SENSORS
Sensors are the electronics needed to detect or identify an object. A variety of technology is used that include inductive, magneto-resistive and optical to name a few.
IO-Link is the new industrial communication standard that connects the control unit to the sensors. The standard is backwards compatible with the commonly used binary switch signaling. These new capabilities are beneficial to the end user for remote diagnostics and configuration. To sensor designers, size is important to integrating the IO-Link capability. Strong focus has been put on saving board space.
Temperature Sensing
There is a wide range of temperature sensing applications that call for many design alternatives. This offers solutions for building thermal sensing signal chains using thermal sensors. To design a thermal sensing, determining the temperature range that must be sensed is usually the first step, as well as the operating environment. The next step is to choose from 4 types of thermal sensors: silicon, thermistor, RTD and thermocouple. Abacus carries either signal chain solutions or integrated ICs that provides an analog or digital communication path back to the control device.