Hardware-Independent Configuration

In traditional control systems, mapping physical I/O to logic and HMI graphics varies among manufacturers.

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The same is true of I/O diagnostics. Even though most manufacturers provide diagnostic tags to monitor the health of their I/O, there is no consistency as to how those diagnostic tags are used.

That presents a challenge if your system has a mixture of I/O from different manufacturers.

It means there are different diagnostic interfaces and procedures to learn and maintain. And if you ever want to replace I/O with a different brand, you have to rewrite the logic, rewire the I/O, and reconfigure the diagnostics.

UCOS is Very Different

In UCOS, a given I/O subsystem is configured simply as a rack, slot, and point. UCOS doesn't care, for example, whether it's an Allen-Bradley 1771 or a GE 9030 rack/slot/point.

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UCOS drivers translate commands issued by logic and operators into the "language" required by each brand/model of hardware. Moreover, the diagnostic information issued by the hardware is translated by UCOS and presented consistently to the operator, regardless of the I/O brand.

One Set of Logic

Since UCOS logic and diagnostics are presented consistently regardless of manufacturer, you can even change brands of I/O without having to change the logic or reconfigure the diagnostics. The UCOS drivers take care of that for you.

Here's a real-life example.

The fragment of boolean logic shown above was originally written to handle the fault logic for a Rotork valve actuator connected to a UCOS system.

This same logic — unchanged — was later used to handle faulting for valve actuators made by Limitork, EIM, BIFI, and Keystone. Only the device names changed, and even that was handled automatically by UCOS.

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