openPOWERLINK

openPOWERLINK is a software utility designed to work as an industrial Ethernet solution that can be employed for communication in hard real-time, which offers you the possibility of handling it either as a master or a slave, with the Managing Node and Controlled Node, respectively, being available for you.

First and foremost, it need be mentioned that two of the factors that differentiate openPOWERLINK from similar solutions on the market are related to the fact that it works cross-platform and is highly portable.

It is also worth pointing out that support for multiple operation modes is integrated, with Standard Node, Async-only Node, Multiplexed Node, and PollResponse Chaining Node being on the list.

Other than that, setting up real-time communication using dynamic or static PDO mapping is always an option when employing openPOWERLINK.

Then, asynchronous communication is supported as well, with the mention that SDO over ASnd and SDO over UDP are your alternatives. And since we have touched upon the subject, it should be noted that the “Multiple Asnd” component ensures optimized use of asynchronous bandwidth.

As for innovations, users should be aware that state-of-the-art standards such as EPSG DS 301, EPSG DS 302-A, EPSG DS 302-B, as well as EPSG DS 302-C are implemented.