Universal Signal Conditioner - Overview & Applications (Part 1) from AutomationDirect

what happens when you have a sensor transducer or controller that outputs one type of signal and you need to read it with another device that does not share the same type signal well in this video we'll show you how a signal conditioner can be used to isolate amplify filter and convert a variety of input signals to clean output signals that can be more easily handled by processed controllers or plc's hey I need that no I need it [Music] more in a nutshell a signal conditioner is used in applications where you have a signal and you need to bring that signal into an input device and the two signals don't match for instance in our setup today we have an RTD and it's mounted to a piece of equipment that used for reading a process temperature such as a curing oven now that's just our hypothetical application that we're using today we get a second device such as a controller that we may need to feed the signal into but it does not accept RTD inputs today we're going to be using our click PLC well it only has a 0 to 5 Volt or a 4 to 20 milliamp input so what do we do we're going to take the RTD we're going to wire it into our signal conditioner set up the input of the signal conditioner for 3 WI RTD like ours and then we're going to wire the output of the signal conditioner to the analog input of our click PLC set them both for the same ranges which in our case is a 1 to 5vt signal in case you're just not sure or you don't understand what an RTD is an RTD is a resistive temperature detector there's a couple of different names if you go out and look on the internet but we sort of go with the most common name they all mean the same thing it's a temperature sensor we're using a small three wire one here today the automation direct does sell a line of rtds I've got one here on the table and we have more that are in our catalog and on our website so check them out if you have any questions the signal conditioners we have here today are Universal type where you can convert from many different signal types to a universal output type for your controller but automation direct we also sell signal conditioners that have fixed signals like this one it only accepts an RTD input and provides a 4 to 20 milliamp signal out now we do sell a variety of this type and they are a little bit less expensive but for the ones that we're going to show today you can take inputs like rtds thermal couples 0 to 5 0 to 10 volt DC and also 0 to 20 and 4 to 20 milliamp inputs and can convert any of these signals to either a voltage or a current output signal we have set up the signal conditioner to basically convert one signal which is our RTD to a new new signal 1 to 5 Vols there's settings in the signal conditioner that'll have to be programmed we will cover how to program the conditioners in the next video but for now we're going to show why you would use a signal conditioner and where you'd use a signal conditioner well we have two models of the signal conditioners one like the one we have wired up here is a relay contact output which is what we're going to use today and we'll show you how it works the other is a non relay type output now the signals inside of both of these are those converted signals are all the same but just the differences is one has relay and the other does not and it's just basically an extra feature that we have on this particular model we programmed the signal conditioner to close the relay contact when the temperature is reached 70° F when the contact closes we apply power to our green indicator light here also we have a Seymour micro display panel connected and programmed here so it would display the temperatures as well now it too can display converted ranges that may better suit your application versus just displaying raw data what we have here today is we're actually displaying the true temperature and we also have a temperature bar graph that displays from 50 to 80° F now today we're also using a 24volt DC power supply and this is only used to power our green indicator light wiring as you can see in this diagram we followed the RTD manufacturers wiring diagram and wired it to the signal conditioner as shown here on the units included quick start guide now this can also be uh downloaded from our website in a PDF format we're using a three-wire RTD so we're going to use terminals 41 42 and 43 as shown here now how you wire up your input is going to depend on your device so make sure you have the proper wiring diagrams for all your components being used in your system next we're going to wire two wires from our signal conditioner to the input of our click PLC again all we needed was the wiring diagram that came with the signal conditioner and the wiring diagram for the click analog PLC and then last we have two wires going to our green indicator light with a positive voltage wire directly to the light while we're switching the negative voltage to the light now what's nice about our click PLC is that you don't have to write any code to set up the analog signal as you see here we simply go to the CPU built-in IO setup up select the input Tab and then Select 1 to 5 volts and we enter 0 to 100 for our degrees in the range we'll use the register df1 to store the [Music] value now for our example the only code we need in the PLC is an end statement now we save to the [Music] PLC we can look at the register df1 and see what our temperature is coming into the PLC which matches the temperature on our Seymour and on the front of our signal conditioner now on the front of the signal conditioner you can see what the RTD is reading and when I insert it into cold water now the click PLC and the Seymour are reading and displaying the converted signals now we'll warm up the RTD above 70° in order to close the relix contacts that are built into the 116 signal conditioner now if you notice the indicator light is now letting us know that we have exceeded 70° F see well now you know what a signal conditioner does and why you may want or require one in your next application please follow us to the next video where we'll show you how to set up the signal conditioner parameters thanks for watching see you [Music] soon