Max external I/Os

from my understanding there only safety I/Os by default and some I/Os for gripper, i thought ive read somewhere, there are some sort of I/O extension card, but i cant find it now

You can expand I/Os almost as you wish by adding PLC (dunno what controler are you gonna use)

You have slots in the controller where you can add an i/o card. If you have the Robot controller in the Modular PLC system you can add a normal PLC I/O card

which contoller sre you using. The profinet IO are come in as digitals. If you want to use them as a word just use M_In16

M_In M_Inb M_in8 M_Inw M_In16 [R]

M_In: Returns a bit.

M_Inb or M_In8: Returns a byte (8 bits).

M_Inw or M_In16: Returns a word (16 bits).

M_In16(2000)