The CloudRail.Box lets you connect over 12.000 industrial sensors or actuators to any cloud — plug&play in less than a minute. Just plug-in a sensor, select the cloud, and done!
Especially for retrofitting in brownfield environments, this allows you to put additional sensors like e.g. vibration, pressure, temperature and many more on existing machines and send the data to the cloud. CloudRail supports sensors (IO-Link, Digital, Analog, Modbus) from almost any vendor like for example ifm, Sick, Turck, Pepperl+Fuchs and many more.

The CloudRail.Box, uses remote IO-Modules, so called IO-Link Masters, to connect with the sensors. Thanks to IP67 or even IP69K certification, these modules can be installed outside of the cabinet and close to the sensor. One CloudRail.Box can talk to up to 8 IO-Modules, as long as they are in the same network. Each IO-Module has either 4 or 8 ports. Connecting an additional IO-Module is as easy as connecting a sensor: Just plug it in!

Each port of an IO-Module can be used as:

• IO-Link Input (any IO-Link sensor)
• IO-Link Output (any IO-Link actuator like a light)
• Digital Input
• Digital Output (use a 24V relay to e.g. turn on or off heavy loads)
• Analog Input 4…20mA (with DP2200 adaptor or AL2205 module)
• Analog Output 4…20mA (with AL2205 module)

In addition to IO-Modules, CloudRail can also work with Modbus devices such as energy meters. For Modbus RTU, just use the RS485 port on the CloudRail.Box. Modbus TCP support will be available soon.

Besides IO-Link vibration sensors, CloudRail can also connect to VSE products by ifm for more advanced vibration analysis.

The CloudRail.Box can either work with exclusively installed sensors and IO-Modules (usually used for retrofitting old machines) or use existing hardware which is already connected to a PLC. Thanks to a Y-Path, this works without any impacts on the production system.

Using a Y-Path which is part of the IO-Module allows you to use the same IO-Link Master for your control network as well as the CloudRail System. In this setup the IO-Link Master is connected to a PLC using a fieldbus like Profinet. The CloudRail.Box connects through a special IoT-Port, which is completely separated from the control network. All connected sensors can be used with both systems.

The E43406 adaptor is installed directly between an IO-Link sensor and the PLC and splits the signal using a Y-Path. One connection still goes to the PLC (no impact on existing system), while the other is connected with an IO-Module of the CloudRail.Box.

Ready to start your next IIoT project?

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