ODVA, SERCOS, FDT play nice

SERCOS Int’l. (SI) and ODVA announced SI will adopt CIP Safety as its functional safety protocol for SERCOS. ODVA says it will extend the CIP Safety Specification to include safety profiles for SERCOS devices. SI says it will develop the SERCOS III network adaptation to use CIP Safety.

Jointly, the organizations will develop and establish conformance testing for devices implementing CIP Safety on SERCOS to help ensure compliance with the collective body of specifications, and enable interoperability of these devices in multi-vendor systems.

ODVA and the FDT Group published the Field Device Tool for CIP Networks: Annex to FDT Specification. This annex provides the schemas required to implement the Device Type Managers (DTM) configuration option for the currently available adaptations of networks built on the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP), which include DeviceNet, EtherNet/IP and ControlNet. In addition to previous configuration options, the latest publication of the CIP Networks Library of specifications allows for DTM configuration for all CIP Networks.

With the increasing ability to multitask network diagnostics, prognostics and configuration along with conventional control tasks, DTMs aim to provide users with new opportunities for further productivity improvements in their plant networks.