Crystal Instruments Spider-HUB IEEE 1588 Industrial Network Switch

The Spider-HUB is an industrial Ethernet switch designed and manufactured by Crystal Instruments to solve precision time synchronization in data acquisition and vibration control systems. It supports the latest IEEE 1588v2 technology to meet precision time-stamping requirements, guaranteeing accuracy within 50 nanoseconds, and can be configured for 1588v2 Master, Boundary Clock and Transparent Clock roles. That makes it the component that aligns the sampling instants of front-ends across a large system. The unit uses a modular design with ten RJ45 Ethernet ports for flexible network planning and quick expansion through multiple switches. Ports run at 10, 100 and 1000 Mbit/s line speed, full or half duplex, with autosensing of link speed; they can optionally be programmed to a fixed speed, and speed matching between 10, 100 and 1000 Mbit/s ports is supported. The compact, low-power chassis takes power through a 2.5 mm center-pin jack and draws about 21 watts on average, 25 watts maximum. A choice of front or rear wiring suits a variety of industrial applications including high-speed data acquisition and dynamic signal measurement. In a working system a single Spider-HUB supports up to 8 Spider-80X front-ends; each front-end's Ethernet port connects to the switch, one port goes to the PC, and a remaining port can reach the next cluster to further expand channel count. This makes the Spider-HUB the synchronization hub for distributed measurement networks.