How to move from T1H to BRX

[Garyhlucas]

Our products look like they are going to take off in a big way and we are trying to figure out how transition to BRX.  Our product is a very small but advanced Membrane BioReactor (MBR) waste treatment plant.  We are trying to take waste treatment from custom built one of a kind plants, to a Product that gets built exactly the same every time.  Some jobs though have a lot of auxiliary equipment like screens, mixers, pumps, and chemical dosing that are not part of the biological treatment process, but are necessary to building a complete plant.  So we plan on having a remote I/O panel to handle these functions when the job requires it.

Our total for the plant I/O currently is 8 digital inputs, 32 digital outputs. 16 analog inputs, and 3 discrete inputs and 3 discrete outputs on a high speed counter.  It looks like a BX-DM1E-36ED13-D covers a lot of the I/O and can take 8 expansion modules.  We'll need 16 more analog inputs, and 16 more digital outputs so I am guessing 4 8pt modules and room for 4 more to handle future needs.

However we are bidding a job right now where that remote I/O will be needed too.  This remote I/O will be on another skid located in another room.  Since we are currently using Terminator I/O this a is simple just add a communication module to the same kind of Terminator I/O or even a second Do-More CPU. Currently this works well as all I/O modules are the same type.  So how would we do this assuming the analog input modules are actually available AnyDayNow?  Can a BRX CPU be used simply as a remote I/O comm module for the remote I/O?  Is there a plan for a comm module to do remote I/O in the near future?  If we needed high speed I/O in the remote location would using BRX CPU with the high speed inputs be the way to go?  We also might want modbus in the remote location to talk to PLCs, so maybe that influences the decision of what to use for communication too.  The cost difference between a CPU or comm module is not a consideration, ease of setup and programming is more important.

Thanks,

[Controls Guy]

As quickly as possible.

[BobO]

We have an EBC in development for BRX. It will likely launch Q4, with a batch of other Host modules.

The last date I heard on analog expansion was mid-August, which seems achievable. The tech seems all stable, it's now just launch logistics.

One consideration of remote I/O vs a remote CPU is the high speed I/O requirement. We are going to be developing the BX-HSIO, which adds more of the same high speed I/O functions as are on the brick, but the BX-HSIO will be limited to the local base. Since it is very easy to move data between Do-more CPUs on all platforms, I would plan on using another CPU rather than remote I/O.

[Garyhlucas]

Okay,
Sounds like a remote CPU makes the most sense. It also means we can talk Modbus to the VFD drives and use the onboard highspeed I/O. Likely we will use the same CPU as that removes yet another part from the spares list, an important consideration for us.

Which brings up another topic. BRX CPUs have a microSD slot. Can this be used to reload a program? Is there a routine to save a current program and ALL variable data to the SD card? This would be totally huge. Supply the customer with an offline backup of each CPU after we have done startup. Keep one spare unprogrammed CPU as a spare. We could even send unprogrammed CPUs to a customer and they could reload their own program. Having experienced lots of AB PLCs that have lost their program, including having to fly out to a customer on Thanksgiving to do a reload this is a high priority item for me!

[Garyhlucas]

As quickly as possible.

Waiting on analog input modules! ADN.