This week Shawn Tierney hosts Michael Warren from Wieland Electric in studio to demonstrate the SAMOS PRO Safety Controller in episode 15 of The Automation Show Season 2:

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Watch The Automation Show: Samos Pro Safety Controller

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Show Notes:

Thanks to Michael for coming out to our office, and to Wieland for sponsoring this episode! For more information about the SAMOS Pro Safety Controller, see the below links:

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  Wieland Electric Safety Products

  
  


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  Free Download of Samos Plan6

  
  


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  SAMOS PRO SAFETY CONTROLLER

  
  


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  Safety Training

  
  


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  Wieland Electric North America Contact info

  
  

Note: The video edition was originally released on 07-22-25, and re-released with Audio Podcast Edition on 08-21-25.

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)

Shawn Tierney (Host): Everybody, welcome back to the show. Sean Tierney here from Insights and Automation, and we have a special show for you today. I have Michael here from Wheelan, and we’re gonna talk safety PLCs and all kinds of great stuff. But before we jump into that, you know, I haven’t had Wheeling on the show before. So, Michael, I’m hoping you can give us a well, not only introduce yourself.

I got to meet him this morning before we started recording. But, if you could introduce yourself and then maybe tell us a little bit about your company, and then we can jump into why we’re here to talk about these good looking products. So let me turn it over to you.

Michael Warren (Wieland): Okay. Great. Well, thank you, Sean. Thank you for having me. I appreciate that.

And, yeah, my name is Mike Warren. I’m a business development manager for, Whelan Electric, North America. I’ve been, with Whelan a couple years now, but, I got over twenty years of experience in the industry. I have a couple of TUV certifications under my belt. I have a TUV functional safety engineer and also TUV certified functional safety expert.

In addition to that, I do consulting for safety applications. I teach safety classes. I also teach the CFSE class. And, I do things like, review machine safeguarding, standards, CE marking, risk assessments, remediations, lockout tagout, basically everything that, is involved in in the safety world. These are some of the classes that I cover.

So, what we’re doing today, Sean, is to talk about, our product. Okay? The the Samuels Pro Compact. And the Samuels Pro Compact is a safety PLC. It’s known, by various names, safety controller, brick PLC, whatnot.

But it is a compact, as the name implies, safety controller. And in a safety chain, it really is, the keystone to a safety, system. There’s always, an input device. Okay. We follow the ILO system.

Okay. I for input devices. L for logic, in this case, the Samuels Pro Compact. And an output devices could be contactors, which I have here, in the demo itself. Okay.

It could be a, OSSD, inputs from a VFD or robots. Okay? So those qualify as output devices. But the input device is for detection. The large device makes a decision, and the output device executes.

And the primary purpose of an output device is to remove energy in an emergency or a, an intrusion, situation. So let’s take a look at the product itself. Okay? The Samuels Pro Compact, again, is occupying this spot right here, in the demo itself. It’s 45 millimeters.

Okay? Very compact. The base system is set up with 20 inputs. Okay? 20 devices.

Okay. 20 inputs, it would be, 10 safety devices. Safety device is always redundant. There’s two points per safety device. So that device is already set up for 10.

There’s four safety outputs on it. And the version that I have here in the demo is actually an upgraded version including motion. So not only will it, set up and accept the inputs from some of these safety devices that I have here, for example, like light curtains, I have door switches, I have an e stop, I also have an analog position switch right there that’ll detect the input. Other than those devices, I also have a safety encoder attached to one of the axes, in the demo to do motion detection. Not only are we detecting people, but we’re also detecting shaft movements, okay, with the encoder itself.

Shawn Tierney (Host): And that’s optional. So there’s two models, one with motion and one without.

Michael Warren (Wieland): That’s absolutely right. Alright. And I wanna point out that the software is free. It can be downloaded easily. It can throw it on your laptop.

And the nice thing about it, and we’ll get to the software. We’re gonna show a little bit about it, that you can use the software without any hardware attached to it yet. Okay? You could literally can build your safety system in the virtual sense, test it out, check to see if it’s, working properly. And, again, when we dive into the software, you’ll see a little bit, the nice, additional features you get.

Things like a schematic and a report, and also show you the modules that are actually part of the system itself. Okay? Now, we talked about, the communications on this too. Okay? We have three onboard communication, protocols.

Okay? Onboard, we can, work with PROFINET, Ethernet IP, and Modbus TCP.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Oh, nice.

Michael Warren (Wieland): There are additional gateways that you can get to add additional, cons. Okay? That includes CAN open, PROFIBUS, and EtherCAT. So, again, we have a nice way of communicating with other protocols, and let’s face it, other manufacturers. And in the safety world, the manufacturer’s controllers, the actual, automation controllers are not to dictate to the safety system when to remove energy or not.

It’s the other way around. The safety always has a a precedence and a priority over the controls. Its purpose with these communication gateways is to inform the control systems of what’s going on in the safety.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. I mean, most of the time, your your master PLC is gonna already have an HMI or SCADA system. Correct. So they’re gonna wanna display that information. So if you have those especially the the three you have built in, I’ll be able to probably the biggest three Yep.

You know, according to all the surveys and industry reports and whatnot. Having those built in means I mean, you cover most PLCs standard PLCs. You’re gonna be able to give the data to them. They’re gonna be able to know in their program. They’re They’re gonna be able to let their operators know using the existing equipment.

So very cool.

Michael Warren (Wieland): Yep. And in this world, we, fully understand that, it’s a it’s a mix and match. Okay? Okay. Rare do we find customers that are using a single brand for everything.

You and it’s necessary that, you know, one brand of light curtains works with the controller and another brand of door switch and whatnot. They’re all kinda compatible. And the communications, though, is very, very important, because, again, they’re not, operating, independently and in a silo.

Shawn Tierney (Host): So if I understand that correctly, so we’re seeing your products, Ian. I really don’t know much about your company and what products they make, but I can see you make a lot of products here. So you’re saying that you don’t just work with the Whelan products, you work with other people’s safety products as well. Absolutely. Third party light curtain or third party contactor or safety contactor or third parties, safety push button.

Michael Warren (Wieland): Absolutely. Okay. Whelan, itself is a, it’s a German company. Okay? Okay?

They’re famous for their terminal blocks. Okay? So really we put them on the map, you know, many, many years ago. But, there’s two pillars for the company right now. One is safety products, and the other is distributed power.

And, again, this is an important product for it. This is really our ke