PR electronics, headquartered in Aarhus, Denmark, develops and produces signal conditioning devices for the process industry in the areas of temperature, intrinsically safe interfaces, panel-mounted devices and signal conditioning. With its field devices, the company complements Wieland Electric's safety portfolio. This applies in particular to the 'samos Pro Compact' safety controller and its new analog input modules, whose range of applications is significantly expanded in combination with the transmitters, thermocouples, signal doublers and communication units from PR electronics. Wieland Electric will offer the signal processing devices in conjunction with the safety controller as part of its solutions business, for example to serve ATEX applications. The appropriately certified field devices from PR electronics can convert ATEX signals so that they can communicate with the safety controller. "By working with PR electronics, we can offer a complete package for safe analog value processing and, of course, open up new markets," explains Markus Kick, Global Business Development Manager Firing Technology at Wieland Electric. The focus markets are primarily mechanical and plant engineering, but also decentralized process technology, especially combustion technology. Wieland Electric can now tailor user-friendly and customized concepts for customers, from thermal process to steam boiler applications, based on the 'samos Pro' safety controller. Safe duplication of signals or the handling of thermocouples and resistive inputs will also be possible in future.

Another advantage of the collaboration: the configuration displays from PR electronics enable process value monitoring via the built-in display and, thanks to their Modbus RTU interface, also data transmission to the cloud and thus online visualization. For simple connection to the internet, Wieland Electric relies on the 'wienet' IIoT gateways, which are part of the 'wienet Cloud Services'. Thanks to their OPC UA server function, they enable data to be transferred to all OPC UA-capable cloud systems. In future, the gateways will also have an OPC UA client for full support of the open communication standard. The IIoT gateways not only act as a data interface and filter, but also as a WebPLC, as they offer a local web server. All transmitters and signal doublers from PR electronics can therefore communicate directly with the IIoT gateways and with the panels of the 'HMI-Eco' family and thus do not unnecessarily burden the fieldbuses of the safety controllers with standard machine or process data. In addition to the sales cooperation, the companies also want to promote the transfer of knowledge.