Provided is a control device capable of reducing power consumption in a control system. The control device includes a master control unit and at least one slave control unit that is connected to the master control unit via a communication line. The master control unit includes a circuit for, upon completion of data transmission from the slave control unit via an uplink, transmitting an instruction for deactivating the uplink to the slave control unit via a downlink, as well as a circuit for, in order to obtain data from the slave control unit, transmitting an instruction for activating the uplink to the slave control unit via the downlink. The slave control unit includes a circuit for keeping the downlink active, and for activating/deactivating the uplink in accordance with an instruction from the master control unit transmitted via the downlink.

One aspect of the invention relates to a high-availability control system (100) for an industrial process comprising: A plurality of operator stations (108) displaying a subset of information; An interface module (105) including a pair of computers (104) for each model, each collecting each item of data received by each controller (103) having the model and eliminating the duplicates, the computers (104) operating in asynchronous redundancy; A processing module (106) including a pair of computers (104) each receiving the collected data, sorting the data received as a function of their acquisition time, eliminating the duplicates and calculating an information group by acquisition time, the computers (104) operating in active redundancy, A module for managing the operator stations (107) including one computer (104) per operator station (108), each receiving each calculated information group and sending to the operator station (108) each information group corresponding to the subset of information; A duplicate communication network, comprising a distributed redundancy module configured to manage the message exchanges between computers (104).

A communication method between a master and a device, the master transmits in a subcycle a received condition message (RCM) for an immediately prior subcycle, wherein the RCM is an ACK when a transmission from the device in the preceding subcycle was correctly received and the RCM is a NACK when a transmission from the device in the preceding subcycle was not correctly received, comprising: including in each transmitted condition message a current priority data acknowledgement flag (CPDAF), the CPDAF being transmitted set in each condition message for each subcycle of an offset cycle after the master correctly received in a current cycle a priority data message, the offset cycle being defined as the second and subsequent subcycles of a current cycle and the first subcycle of a next cycle, the CPDAF being transmitted as cleared otherwise.

Different devices or subsystems, including programmable industrial controllers, are connected to a common network. Each connected device has the capability for autonomous or quasi-autonomous action based on a common pool of information accessible on the network. For example, all or a subset of devices connected to the network may periodically broadcast status data over the shared network medium; status data may include the current state of the controller and/or environmental conditions that the controller monitors.

A telecommunications system for a programmable logic controller (PLC) includes: a master module comprising a transmitter and a receiver; one or more slave modules configured to receive signals transmitted from the transmitter and transmit signals to the receiver in response to the transmitted signals; a signal conversion module configured to convert the signals transmitted between the master module and the slave modules into digital signals; a control module configured to control the signal conversion module and to determine whether there is an error in the signals transmitted between the master module and the slave modules based on the digital signals; a display module configured to display a result of the determination by the control module.

An aircraft refueling system (10) includes a master controller (12), a fleet controller (14) in communication with the master controller, a platform controller (18) in communication with the fleet controller, and a fuel control system (16) in communication with the platform controller. Embodiments of an aircraft refueling system may include a primary pressure controller (20), a secondary pressure controller (22), a programmable logic controller (24), and a data logger controller (26). The master controller may be configured to receive and analyze data from at least one of the fleet controller, the platform controller, and the fuel control system; and to modify operational parameters or upgrade the fuel control system based at least in part on the analysis of received data.

A PLC communication system includes a PLC; a plurality of devices; three or more communication processing nodes that are provided respectively in the PLC and the devices to allow the PLC to communicate with each of the devices; and a plurality of communication lines that connect the communication processing nodes to each other to allow data communication. The PLC detects an incommunicable state between two of the communication processing nodes. The PLC communication system further includes a display device, and in a case where there are a plurality of types of incommunicable states detected by the PLC, the display device displays a portion where communication lines constituting the incommunicable states among the plurality of communication lines overlap with each other, as a line failure portion.

Provided is a support device that supports easier data exchange between PLCs without relying on a type of a PLC of the other communication party. The support device includes: a first input unit for receiving information defining, on a data-by-data basis, variables for data handled by the first programmable logic controller; a second input unit for receiving a source program expressing processing executed on the first programmable logic controller using the defined variables; a third input unit for receiving information that identifies a type of a second programmable logic controller in association with a first variable; and a generation unit that generates the executable program using the information defining the variables and the source program. The generation unit adapts a data structure of first data secured in the memory in correspondence with the first variable in accordance with the type of the second programmable logic controller.

A novel and useful acknowledgement and adaptive frequency hopping mechanism for use in wireless communication systems such as IO-Link Wireless. One or two additional acknowledgement bits are added to packet transmissions. One is a current acknowledgment bit which indicates whether a packet was successfully received anytime during the current cycle. The second bit is a previous acknowledgment bit which indicates whether packets were received successfully anytime during the previous cycle. An adaptive hopping table is constructed using a greedy algorithm which chooses frequencies with the best PER for transmission of higher priority packets, while equalizing the PER products across cycles. A last resort frequency mechanism further improves transmission success by switching to a better performing channel for the last subcycle when previous attempts to transmit a high priority packet have failed.

A remote control system for vibrating supplying devices is described, comprising electromagnetic power means driven to vibrate in frequency at least one element of a power supply through a control device (CONTROL_ETH, CONTROL_ETH_IoT), with fixed or multiple channels, with fixed or variable frequency, the control device (CONTROL_ETH, CONTROL_ETH_IoT) being designed to be directly interfaced with a central server, the control device (CONTROL_ETH, CONTROL_ETH_IoT) being in parallel directly connected to a network supervisor(PLC), such as a PLC or Industrial PC, for its operating aspects, and/or to a secondary server(SERVER) to acquire a history of parameters, on an industrial Ethernet network (ETH).