface contacts;
- a point-to-point backplane removably coupled to each of the plurality of I/O modules, the backplane including a plurality of bypass data switches, each bypass data switch operatively associated with a respective I/O module control signal line to open and close the bypass data switch and each bypass data switch including a first switch contact operatively associated with the first data communication channel and a second switch contact associated with the second data communication channel,
- wherein removal of an I/O module from the backplane causes the respective bypass data switch to close and route data communications from the first switch contact to the second switch contact, and the insertion of an I/O module to the backplane causes the respective I/O module microcontroller to execute an initialization routine which outputs a control signal to the bypass data switch to open thereby connecting the backplane first data channel to the respective I/O module first data channel contact exclusive of being routed to the second switch contact and connecting the backplane second data channel to the respective I/O module second data channel contact exclusive of being routed to the first switch contact.
A control module for an industrial device, the control module comprising:
- a microcontroller operatively connected to a first data communication channel, a second data communication and a RIUP (Removable and Insertion Under Power) control signal line;
- and
- a mounting base interface contacts configured to interface the first data communication channel, the second communication channel and the control signal line to an associated mounting base,
- wherein the microcontroller is configured to execute instructions to control a bypass data switch operatively associated with the control signal line, the bypass data switch operating in a first state to provide point-to-point data communications between two other control modules adjacent to the control module when the control module is removed from the associated mounting base, and a second state to provide point-to-point data communications between the control module and the two other control modules adjacent to the control module when the control module is inserted to the mounting base.
A point-to-point backplane for an industrial control device comprising:
- a plurality of mounting bases configured to removably couple a plurality of respective I/O (Input/Output) modules, each mounting base including a bypass data switch operatively associated with a respective I/O module control signal line to open and close the bypass data switch and each bypass data switch including a first switch contract operatively associated with a first data communication channel and a second switch contact operatively associated with a second data communication channel.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.