Building a better sensor safety network

Actuator sensor interface (AS-i) is a 2-wire networking solution for discrete I/O, analog data, encoders, and intelligent sensors. When the first components were introduced, AS-i was quickly accepted as a fast and low-cost method of transmitting binary I/O data from the field to the PLC. With 31 I/O nodes, the system handled a total of 124 inputs and 124 outputs (4 I/O for each I/O node).