Advantech’s New Counter Module with up to 8 Counter Channels, Counter Gate and Alarm Functionality

The new Advantech APAX-5080 Counter Module is the latest module to join the APAX series of products and features up to eight channels and hot-swappable functionality. . With its 4/8 counter channels, the APAX-5080 is capable of simultaneously taking counts from multiple sources using any of its five operating modes ( UP, UP/Down, Frequency, Pulse/Direction, and A/B Phase modes), therefore saving hardware installation costs and having greater scalability.

The flexibility of the APAX-5080 is enhanced with the additional benefit of four DI counter gates to define when a counter is enabled, and four DO alarm output channels triggered by a specific counter value; so that the APAX-5080 can be configured to send an alarm message when certain criteria are met. The figure below illustrates the functionality of the counter gates in pulse/direction mode.

To reduce the risk of downtime in critical operations, the APAX-5080 module is designed to be hot swappable, therefore enabling factory and business premises to be up and running almost instantly.

Easily configured using Microsoft Windows CE, Linux and SoftLogic, the APAX-5080 is the ideal counter module for use in automated systems.