“Good News Is No News.” The PROFINET and PROFIBUS news from Hanover Fair was slim… and that’s a good thing. This means the technologies are stable and complete. Although work continues “around the edges,” the core communications protocols are where they need to be for wide adoption.
With 50,900,000 PROFIBUS nodes installed through 2014 along with 9.800.000 PROFINET nodes, the technologies are already widely adopted. For those who are late to the party, now is the time to join.
In addition to the node count news, other press releases included:
Interoperability assured. PI has done an excellent job of providing members with self-test tools that they can apply prior to testing in a certified PI Test Lab (PITL). The test suite is now at version 2.31 for testing PROFINET version 2.3 products. Fully automated test cases are now available. In addition, a separate tester is available for GSD files. Members may download the tools from the PI website. Details here.
New member of the PI family. We at PI North America are quite proud to see our friend Rodrigo Pinto forming a new Regional PI Association (RPA) in Chile. He also heads a PI Competence Center (PICC) and PI Training Center (PITC). Also, PI North America member FEPROM SOLUTIONS SRL has been approved to open PICCs in La Paz (Bolivia) and in Lima (Peru). Read more.
Anniversary video on 25 years of existence of PI in Germany. At the PI Conference earlier this year, PI debuted a video retrospective of PI Germany’s 25 years. You can see it here.
Next up: a look around the fair.
–Carl Henning