The UEIPAC series programmable automation controllers from United Electronics Industries offer a combination of flexibility, high performance, low cost and small size. The UEIPAC unit is an ideal for a wide variety of measurement and control applications, including: temperature control, remote vehicle control (UAV and ULV), and hardware in-the-loop (HIL). The UEIPAC is also suitable for a host of embedded data acquisition (DAQ) applications, as it allows systems to be developed without the cost or the additional space required by an external host computer.
The UEIPAC 300 is 4” x 4” x 4” and offers 3 I/O slots. The UEIPAC 600 is slightly larger at 4” x 4” x 5.8” but provides 6 I/O slots and allows up to 150 analogue inputs or 288 DIO channels. Each UEIPAC Cube contains the PowerPC processor preloaded with a standard Linux operating system (currently 2.6.x). It also contains an ethernet port, a single port ethernet switch, and a serial port.
The UEIPAC has a selection of I/O boards that includes analogue input (with up to 24 bit resolution), analogue output, digital I/O, Serial and CAN communications, ARINC-429 networking, counter/timer, quadrature encoder input and more. There are over 25 different I/O boards available, so it is likely that there is a configuration suitable for most applications.
Using the UEIPAC, applications written on the user's PC are deployed on the cube and run fully standalone. This allows the smaller, faster, more reliable and higher performances systems. It also eliminates the cost of a dedicated host PC and guarantees long term availability of the identical hardware. This is critical when certifying products through CE or FDA etc.
The application runs as a regular Linux process, giving access to the standard POSIX API provided by the GNU C runtime library (glibc) as well as any other library that can be compiled for Linux.
To develop programs for the UEIPAC, a copy of the UEIPAC Linux TK programmer’s toolkit needs to be purchased. The toolkit provides the various items needed to write applications for the UEIPAC. Regardless of the number of cubes deployed, only one programming toolkit is required.
The UEIPAC cube may be placed on a desk or table, or can be mounted to any flat surface/wall, DIN Rail or in a standard 19” rack. The UEIPAC may be ac, dc or battery powered.
The UEI product range is supplied and supported by Adept Scientific in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Scandinavia.