Continuing to answer questions from an Anaheim training class attendee: There are lots of great Internet resources; finding them is the challenge. Of course I’m a little biased towards our site, www.us.profibus.com and the PROFIblog. But beyond those…
The automation industry magazine’s web sites are a good starting point. These are the four I access most frequently:
I’ve also signed up for some of their email newsletters.
Wikipedia is a surprisingly good resource for the more general overviews; for example, PROFINET, Ethernet, fieldbus, and HART.
For keeping up-to-date, this blog and the roughly 30 other industrial automation blogs are good. I keep up-to-date using RSS feeds from these blogs. For more on RSS and an importable list of the RSS feeds I use visit our RSS Primer. Other “real-time” sources include the PROFIBUS and PROFINET forums and the long-running Automation List from www.control.com.
Obviously, your vendors’ web sites will be valuable. Readers are welcome to jump in with additional suggestions.
The knowledge gained on your six-year sojourn into IT should serve you well back in Automation. Industrial Ethernet is being rapidly adopted in industry and that IT knowledge is definitely transferable. The need for cooperation between IT and Control Engineering is one of my pet topics. I’ve blogged about it frequently with some references to magazine articles on the topic:
Control Engineers Boo IT – Continued
IT vs. Control Engineering, again
IT and engineering – two organizations separated by common technology
Balancing the Needs of Engineering and IT
Yikes! Yesterday’s post was number 200, a modest milestone, but a milestone none the less.