Announcing New Products!

Datalogic Automation's RFID Business Unit Announces Profibus™ for Cobalt HF™, an Enhanced Cobalt HF Platform, New Gateways, and the New Cobalt HS.

Bologna, Italy February 19, 2008. Datalogic Automation’s RFID Business Unit announces several new Escort Memory Systems products for industrial auto-ID applications. PROFIBUS™ communications are now available for the EMS Cobalt HF™ product family of high-frequency industrial RFID systems. With the addition of PROFIBUS™ connectivity the Cobalt HF RFID product family extends an already impressive list of communications options available to the factory automation engineer, such as TCP/IP, DeviceNet™, Ethernet IP™, Modbus TCP™ , USB, RS-485, RS-232, and RS-422.

The standard Cobalt HF platform has been enhanced with improved installation options, more accessible diagnostics, and an attractive graphical design in a new product revision, Cobalt HF Rev 02. PROFIBUS™ connectivity is just the first in a series of new features to be added to the Cobalt product family.

Two new models of the Gateway are now available: GWY-01-DNT and GWY-01-232. The Gateway is a network device that hosts a local RS-485 Subnet16™ of up to 16 RFID read/write stations. Those stations are then presented through a single connection point to an external network such as TCP/IP or industrial Ethernet. The two newest Gateway models provide external connection to DeviceNet and RS-232.

Cobalt’s flexible architecture has also been extended into Escort Memory Systems’ highly successful and long-running HS family of RFID tags, antennas, and controllers. With these new Cobalt HS systems, current installations of HS tags can benefit from the direct Ethernet communications and from the powerful C-Macro™ command set offered in all Cobalt products.