How to Interface a sensor using IO-Link

[Yin_W]

LEHCR's approach is well worth trying. NI controllers, which have more than one Ethernet port, usually support EtherCAT. You can try to talk to IO-Link devices using an EtherCAT IO-Link terminal. For example: https://www.beckhoff.com/english.asp?ethercat/el6224.htm

Further more, it's highly encouraged and recommended to put your ideas on adding new feature here: https://forums.ni.com/t5/Data-Acquisition-Idea-Exchange/idb-p/daqideas 

[UrsL]

The recent contribution to this topic brought to my mind that a while back I did solve my posted IO-Link problem successfully but that I never reported it here, sorry. In my case the solution was accessing the relevant information be reading the Modbus holding register value of the Comtrol IO-Link Master by simple LV TCP Write and Read functions. In fact I made a VI that reads the Modbus Holding Registers of a Comtrol 4-EIP Master to fetch the distance values of connected multiple Sick Laser Distance IO-Link Sensors of the type DT35-B15251. The achieved rate to get the distance values is rather impressive too.

I don't know if this is useful information at this point though.

[fontermosolar2018]

please, can you help me?. I need to see an example. 

[UrsL]

OK I attach the VIs I made to access the Comtrol IO-Link holding registers that hold the distance data of the connected laser distance sensors from Sick. The Sick sensors are the type DT35-B15251 and the IO-Link Controller is the IO-Link Master4-EIP from Comtrol. I hope the information will help you to get started. The manufacturer of the sensor decides what data is provided, therefore you may need to adapt the VIs according to your needs. However, the basic scheme should be the same.

[cridahe17]

Hi UrsL, I am new with labview and data comunications, please, can you help me?, I have a master AL1123 of IFM with flowmeter SV4610, how configurate the modbus in your VI attached?, can you explain more especific your example? or, can you say me an step by step?, please, help me.

[UrsL]

Hi cridahe17,

Well, my VIs assume that the sensor is physically connected to the Comtrol IO-Link Master I mentioned and that the IO-Link description of the sensor is actually uploaded into the device. However, I don't know if this will work for the master/sensor combination you want to use. Depending on your particular master/sensor combination and if your IO-Link master has a built in web server, you should at least be able to access the sensor's data by your web browser once the sensor's IO-Link description was uploaded. Then you may use my VI as a template to go from there.

[apade]

Hi UrsL,

I believe there are very few people like us who are trying to work on integrating IO-Link device with LabVIEW. Reading all the comments here, it seems like that your solution might help me in my project (after modification though). One small issue I am having is I have older version of LV.

Is it possible that you can save your labview project and all the VIs in the project for LV2014 and attach again here?

[UrsL]

OK, It's been quite a while since you wrote that request and I came across it today;-). Do you still need a LV2014 version of this? If yes I can try to create one.

[apade]

Hi UrsL, 

Thanks for replying back. If you can post the LV2014 version that would really be helpful. I haven't yet quite figured out how to communicate over using IO-Link through LabVIEW. 

[UrsL]

Alright attached you find the ComtrolIOLink VIs in the form of a LVProject for 16bitLV2014. There are two top VIs that read data from laser distance sensors which are physically connected by IO-Link to a Comtrol IO-Link Master device that you need to configure with a fixed IP address. There are two top VIs that read and graph distances continuously, one is for just one sensor, the other one for multiple sensors. The sensor description files need to be loaded into the controller. I hope the code will of help for you.