Based out of Richmond, California, Mesa Electronics has introduced a field-programmable gate array based industrial programmable I/O card, with the host interface being a 100 BaseT Ethernet.

A variety of open-source FPGA firmware configurations are available for hardware step/dir generation to 25MHz, real time remote I/O timing and high speed serial communication, analog servo control, PWM generation, and absolute and incremental encoder counting.

The 7180 is compatible with Mesa’s 50 pin daughtercards. I/O module rack compatible pinouts with interleaved grounds and 50 pin I/O connectors are used by the 7180HD. All of the 72 7189HD I/O bits are 5-volt tolerant. 1A of volt power is supplied to the external daughtercards through a PTC protected power option which is jumper selectable. DIN rail mounting hardware is available for all daughtercards with 3.7’ hole spacing. Din rail clips are sold in sets of two, and the hardware consists of an aluminum mounting bar, plastic DIN rail clips, and 3mm threaded spacers and screws.

Radiated EMI is kept to minimal levels with four layer construction, and helps maintain power and ground integrity. For encoder counting, RS-422 interfaces, industrial motion control, real time I/O, CNC retrofit, analog I/O, and other applications.

Somewhat similar to the Industrial I/O card, is Mesa’s 7173 Pendant/control panel interface. The 7173 is powered by the same CAT6 which provides the data interface. It is a control panel interface, otherwise known as a remote real time pendant. The 7173 uses a real time high speed RS-244 link for communications with the host, and is able to support rates up to 10K updates per second, eliminating any roughness or detectable delay in the pendant interface as well as the control panel.  The 7173 supports a 64 key keypad as well as up to four 50KHz encoder inputs for MPG’s, 6 digital outputs, and 8 digital inputs. More inputs and outputs are available if a smaller keypad is used.