Introduction
8 digital inputs 24 VDC (two channels with time stamp)
The EP1258 EtherCAT Box with digital inputs acquires fast binary control signals from the process level and transmits them, electrically isolated, to the controller.
The status of the signal is displayed by light emitting diodes; the signal connection is made optionally through M8 connectors (EP1258-0001) or M12 connectors (EP1258-0002). Both modules have 10 μs input filters.
The sensors are supplied from the control voltage US. The peripheral voltage UP is not used in the input module, but may be connected in order to be relayed downstream.
Distributed Clocks
Channels 0 and 1 are assigned a time stamp that shows the time of the last edge change with a resolution of 1 ns. This technology enables signals to be traced exactly over time and synchronized with the clocks distributed across the system. With this technology, machine-wide parallel hardware wiring of digital inputs or encoder signals for synchronization purposes is often no longer required. As a result, equally timed reactions, independent of the bus cycle time, are to a large extent possible. Distributed Clocks in the EtherCAT system documentation.