Universal network adapter for industrial control networks

An industrial controller comprising:

• a set of I/O nodes attached to a plurality of networks and providing electrical connections to actuators and sensors of a controlled process;
• a programmable controller having a stored program for controlling the controlled process by providing signals to the actuators and receiving signals from the sensors through the I/O nodes;
• a network appliance having:
• (a) a plurality of I/O network interface circuits providing hardware connections to the different I/O networks corresponding to each I/O node;
• (b) a controller network interface circuit providing a hardware connection to a controller network communicating with the programmable controller;
• (c) a memory holding a network appliance program, script files, configuration files, a communication schedule, a mapping table, and a buffer;
• (d) a processor executing the network appliance program to:
• (i) store in memory, script files associated with the different I/O networks, the script files associated with particular I/O networks and executing to translate between protocols of the controller network and the particular I/O network;
• (ii) receive from the programmable controller and store in memory, configuration files associated with particular I/O networks and describing configuration parameters for the particular I/O networks;
• (iii) before communication between an I/O node and the programmable controller, configuring each of the I/O networks and generating the mapping table according to the associated configuration file;
• and
• (iv) coordinate communications between the programmable controller and the I/O nodes according to the communication schedule, wherein
• during a first phase of the communication schedule, data is placed in the buffer according to the mapping table concurrently from each of the I/O nodes via the associated script file and from the programmable controller, and
• during a second phase of the communication schedule, data is sent from the buffer according to the mapping table concurrently to the appropriate I/O nodes via the associated script file and to the programmable controller;
• whereby the programmable controller may communicate with I/O nodes as if they were connected directly to the controller network.

A network appliance for a programmable controller configured to control a plurality of I/O nodes communicating on I/O networks using different protocols, the network appliance comprising:

• a plurality of I/O network interface circuits configured to connect to the different I/O networks of the I/O nodes;
• a controller network interface circuit configured to connect to a controller network communicating with the programmable controller;
• a memory configured to store a network appliance program, an I/O buffer table, and a communication schedule;
• and
• a processor configured to execute the network appliance program to coordinate periodic communications between the plurality of I/O nodes and the programmable controller according to the communication schedule wherein during a first phase of the schedule the I/O nodes and the programmable controller concurrently write to the I/O buffer table and during a second phase of the schedule the I/O nodes and the programmable controller concurrently read data from the I/O buffer table.