Industry 4.0 marks the fourth industrial revolution, characterized by distributed, intelligent control systems. Breaking from a past with large, centralized programmable-logic controllers, Industry 4.0 allows for highly configurable, highly modular factories, which accept an ever increasing number of sensor inputs, while operating at a higher output than ever before. The ultra-small PLC, or Micro PLC, lies at the heart of the Industry 4.0 factory, providing high performance with ultra-low power consumption in an ultra-small package. MAXREFDES61# is Maxim’s Micro PLC, quad-channel, analog input card.

The MAXREFDES61# features a 16-bit high-accuracy four-channel analog input with isolated power and data. Two of the input channels accept -10V to 10V signals and the other two inputs accept 4mA to 20mA signals. The MAXREFDES61# design integrates a dual low-noise low-distortion buffer (MAX9633); a 16-bit 4-channel multirange input ADC (MAX1301); two high-voltage 4–20mA current protectors (MAX14626) for the current input channels; an ultra-high-precision 4.096V voltage reference (MAX6126); 600VRMS data isolation (MAX14850); a STM32F4 microcontroller; a FTDI USB-UART bridge; a high-efficiency DC-DC converter (MAX15062); and isolated/regulated 15V, 5V, and -3V power rails (MAX17498C/MAX8719/MAX1659/MAX1735). The entire system typically operates at less than 500mW and fits into a space roughly the size of a credit card. While targeted for the industrial, Micro PLC application, MAXREFDES61# may be used in any application that requires high-accuracy analog-to-digital conversion.

Applications:

• Industrial control and automation
• Process control
• PLC