Wireless for the here-and-now
loading… There has been a wealth of wireless worry today as the WirelessHART vote looms and SP100 does whatever it does. Peter Welander blogged about the former at WirelessHART: Yes or no? Walt Boyes blogged about the dissension in the SP100 ranks at HART v. SP100: the plot thickens. Taking the worry and work out…
Recommended Pictures
loading… In the US 426,000 cell phones are discarded every day. What does that look like and how do you make a picture that looks like that? See the article and picture in the IEEE Spectrum magazine, “The Big Picture.” Visualizing big numbers is tough; pictures help. Hmm, now 20,000,000 PROFIBUS nodes… too hard. What…
Recommended Reading
loading… Wireless segue into today’s recommended reading list: There is an excellent case study in The Industrial Wireless Book showing how wireless is being used in a giant frozen food storage center. Adding to the typical reasons for wireless (moving equipment) is the temperature, a constant -25 degrees C. For a real world example of…
More Wireless Webinar Q & A
loading… A few more questions (with answers) from the recent wireless webinar: Q: Are there any wireless devices designed specifically for Hazardous Locations (XP, IS, NI, approvals)? Are there any special considerations when using a wireless device in a HazLoc? Yes, there are currently access points and solutions available for hazardous locations, but most of…
Wireless Webinar Q & A
loading… As promised, here are the questions and answers from yesterday’s webinar. If you have a question that we did not get to, send us an email at webinarQ at PTOregistrations dot com. Q: If I want to use WLAN / WiFi with PROFINET, do I need special hardware like special access points? No, you…
Wireless Webinar
loading… We just concluded our Industrial Wireless Networking webinar. We ran out of time before we were able to answer the questions raised during the webinar, so we’ll post the Q&A here tomorrow. The post-webinar survey took us to task for not allowing enough time for live questions. Guilty as charged and our apologies. This…
Pegging the FUD meter
loading… What’s FUD? Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) is a sales or marketing strategy of disseminating negative (and vague) information on a competitor’s product, according to the FUD article at Wikipedia. What pegged my FUD meter? An article in Automation World titled “Era of Compatibility.” The offending (offensive?) paragraph: “A number of Ethernet-based approaches have…
News and Records
loading… When my wife and I moved back to the States from Canada, the young professional packers labeled our boxes. I was surprised to open one of them after the move to Arizona that was labeled “CDs”. The box seemed awfully heavy. Oh, these were the 12-inch, black vinyl “CDs.” Even then all of my…
Pay me now or pay me later
loading… There was an old TV commercial for oil filters that warned you to change the oil filter or risk damaging your engine which would cost you more later. The tag line: “Pay me now or pay me later.” This relates directly to choosing an Industrial Ethernet network. Well, maybe not real directly; in fact,…
On the road again…
loading… The General Assembly Meeting ended Thursday night with the traditional pool party. Friday morning I took off for the next PROFINET one-day training class in Austin. (Ok, truth in traveling, my wife came along and we met our youngest and his family at Sea World in San Antonio for the weekend.) The Training Session…