A reference design that might help engineers build industrial sensor networks, integrate IO-Link, and reduce MCU workload. Read on!
When we design industrial sensor and actuator networks, we often face challenges like driving heavy loads or data lines with minimum power, ensuring flexible application use, and maintaining high protection and compactness. The Industrial Smart Sensor reference design (STEVAL-IOD04KT1) from STMicroelectronics helps us solve these problems by providing a complete hardware and software solution for real-life IO-Link industrial applications.
At the core of the system is a microcontroller that runs IO-Link control software, manages communication between the dual-channel transceiver and various MEMS sensors via standard interfaces, and integrates functions for IoT applications. Based on a high-performance Arm Cortex-M0+ 32-bit RISC core, the MCU handles communications efficiently while offloading tasks like clock extraction, wake-up detection, and data buffering to the transceiver. This reduces our workload and power consumption.
The transceiver ensures reliable IO-Link communication between the 24V bus rail and the microcontroller. Its internal temperature sensor can serve as an environmental sensor, while its configurable DC-DC regulator and multi-octet transmission mode reduce MCU computation effort and improve power dissipation. Its internal architecture also gives us reverse polarity protection and high EMC immunity up to ±2.5 kV surge, ensuring it operates in harsh industrial environments.
The board integrates a high-accuracy, ultra-low-power 3-axis magnetic sensor and an iNEMO inertial module with a machine learning core and finite state machine, both with digital output. We can add additional sensors via the J2 connector. An M8-to-M12 standard industrial connector adapter allows us to connect easily to an IO-Link Master.
The software package includes the IO-Link control stack, IODD sensor description files, and STM32Cube HAL, enabling us to communicate with any IO-Link Master V1.1 interface. We can use IDEs such as IAR Embedded Workbench, Keil MDK, or STM32CubeIDE to fine-tune or expand the design. Firmware modifications and sensor extensions are supported using the compact STLINK-V3MINI in-circuit debugger and programmer.
This reference design gives us a complete solution covering both electrical and software requirements. It simplifies IO-Link industrial sensor development, reduces MCU workload, improves power efficiency, and offers flexible integration. It helps us validate, prototype, and deploy industrial sensor applications faster. The IO-Link software pack is free, with user-friendly licensing, and portable across STM32 MCU series, making it easier for us to integrate with other STM32Cube-based software.
STMicroelectronics has tested this reference design. It comes with a bill of materials (BOM), schematics, assembly drawing, printed circuit board (PCB) layout, and more. We can find additional data about the reference design on the company’s website. To read more about this reference design, click here.
