Alongside development of the IO-Link Safety specification, technology provider companies have implemented testing systems for FS masters and FS devices, thereby ensuring a high level of maturity of test specification V1.1.
A new FS master testing system – comprised of the testing program on a Windows PC as well as test hardware acting as a pseudo FS device which can be controlled and read out – can now check all FS master functions in accordance with the test specification, including OSSDe mode. This FS master testing system also plays a big role in integration testing in safe fieldbus systems (e.g. PROFIsafe). The well-known “USB master,” which already supports the testing of standard IO-Link devices can configure and test IO-Link Safety FS devices in an expansion stage.
Discussions with testing laboratories regarding how these testing systems can be integrated into the safety certification of IO-Link Safety devices are ongoing. Safety certification itself has already been coordinated and specified in the test specification.
Initial experience with the tests was gathered by companies at the first Interop Workshop for IO-Link Safety FS masters and FS devices in November of last year. A total of seven companies tested mutual operation and test programs with five FS master implementations and six FS device implementations. This experience has already been incorporated into version 1.1 of the test specification.
Thanks to this great success, more IO-Link Safety Interop Workshops are planned for 2022. The next one will be held on June 30 followed by another on October 20, 2022.
Interested companies who would like to participate with their IO-Link Safety products/prototypes are asked to register early for an appointment through the IO-Link Support Center: info[AT]io-link.com.