XiO Inc

San Anselmo, California, January 20, 2012

Soft-I/O, the innovative input/output system manufactured by Xio, Inc. has been approved by a major diversified manufacturing company for use in its nuclear reactor services business.

"Our customer has completed a massive 21-day test with flying colors," reports Mario Lento, Director of Business Development for Xio. "The test plan alone was 70 pages!" Lento continued. "Each system has six Soft-I/O modules performing a number of input/output tasks from simple pushbuttons and lights to some high-tech strain gauges that need to be demodulated over long cables."

"We are heartened by this major customer approval," said Chairman Paul Sagues. "It's one thing to offer innovative I/O technology and an entirely different thing to be approved for use by one of the world's largest companies in a very challenging application. This is the coveted 'pedigree' that separates a board-based offering from a true factory automation component. The heritage of Xio is industrial automation, and this is a major gold star approval."

"We are excited going into 2012 because we are readying one of the most significant offerings in the automation business," concluded Lento. "Wrapping up this major approval paves the way for our newest offerings."

About Xio Inc.

XiO is leading the automation industry into a new era of flexible input/output for electronic sensors, actuators and controllers. XiO's Soft-I/O® is revolutionary technology that reduces part count, wiring expense, provisioning and maintenance costs by an order of magnitude compared to traditional approaches.

XiO's patented Soft-I/O technology is used by control OEMs to replace traditional PLCs, providing huge cost savings and extended functionality. Soft-I/O's flexibility makes it uniquely suitable in energy systems.

XiO is a high tech company started by distinguished veterans in high precision industrial control systems, serving markets from silicon wafer fabs, mining, utilities, the petro-chemical industry and beyond.

XiO was born to focus on Soft-I/O, a technology that is revolutionizing the traditional Input/Output or I/O market.

If you

The true power of Soft-I/O is that any pin can be software reconfigured for a specific mode. On the right is an image of the drag and drop interface in the Soft-I/O web management console. Flexibility is designed into the device. Any pin can be configured to be a 0-20mA input or output, or a 0 to 10V analog input or output, or a 5V digital input or output, or a 0 to 75mV differential analog input to measure thermocouples.

Added to the Flexibility of I/O pins, Soft-I/O also introduces the concept of a Soft-Device™

A Soft-Device is s a configurable software component that can be purchased to extend the functionality of a Soft-I/O module in the same way that applications for Apple's appstore extend the functionality of the iPhone. See the section on Soft-Devices for more information on how Soft-Devices solve specific problems.

You can read more about the specifics of these using the links in the Article Index at the top right or by clicking on the Next link below.

Sequences

Sequences in a Soft-I/O allows a user to create powerful control loops with having to understand complex ladder logic diagrams. With sequences you can tell a Soft-I/O module to wait for a specific trigger on an input before triggering a number of events. Below is a screen shot of the intuitive sequence setup screen.

A very complex sump pump mechanism can be implemented using the Soft-I/O sequence engine:

• Step 1: Trigger the sequence when the high level sensor goes high
• Step 2: Switch on the sump motor
• Step 3: Wait until the low level sensor goes high
• Step 4: Wait 30 seconds
• Step 5: Verify that the low level sensor is still high
• Step 6: Switch off the sump motor

Sequences have a number of additional options like alarms, power-up behavior, start and stop triggers, interaction with Soft-Devices and interaction with other sequences.

Data Logging

Data logging is at the center of many critical industrial and experimental process monitoring. Soft-I/O's data logging goes beyond the simple storing of information that requires tedious analysis of large data sets. Soft-I/O includes the following functionality:

• a trigger that start the data logging, for example the temperature of a fermentation process exceeded 110 degrees.
• storing of samples that led up to led up to the trigger, for example, measuring the air flow up to the point when the trigger fired.
• storing a specified number of samples after the trigger event. This can help a user to analyze the ability of a system to recover after a catastrophic event.
• emailing the results. Soft-I/O can convert the saved log files to CSV that can be opened in Excel and will email it to a user whenever an exception occurs, freeing the user to only react to exceptions.

Communications

The default configuration and monitoring interface for Soft-I/O is its built-in web site.

For OEMs who want to integrate Soft-I/O with larger automation networks, we provide:

• a Telnet interface for rapid testing of commands and interactive monitoring and control;
• a TCP/IP interface using standard sockets and the same commands as the Telnet interface to automate interaction with entities defined in Soft-I/O;
• an optional Modbus slave interface to access a subset of the attributes and methods on Soft-I/O; and
• an email interface to report status and alarm events.

More information on Soft-I/O capabilities is available from the Soft-I/O Product Web Site.

In order to introduce the term Soft-Device, we need to begin with a bit of history and look at the way that input/output or I/O systems have been built for the past 50 years or so.

Soft-Devices are a game changer, but to understand them, we need to first look back at the old way. We have become accustomed to buying a computer peripheral and then installing a software driver that knows how to handle your new peripheral. Without drivers, printers would be much less capable. With an old-style I/O system or a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC or PAC), there is no concept of device.

Traditional PLC Wiring

When you want to hook up a common three-wire proximity sensor to your PLC, you really only hook up one wire to the PLC, the output of the sensor which is an input to the PLC. Or course, you have to make sure that you buy the right sensor (sourcing or sinking) and the right input module (sourcing or sinking). You hook up power to the sensor from somewhere on your panel and then hook up the one wire to your PLC. You then hook up a wire from your PLC to the power supply to reference the PLC to your power supply. All your PLC knows is that there is some input. The input could be from anything.

Soft-I/O Wiring

Soft-I/O is a very different product. First, Soft-I/O can be configured for sourcing or sinking circuits. There is no other hardware version to buy and stock as for a PLC or I/O card. Second, Soft-I/O provides the power for your device. The combination of these two capabilities makes it natural for Soft-I/O to now handle more of the device. For example, if you configure Soft-I/O for a dry contact switch rather than a proximity switch, Soft-I/O will give you the opportunity to de-bounce the switch. What’s that? Mechanical switches “bounce” when they close. Because Soft-I/O is such a fast input device, it will see the bounces as multiple transitions of the switch. You can put in 20msec as a de-bounce time, and Soft-I/O will “see” one transition.

Soft-Devices

So, Soft-I/O uses the concept of <strong>“Soft-Device”</strong> to handle physical sensors and actuators. What about actuator Soft-Devices? When you create a light bulb Soft-Device, Soft-I/O knows that you may want to flash the light bulb, so you automatically have those controls available.

A natural extension of the Soft-Device for physical sensors and actuators is to create Soft-Devices for non-physical devices, such as temperature controllers or integrators or even light towers. When you create a temperature controller Soft-Device, you are led through a very simple process or setting up the temperature sensor, testing it and then setting up and testing the heater. Once they are ready, you are led through the controller configuration.

Please check out our Data Logger Soft-Device. Our Data Logger has more features than most data loggers, and it is perfectly integrated with the other Soft-Devices. So, if you are sampling a thermocouple, you get the data file sampled in degrees C or F or K at your choice. The Data Logger “knows” about the other Soft-Devices. Looking forward, you will see an increasing number of applications on our website. We call them Soft-Devices. Others may call them apps. Whatever you call them, it’s the most powerful new model in the controls world since the PLC was invented more than 50 years ago. And it’s all made possible by the absolutely unique patented configurable input/output module, Soft-I/O!

You can find more examples over at our ever growing Soft-I/O Soft Devices.

Soft-I/O has reinvented how to connect sensors and actuators to computers. The traditional way has been unchanged for about 50 years. This old way employs dozens of different hardware interface modules to hook up the thousands of different sensors and actuators. Here is a 30,000 foot description.

Yesterday all PLCs in the U.S. went out on strike in a bid to get more flexible I/O and better user interfaces. A spokes person said that the need for better control tools was due to some fool increasing the turn around time on installations.

Soft-IO® - 'Experience the I/O Freedom'!. It has never been easier to create your own dynamic control system. Manage all your I/O from the tool you use most frequently, your web browser.

With a library of available soft devices, you can add what you need as your control requirements grow.

The one thing about a job requirement, it always changes! Soft-I/O makes it easy to add the most common sensor and actuator interfaces without having to buy new hardware. OEMs can use software to "re-wire" inputs and outputs.  Technicians can also edit content through a familiar graphical Control Panel that gives you complete control over your Soft-I/O device using any web browser.