A safety network controller is comprised in an electronic safety system. The safety network controller comprises a first serial port and a second serial port, each of which is configured to communicatively connect to a redundant safety network controller via a respective daisy chain network. Each daisy chain network comprises at least one safety device controller that is controlling a corresponding safety device. The safety network controller further comprises network circuitry configured to communicatively connect to the redundant safety network controller via a packet-switched network. The safety network controller further comprises processing circuitry configured to exchange, with the redundant safety network controller: serial communication via each of the daisy chain networks; packets via the packet-switched network; and responsibility for control over one or more of the safety device controllers in response to detecting a failure.

In order to enable a seamless configuration modification during operation, a first automation device sends a second automation device a request for parameter modification. The second automation device responds to the request, such that a standby acknowledgement of the request is sent. Immediately with the transmission of the standby acknowledgement in the second automation device, an output process image is frozen, and the modification of the communication parameters for the second automation device is carried out. The first automation device responds, such that after receiving the standby acknowledgement in the first automation device, the communication is immediately stopped and the modification of the communication parameters is carried out for the first automation device. An input process image is frozen.

A system for managing communication between building management system (BMS) devices includes a memory and a controller. The memory includes instructions stored thereon. The controller is configured to execute the instructions to implement an agent manager, a zone manager, and a channel manager. The agent manager is configured to generate an agent for each of the BMS devices. The zone manager is configured to define at least one zone relating to a physical location zone or a building control zone. The channel manager is configured to generate a communication channel associated with the at least one zone. The channel manager is further configured to manage registration of an agent to the communication channel, wherein an agent is configured to communicate over a communication channel in response to being registered to the communication channel.

Example implementations described herein involve systems and methods for managing a plurality of programmable logic controllers (PLC), which can involve, for a detection of an update to one or more of a software or a firmware installed on a PLC of the plurality of PLCs being available, determining an impact level of the update to the one or more of the software or the firmware installed on the PLC of the plurality of PLCs; selecting a non-operational time slot for the PLC of the plurality of PLCs based on the impact level, wherein higher impact levels are indicative of requiring a longer non-operational time slot; and scheduling the update to the one or more of the software or the firmware installed on the PLC of the plurality of PLCs during the non-operational time slot.

A method synchronizes first and second simulation systems, each operating in a free running operation thereby exchanging data to run the simulation systems. The method includes: a) providing the first simulation system (PLCSIM) being enabled to run in cycles at a linear speed determined by repeatably setting a scaling factor (s.sub.n); b) providing the second simulation system (Process Simulate) to run in cycles at different speeds; c) the second simulation system requests at the end of a cycle a virtual time stamp from the first simulation system; d) calculating on the basis of the virtual time stamp a virtual duration time At.sub.nfs and on the basis of the virtual time stamp after completion of the cycle of the second simulation system a virtual duration time At.sub.nss; and e) calculating an update sn+1 for the scaling factor according the most recent scaling factor s.sub.n multiplied by At.sub.nss/At.sub.nfs.

This control system is provided with a plurality of slave devices and controllers. The controller is connected to one end of a field bus which includes the plurality of slave devices that is linearly connected, and the controller is connected to the other end of the field bus through a communication cable. The controllers are provided with a CPU and a transception part. One of the controllers generates a control frame with the CPU and transmits this from the transception part, and the other of the controllers performs a loop communication of the control frame by the transception part.

A method and to assembly for managing an automation program for an industrial automation platform, wherein the automation program is transferred to the automation platform and execution of the automation program is controlled, where in a first step, the automation program or a reference to the automation program is transferred from a Kubernetes master a virtual kubelet, in a second step, the transferred or referenced automation program is transferred to the industrial automation platform via a provider interface of the virtual kubelet, and in a third step, the execution of the transferred automation program on the industrial automation platform is controlled, where via the provider interface, control commands are transferred to the industrial automation platform and acknowledgement messages of the industrial automation platform are received and processed or forwarded to a control entity, such that automation programs can be managed, distributed and run using container orchestration systems.

Provided is a programmable logic controller comprising: a CPU module; and an input module that generates internal data corresponding to an input signal input from the outside, wherein the input module includes a first control unit and a second control unit, the second control unit generates the second control data by encoding second input data into data that cannot be decoded by the first control unit, the first control unit outputs the first control data including first input data and the second control data, the input module generates the internal data based on the first control data and transmit the internal data to the CPU module and the CPU module extracts the first input data and the second input data to determine whether the input data is correct.

A method for configuring an industrial control apparatus, the method including: starting a detection mode; selecting a stock control apparatus; opening a stock configuration of the stock control apparatus; selecting and buffer-storing at least one feature of the stock configuration; starting a transfer mode; selecting at least one target control apparatus; and transferring the at least one selected and buffer-stored feature of the stock configuration to the target control apparatus.

The described techniques enable a skid communicator tool to quickly change network settings to those required by a particular skid or network in a process control environment with which a user of the tool wishes to establish communication. These techniques are helpful because skids and networks in process control environments often require different network settings for any device attempting to communicate with the skids or network, and a user often must manually load these network settings every time she wants to communicate with a different network or skid. By contrast, the techniques enable the skid communicator tool to seamlessly connect to, disconnect from, and reconnect to any of the skids or other networks requiring different network settings with minimal input from the user, thus enabling a user to easily move through and interact with different areas, units, or equipment of the process control environment.