AutomationDirect's REER Mosaic Safety Controller: Quick Start Part 5 (Adding Modules)

The M1 Safety Controller by itself is so capable, most of the time that’s all you will need. But as your system grows, you may find the need to add additional capabilities. Given the base M1 Controller you can add a wide range of options including I/O, Relay, EDM, Status Outputs and even communications modules. And while they just plug together using these little DIN Rail bus connectors, beware that because the M1 Controller will satisfy most system needs, it doesn’t come with a bus connector. That helps keep the cost down for applications that only need the controller module. All the other modules do come with a bus connector. So, to add module to the M1 Controller you will also need one extra bus connector and whatever modules you want to plug in. The best way to assemble the modules is to slide the bus connectors together, add the protective endcaps that come with the stand-alone connector, and then snap that assembly onto the DIN Rail. Then you just hook a module onto the DIN rail from the top and rotate it downward until it clips onto the DIN rail. That was the controller, so let’s add a relay module and another module. The nice thing about that is you can easily swap out modules once the bus connectors are in place. Make sure the power is OFF before swapping the modules, – these modules are NOT hot-swappable. There are a couple other things you need to know: The order of the modules doesn’t matter. Mosaic Safety Modules should be installed in an enclosure with a protection class of at least IP54. And of course, you can find lots of enclosures at the AutomationDirect Website. The MOSAIC Safety Modules should NOT be used to provide power to other devices Make sure all system components use the same ground. I went ahead and wired the power inputs on these modules so we can look at the system from the software. That’s important to understand – since all of the interconnect wiring will be done in software, the power wiring is all we need to get started with our programming! How easy is that? Of course, to make the real outputs actually do something, you will also need to wire the enables … that’s easy to forget … I left them un-wired here to emphasize you don’t need those for simulation. The slave modules use those pins to specify the node number. So, if you have multiple copies of the same module in your system, you would give each module a different node or address using these pins. Which tells us, we can have up to 4 modules of the same type in a system. The same addresses are used by each module type, so you could have four output relay modules, 4 I/O modules, 4 Status modules, etc … in your system. And look at this: The connectors on all of the modules are removable, so you can simply unplug all your wiring, replace a module and then plug the wires right back in. Let’sapply power to the modules and connect the safety controller to the computer using this cable – which is just a regular USB cable with a Mini USB connector on it. If you have one laying around, it will probably work, but if you want to be sure, get this one. Of course, when you bring up the MOSAIC Designer Software, the first thing you want to do is setup the configuration to match what you just installed, again the order of the modules doesn’t matter. Once you have done that, all of the new module functionality will automatically be available to you over here in the menus. For example, here is the new relay output we added. That’s cool because it means all of the interconnect between the M1 Controller and the relay module is now done in software – That means you don’t have to connect these modules using external wires which saves you time and money! That ought to be enough to get you up and running with adding modules. Click here to learn more about the MOSAIC modular safety integrated controller. Click here to learn about AutomationDirect’s free award winning technical support and click here to subscribe to our YouTube Channel so you will be notified when we publish new videos.