Operation and maintenance
The INTERBUS system registers all connected stations, from the controller board to the sensors and actuators. Only with INTERBUS, is clear troubleshooting possible with the ring system.
Clear error diagnosis
A ring system with actively connected stations, as implemented with INTERBUS, allows for segmentation of the entire system into electrically independent part systems. In the case of a fault on one station, a short circuit or an interruption in a bus cable, the communication is only interrupted from the site of the error. Localizing the site of the error with the bus master is still possible and a service engineer is able to remedy errors directly and quickly. This is also possible in the case of serious errors, such as short-circuits or loose contacts.
The INTERBUS diagnostics display
Preventive error correction - Minimizing downtime
During transmission breaks in which the master does not send user data, the current data flow is filled up by status telegrams. If they fail to appear for a period longer than 25 ms, all stations interpret this failure as an interruption of the system. All stations are set to a predefined and safe reset state, i.e. in the case of an interruption of the system or a failure of the master module, all devices are set to the safe state as quickly as possible. Individual stations can also be reset. The same goes for sporadic malfunctions that can occur for example as a result of electromagnetic interference sources or faulty cables. Due to the active station interfacing with monitoring of each individual transmission path, clear troubleshooting is possible with the INTERBUS system even in this case. Locating the site of the error is particularly important to minimize system downtime. Due to the statistical evaluation of the transmission quality, INTERBUS makes preventive error correction possible. By evaluating the frequency of faults, component failures based on normal wear, e.g. failures of trailing cables or sliprings, can be detected early and production downtime can be avoided.
Optical fiber paths evaluation
In fiber optic systems, the quality of the optical transmission medium can be monitored with a transmitted test pattern. These options for complete fault type and fault location analysis give INTERBUS system an outstanding position among the fieldbuses.
Diagnostics tools
Users can access the system diagnostics in various ways: Diagnostics functions are integrated on the INTERBUS devices, there are front panel diagnostic functions on the controller boards, and on the PC, errors can be detected using the CMD software.