Sensor network gateway design accelerates solution for smart factory

Renesas Electronics has a new IO-Link master development kit to expedite IO-Link-based application development for industrial networked devices in a smart factory. The development kit comprises a board and pre-qualified sample software produced by TMG. The board has eight IO-Link connecters enabling developers to instantly connect IO-Link slave devices and begin the evaluation process. The easy-to-use development kit adds to shorter prototype-to-production process time and serves to decrease the development burden for engineers. The solution is supported by two CPUs that work independently and simultaneously with a large built-in SRAM. The eight-port IO-Link Master is managed by one CPU; the other CPU features an R-IN engine architecture and supports Industrial Ethernet communication to the upper layers, such as PLC, with no external microcontroller, microprocessor, or memory like DDR. Combining the two CPUs in a small 12mm x 12mm LFBGA package also helps with creating compact PCBs.