I am an OEM that typically delivers a fully configured solution with a CompactLogix PLC, HMI, etc. I have a customer that wants to remove our PLC and control our skid directly from DeltaV via Profibus. Yes I know Profi from DeltaV isn’t really native but that’s how they do it.
My I/O is currently a mix of Ethernet/IP IO (Festo Valve Manifold, Kollmorgen VFD’s, and some remote I/O racks) + local I/O that’s connected to the central PLC.
My strategy is to remove the PLC, replace it with an ethernet/IP endpoint to make it look like remote/IO and then use an Anybus X-Gateway that acts as a Profi Slave on one side and an EIP Master on the other.
My question is, acting as an EIP master can I just map all of this I/O through directly or is the EIP that Anybus implements really meant to only talk to a a PLC? We could, in theory still do that if necessary but I’d rather not. Not so much from a cost perspective but more from a one more item to configure and maintain perspective.
Thanks
Andy