A Matrox Indio board provides Matrox Design Assistant with
industrial I/O and communication capabilities when using a
non-Matrox runtime platform PC. Adding a Matrox Indio board to your
PC can prove useful, especially if you need to add more discrete
inputs and outputs for the real-time synchronization of a vision
application with industrial devices.
Matrox Indio has an Advanced I/O Engine that includes 8
auxiliary input signals, 8 auxiliary output signals, 2 rotary
decoders, 2 I/O command lists (with 4 latches), and 16 timers. The
auxiliary I/O signals have hardware-assisted management that
enables real-time synchronization. For more information, see the
Matrox Advanced I/O Engine section in
Chapter 40: IO steps.
In addition, the auxiliary I/O signals support 24V and
TTL-compatible signaling for factory-floor and lab use. You can
configure these using jumpers on the Matrox Indio board. For more
information, see the Matrox Indio Installation and
hardware manual.
You can use the general purpose network interface of Matrox
Indio to connect GigE cameras. Alternatively, you can use the NIC
for communicating with external devices using the PROFINET,
EtherNet/IP, or Modbus/TCP industrial protocol.
Matrox Indio has a Matrox PROFINET Engine that provides a
hardware implementation of the PROFINET industrial communication
protocol. For more information on setting up PROFINET communication
with Matrox Design Assistant, see the
Setting up for PROFINET section in
Chapter 41: Quick Comm protocol and PROFINET and EtherNet/IP
steps.
If the Intel I210 does not appear as a network adapter in
Microsoft and Windows' Device Manager, you might need to install an
Intel Ethernet Controller I210 series driver, which can be found at
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/. Once the driver is installed,
you can use Matrox Indio to interface with a GigE Vision camera, as
described in the
Using I/O steps with GigE/USB3 Vision cameras section in
Chapter 40: IO steps.
Matrox Indio provides support for Power-over-Ethernet (PoE).