In this video we’ll walk through the various I/O pin configuration options shown in this functional overview chart from the user manual. This looks kinda complicated, but it’s really not that bad once you understand what’s going on. In this menu option you tell pins A1 and A3 what they will be doing. Then down here you refine that configuration for the function you chose. For example, If you setup pin A1 up here as an analog output, then down here you would be given the analog options to refine. If you set it to be a Switching output, then down here you’ll be able to configure what type of switching output it is. Same thing for pin A3, but he can also be an error output or even an input pin. Again, you select what function in this menu, and then configure it in this menu which will be one of these options. One nice thing about all of this is when you configure one of these pins the bubble on the run mode screen changes to reflect that so you always know what the pin is doing. If you said you want the pin to be a switching output, the bubble would be one of these “A” numbers. If you said you want it to be an error output, then it becomes an F for fault. If A1 is selected to be an analog output (for the two sensors that can do that) then you would see an “AN” here for Analog. So at a glance you can see how your I/O pins are setup – I really like that. Let’s use A1 for our walk through of all of these switching output options since on my unit that pin has a dedicated output. In that menu I can set the A1 Output to go active when an object is detected. I just place my object in front of the laser, press T to calibrate on this object height and when ever an object of that height goes by, the A1 pin will go active and this bubble will change. The signal won’t go away until the object height has fallen below that level plus whatever you set the hysteresis at. That way non-uniform surfaces won’t give you multiple alarms. The hysteresis is set over here. Just dial in whatever you want. The T Background menu is very similar, except now you learn the background and anything that is larger than the Hysteresis plus 10mm plus another half Hysteresis will be detected and the signal won’t be released until it has fallen below the Hysteresis level. To set that up you just enter that menu item, make sure there are NO objects in the line of sight and hit T. The sensor calibrates and you’re ready to go. Now if an object passes by and it is large enough – it will be detected. The window mode is similar to the previous two, except now you can detect an object between two set points, or within a window. You just place the object in the center of the region, go into the T Window menu and press T. Now any object that is within this window will be detected. How wide is the window? You set that right here – just dial in anything you want. And the hysteresis, of course, under the Hysteresis menu. This Poti command, I assume that stands for Potentiometer, allows you to tweak the trigger point for all of these. For example, if your setup configured the sensor to trigger at 197mm and you need to bump that up a few millimeters, just drop into this menu and tweak it. If you have the sensor set to Teach Window Mode, you’ll see it toggle between the two window edges like this. The plus and minus keys tweak the center of the window so you’ll see both the high and the low change each time you press one. This menu let’s you set the output type – you can choose from these three options and look, it even shows you a diagram for each one – that’s pretty cool… This menu lets you pick if the output should be normally open or normally closed. The On delay and Off delay menus adjust how long the sensor waits to report the start or end of and event. You can set the time from 0 to 10 seconds. This little falling edge right here tells you that the OFF delay is enabled for this contact. And this one tells you that the ON delay is enabled. That’s really handy. If you chose an impulse type for the response you can’t set the output delay, and instead just get an “Impulse” like this to remind you it’s not available. Speaking of Impulse … The impulse menu lets you change the switching output to be a pulse where you specify the width. A zero width means no impulse – the signal stays active as long as the object is present. This little pulse on the main display is a reminder that this output is set to Impulse mode. A minute ago we did the Teach Object, Teach Background and Teach Window. With those you set a fixed threshold and when the object crosses that threshold, the pin changes state. That’s great, but what if your application has a large temperature swing? Well, if the sensor is mounted on a large steel frame for example, that steel frame is going to expand and contract with temperature, right? And since the resolution of these sensors is so fine, they are going to see that and mess up all the distances you setup. Wouldn’t it be great if you could setup a sensor so that you could use to constantly re-calibrate the sensor? Well, that’s exactly what this guy does. Back under the pin function menu, I can tell pin A3 to be an external trigger for A1 and what type of mode . Then, under A1’s menu, I can tell it to respond to A3’s trigger and what kind of detection it should use. All the hysteresis and windowing are done using the same menus as before. The only difference is now you have a way to automatically recalibrate the system as it runs! So if you have an application that needs to be accurate across temperature extremes – take a look at this one – it’s an awesome feature. Ok, that was all the switched output modes. We have one more Output to look at: The error out. If you set a pin to be an Error out, the pin will go active when it doesn’t see any laser light reflected back. This can be really handy when setting up the system to ensure you have adequate signal. Down in the pin’s menu, you can specify the type of output and whether it is normally open or closed. You can tell a pin that it is a laser enable – which is cool because it lets you turn the laser on or off from an external signal. The manual laser enable menu over here always wins – if you go into the menu and manually turn the laser off – this input pin has no effect. And finally, we have the offset mode. This one has lots of uses, but let’s use this as an example: Suppose you have an object that is being pushed towards the sensor, but it has an irregular shape – a protrusion like this for example. Wouldn’t it be great if we could tell the sensor to give us THIS answer and not the actual measured distance? Well, guess what – that’s a great place to use this offset feature. You just dial in what ever offset you want and the final distance is modified by that amount so now you are getting the distance to this point and not to that one. With this option your laser doesn’t have to hit the nearest point of the object and that makes your life easier because it gives you more flexibility on where you can mount the laser sensor. It doesn’t have to be pointed exactly at the closest point on the object. As you can see, there’s a lot of things you can do with these incredibly flexible full featured laser distance sensors from AutomationDirect And don’t forget – Automation Directs tech support is FREE and you’ll talk to a real live person here in the US within minutes. Got a question? You can call, e-mail, or even do on-line chat during regular business hours. AutomationDirect offers Wenglor distance measuring sensors from 80 micro meters all the way out to 100 meters to cover all of your distance measuring needs.