As a member of the IO-Link Community, you have the opportunity to actively participate in the further development of the standard. We are continuously looking for experts who can contribute their expertise and further develop the specification according to the needs of customers and the industry. Your participation offers you the chance to shape the specification according to application requirements and benefit from the feedback of other participants.

Our community promotes the active involvement of its members and offers numerous opportunities for networking and collaboration. By exchanging ideas and best practices, you can gain valuable insights for your own projects.

Join our dynamic community and help to continuously develop the IO-Link standard to meet the latest requirements. Together, we can meet the challenges of industrial communication with IO-Link through innovative solutions.

Call for experts – mioty & IO-Link cooperation

In context of transmitting sensor data from remote and not connected offsite plant locations, the challenges start in connecting this sensor nodes to the plant infrastructure. Here we can make use of long range and low power wireless technologies (LPWAN) to collect the sensor data. mioty is a new emerging wireless technology for rough environments, which is sophisticated for wireless connectivity in industrial environment and may extend the capabilities of IO-Link. In comparison to IO-Link wireless, mioty is not intended for automation purposes and has a significant smaller payload per time.

Therefore, our aim is to define and investigate the opportunities and challenges when combining mioty with IO-Link. The task of this group is to identify work packages for the cooperation of both groups.

All interested member companies are invited to join this workgroup. Please sign in if you are interested via email to alexander(dot)kahlig(at)ifm(dot)com and joachim(dot)uffelmann(at)ifm(dot)com.

Call for Experts - Time based IO-Link

IO-Link with a typical cycle time of 1-2 ms today limits its use in highly precise time-synchronous applications such as in fast processing machines.
An expansion of IO-Link to include synchronized clocks and time stamps enables the automation of fast machines or the analysis of time-based data sets e.g. in the area of vibration analysis. The accuracy, which is limited by the cycle time, should be expanded by synchronous time information in order to process sensor data precisely and to control actuators with high precision.

A time-based extension should be defined as a communication profile within the IO-Link domain by the IO-Link community. Project title: „Time based IO-Link“.
We are looking for experts from device, system and software manufacturers who would like to contribute actively to this communication profile work with their experience and requirements. All interested member companies are invited to participate in the project group. 

If you are interested in this working group please registeruntil July 22nd, 2024 via e-mail to frank(dot)moritz(at)sick(dot)de. Questions on the project group and possible attendance please address directly to the project group leader.

Call for Experts - "IO-Link Master Description"

A standardized, fieldbus, vendor and tool neutral IO-Link Master Description (IOMD) is required as equivalence to the IODD (IO Device Description) which describes sensors and actuators with an IO-Link communication interface for engineering toolchains. The IOMD shall contain information about a master’s identity, communication properties, port properties (including electrical capabilities), parameters, process data, diagnosis data, supported SMI services and the design of the user interface for engineering tools.


One use case for a standardized IOMD is the possibility of using IO-Link master configuration data independently of manufacturers and tools. In addition, the IOMD in combination with the already available Standardized Master Interface (SMI) will facilitate the interoperability of IIoT applications (especially Sensor-2-Cloud, Asset Administration Shell and Digital Twin solutions). This will help to shorten the time to market for application development, which is the main benefit for users of IO-Link products. 

For this purpose, a new working group "IO-Link Master Description" is looking for experts, who are willing to contribute actively their experience and requirements in this field by
• Use case definitions
• Requirement definitions
• Identification of the basic format
• Definition of the IOMD
 

All interested member companies are invited to join this working group. Please sign in if you are interested until January 31rd, 2024 via e-mail to lorand(dot)molnar(at)teconcept(dot)de.