FC Lightbus Card Series

The Beckhoff FC Lightbus Card Series consists of a line of high-performance PCI fieldbus cards designed specifically for connectivity with Lightbus, an optical fiber-based fieldbus technology. The cards offer cycle times as short as 100 microseconds for responsive process communication in free-running or synchronized modes. Users can select between single or dual parallel fieldbus channels per card to efficiently utilize system resources. Comprehensive parameter and diagnostic interfaces further support monitoring and configuring the connected Lightbus network. The cards interface with the Lightbus PCI interface and optical fiber backbone, which provides interference resistance and fast 2.5 MBaud data transfer. Lightbus enables an integrated process image to be made available to a PC-based control system via Dual Ported RAM. This divides the image into input/output/flag data, communication parameters, and process control updating sections. The cards smoothly integrate the Lightbus network into the PC's address space.