Welcome to Soft-I/O!

The key concept here is that the computer needs to sense and then act. A computer control system senses with sensors and acts with actuators. Sensors go into the control system and actuators go out of the control system, hence we have input/output or simply I/O.

We did not invent I/O systems. They have been around for more than 50 years. What we did, however, is invent a very different way to accomplish the task of hooking up sensors and actuators to the computer control system. This is our story.

Right now, we want to hit some highlights and perhaps inspire you to read and watch more. If you have ever struggled to hook things up to a control system, we are confident that you will like Soft-I/O.

Soft-I/O frees you from the tedium and unbridles your creativity. If you can imagine a new machine or process, you have a powerful partner in Soft-I/O!

First Impressions

Probably the one thing that really knocks people back when they first work with Soft-I/O is configurability. Soft-I/O has a 25-pin I/O connector where the sensors and actuators are hooked up. With Soft-I/O, any pin can be configured for a specific mode. On the right is an image of the drag and drop interface in the Soft-I/O web management console. Flexibility is designed into the device. Any pin can be configured to be an input or an output. A pin can also be power or ground. That's a really big deal, and we will spend some time in other places talking about just why we did it and why it is so powerful.

Not only can any Soft-I/O pin be an input, output, power or ground, but the pins can cover a huge range of signal and power. So, we can drive a relay the size of a softball (often called a contactor) or we can hook up a thermocouple and precisely measure the millivolt-level signal that it produces. Or anywhere in between. All on the same pins of a single Soft-I/O model. There is literally only one Soft-I/O: only one part number!   The old way using PLC's or PAC's is kind of like saying, "You need a different cell phone to call New York than California."  With Soft-I/O, one part can do it all. 

The result is that a single part number Soft-I/O module can connect to virtually any sensor or actuator directly, thus vastly simplifying wiring and system integration.

Soft-Devices

Whizzing right along in our whirlwind tour of Soft-I/O, we look now at software innovations. While configurability might be the sizzle, the software inside Soft-I/O is the substance that ties it all together.

Added to the flexibility of configurable I/O pins, Soft-I/O introduces the concept of a Soft-Device™

A Soft-Device is a configurable software component that turns a pin into a control system element. Some Soft-Devices are simple, like switches, lights or temperature sensors. Other Soft-Devices can be very complex, like temperature controllers. A steady stream of new Soft-Devices is coming out of XiO. Most are free, some are sold. With Soft-Devices, you can turn your Soft-I/O module into a dedicated controller or merely a node on your larger control system. It's entirely up to you. Please see the section on Soft-Devices for more information on how Soft-Devices solve specific problems.

You can read more about the specifics of these using the links in the Article Index at the top right or by clicking on the Next link below.

Sequences

Sequences in a Soft-I/O module allow you to create powerful control loops without having to learn or understand ladder logic diagrams or algorithmic code. With sequences you can tell a Soft-I/O module to wait for a specific trigger on an input before triggering a number of events. It is simple to make Soft-I/O event driven. Below is a screen shot of the intuitive sequence setup screen.

A sump pump mechanism can be implemented using the Soft-I/O sequence engine:

• Step 1: Trigger the sequence when the high level sensor becomes true
• Step 2: Switch on the sump motor
• Step 3: Wait until the low level sensor becomes true
• Step 4: Wait 30 seconds
• Step 5: Verify that the low level sensor is still true
• Step 6: Switch off the sump motor

But that's just the start because sequences have a number of additional options like alarms, power-up behavior, start and stop triggers, interaction with Soft-Devices and interaction with other sequences that allow you to quickly build a complete control system or provide a node for your grander control system.

Data Logging

We set out to build the coolest Data Logger, and some say that we did pretty well. Data logging is at the center of many critical industrial and experimental process monitoring. Soft-I/O's data logging goes beyond the simple storing of information that requires tedious analysis of large data sets. Soft-I/O includes the following functionality:

• a trigger that start the data logging, for example the temperature of a fermentation process exceeded 110 degrees.
• storing of samples that led up to led up to the trigger, for example, measuring the air flow up to the point when the trigger fired.
• storing a specified number of samples after the trigger event. Soft-I/O will give you the "before" and "after" of the event of interest.
• emailing the results. Soft-I/O can convert the saved log files to CSV that can be opened in Excel. Soft-I/O will email the file to you whenever an exception occurs. Now, that's the way to monitor your process!

Communications

What good is a control component if it can't communicate? Soft-I/O principally communicates over its Ethernet network interface. In addition, Soft-I/O can communicate over its I/O connector serially using all the popular electrical formats.

The default configuration and monitoring interface for Soft-I/O is its built-in web site.

For OEMs who want to integrate Soft-I/O with larger automation networks, we provide:

• a Telnet interface for rapid testing of commands and interactive monitoring and control;
• a TCP/IP interface using standard sockets and the same commands as the Telnet interface to automate interaction with entities defined in Soft-I/O;
• an optional Modbus slave interface to access a subset of the attributes and methods on Soft-I/O;
• an optional peer-to-peer network interface that eliminates the software chore of integrating multiple Soft-I/O modules; and
• an email interface to report status and alarm events.

More information on Soft-I/O capabilities is available from the Soft-I/O Product Web Site.