Shawn discusses generations of Rockwell IP20 distributed / remote I/O in today's Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition:

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Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Welcome to Automation Tech Talk. I'm Shawn Tierney from Insights, and I'm about seven minutes late today. I just got off a, really excellent call with a major automation supplier, actually, automation manufacturer, who, was introducing me to his next generation IO. And, so I didn't have a lot of time to prep, and I'm like, what am I gonna cover today?

And I'm like, let's talk about distributed IO. So that's what we're gonna talk about. I love to hear in the chat where you what you guys are using for distributed IO if you're using distributed IO. Now OEMs typically don't need distributed IO. I mean, don't get me wrong.

They will, oh, and I should also say if you guys can't hear me or you can't see me or something's wrong, let me know. But in any case, typically, an OEM with a small machine, they don't need the distributed IO. Now they will run a lot of times Ethernet through their different devices like VFDs and HMIs, but, they don't need distributed IO. However, a facility with a large machine or a large system, it makes no sense to run all the wires back from all the sensors and switches and buttons all the way back to the main panel, and that's where distributed IO really does extremely well. And, you know, PLCs and PACs more and more can handle even more and more higher quantities of distributed IO.

But before we get into that, I thought we would talk a little bit about the history of distributed IO or remote IO as Rockwell coined the phrase or patented the phrase back in the day, back in the late seventies. In any case, in the first distributor IO I saw out there, saw a lot of it out there, was seventeen seventy one. And seventeen seventy one IO was, big and bulky. This is an eight point module. I just grabbed what I had available, you know you know, with two minutes to go before the show started.

Let's see if I set up the overhead cam correctly. So I do not have the terminal block on here, but this is an 8.1771, IO module that was donated to, somebody who then donated it to me. And, thank you to both of companies for the donation. And I have a ton of this stuff, and, it's really super inexpensive online. But the, you know, the problem is the programming software is so expensive.

So, you know, a lot of people could use this, reuse this stuff for hobbies or whatnot. But, in any case, this would fit in a big, jack. You guys have seen the racks here before, the big seventy seventy one chassis, and we don't call them racks. We call them chassis. And, you know, it worked.

Remote IO definitely worked. The the digital was so easy to set up. The analog, a lot of people had a hard time getting their mind around block transfers. I always felt that I could explain it to people easily, and that's why I'm doing a PLC five course with seventeen seventy one IO. I don't have that on here on the stage because it's just so big.

I actually have it over there on the floor. But in any case, you know, of this you see this a lot. I remember going to one power plant and walking through and and,