PROFIblog

loading… The December issue of Industrial Ethernet Book has lots of PROFINET articles: “Moving up to Industrial Ethernet: PROFINET” provides a good introduction to PROFINET.  It also reminds me of something I should have pointed out in response to an anonymous comment in the blog about PROFINET real-time (RT) messages not being routable: the spec…

loading… LEGO just celebrated its 50th anniversary as reported by fellow blogger Eric Murphy on the OPC Exchange and by Time Magazine in “Lego Celebrates 50 Years of Building”.  Eric created the OPC logo in LEGO blocks.  (Not quite as ambitious as this LEGO aircraft carrier.)  I don’t have LEGOs but I did get Lincoln…

loading… I did not get to all that reading I planned to over Christmas vacation.  I did finally start to watch Firefly though*.  That was a gift last August.  My Christmas gifts included a new suitcase, which I’ll put to the test starting tomorrow.  (Don’t check the one-day training event schedule; you haven’t missed one. …

loading… “Periodic Desires” was my Thesaurus talking as I looked for synonyms for “Seasons Greetings”.  As I look forward to some well-deserved downtime (so I can get caught up on my reading), I’d like to extend   Merry Christmas (to the 96% of you who celebrate it)    Happy Hanukah (to the 5% of you…

loading… I’m promoting an anonymous comment to the main blog.  This was a comment to How Ethernet/IP Corrupts.  I prefer signed comments, but this one raises some good points that deserve continuing discussion: Let me start out by saying that this is a very interesting post – and it brings to mind a couple of…

loading… Whew!  The 2007 training schedule is finally at an end as we finished our PROFINET one-day training event in Silicon Valley yesterday.  Our last PROFIBUS in Process one-day training event was last week.  After a brief sigh and self-congratulatory beverage consumption, it’s on to 2008.  We have a tough assignment in preparing for next…

loading… “And now for something completely different…” …with apologies to Rocky, Bullwinkle, and Monty Python.  Just to provide some evidence that I am not completely Scotty-ish, as in:    Capt. Kirk: Another technical journal, Scotty?    Scotty: Aye.    Capt. Kirk: Don’t you ever relax?    Scotty: I am relaxing. I had some time before…

loading… One of my pet peeves is referring to “wireless” as one monolithic thing.  Peter Welander does a good job of breaking down the monolith into sensible pieces in the Control Engineering article “Topologies for Wireless Instrumentation.”  Wireless for PROFIBUS and PROFINET is in the category of “wireless fieldbus backhaul” in the article.  We are…

loading… Ethernet/IP folks are always saying that PROFINET “corrupts the stack.”  I want to show that PROFINET no more “corrupts the stack” than Ethernet/IP does.  Since those proponents of Ethernet/IP apparently don’t understand how Ethernet interacts with “the stack,” here is a short tutorial on Ethernet and the stack. What is “the stack” anyway?  For…

loading… The SPS/IPC/Drives show is much larger than our shows in North America (43,000 visitors compared to ISA’s 8,500 attendees).  In fact, the whole ISA Expo would fit in one of this fair’s 9 halls.  The nomenclature is a little different, too.  Americans say “show” while Europeans say “fair.”  Americans describe things “in the booth”…