What is Distributed Modular I/O?

Think of a remote “slice” I/O solution. In a typical application, the communication head and the power supply sit on the left hand side and are followed along the backplane by the individual I/O devices, such as discrete 24V input cards or 0-10V analog cards. Usually there are a limited number of slots available in the backplane and individual slices of control components can be inserted.

In a similar fashion, a Distributed Modular I/O system has a communications head that talks over the desired industrial network on one side and the right hand side acts as a data collector. In lieu of a backplane, each device is connected to an industry standard M12 port utilizing a basic 3-wire sensor cable for IO-Link communication. With the ability to be installed within a 20 meter radius from the data, collector devices can be easily distributed across the machine.