An electronic survey of Industrial Networking readers was conducted in February, 2014, in order to identify usage and application trends of I/O modules among the magazine's readership . Detailed survey results are presented on the pages that follow, with key findings summarized below:
- Survey respondents indicated their I/O systems are remote/distributed, but have some centralized (42%); centralized, but have some remote (31%); mostly or entirely centralized/rack-mounted (16%); and mostly or entirely remote/distributed (12%).
- The majority of respondent's I/O is DIN-rail mounted in enclosures (72%); followed by IP67 machine or open mount (7%) and intrinsically safe (a further 7%); housed in explosion-proof enclosures (6%); and IP20 machine or open mount (2%).
- Nearly 57% of respondents require digital signals; 43% require analog.
- When asked about their connectivity the majority of respondents connect with 4-20 mA (70%) and hard wiring (68%). Ethernet flavor (53%), Serial (40%), HART (38%) and Process Fieldbus (32%) rounded out the top 6 most used.
- When asked to evaluate the importance of I/O features, respondent's top 5 criteria that were ranked as "Extremely Important" or "Important" were ease of setup/installation, reliability, and diagnostic features, compatibility with existing systems and scalability. (see chart for full details)
- The majority of respondents indicated their controller platform was PLC (47%) and DCS (34%). The platforms that respondents are using the least are PC (7%), PAC (a further 7%), and Embedded (6%).