PROFIBUS and PROFINET news from the last ISA EXPO: Manny was our lone PTO attendee at the ISA show this year. He compared its size to the ISA show in Edmonton. Those of us who had attended in the (not-really-so-distant) past recall the glory years. All the major companies were there. All the trade organizations were there. (PTO, seeing the declining attendance, dropped out three years ago.) I remember readying and working the Wonderware booth in the glory years when there were 50 to 60 chairs in the three-screen Wonderware theater… and the overflow crowd clogged the aisles. Times change.
Manny reported “There was a great showing from PTO members at the Houston ISA. Phoenix Contact, ProSoft, SICK, WAGO and Turk all had great booths which were always full of attendees.” I missed that personal contact by not being at the EXPO. But since these companies also exhibit at our one-day training classes I still get to keep up-to-date with them.
The EDDL folks had a booth with participation by our international umbrella organization, PI (PROFIBUS and PROFINET International). Manny reports:
One of the demonstrations that were of importance to PTO members was the Electronic Device Description Language (EDDL) Demo held at booth 1117. The demo simplified setup, calibration, and advanced diagnostics of simple and complex devices using EDDL.
A complete highlight to the demonstrations in the booth was the interoperability between systems and devices using HART, Foundation Fieldbus, PROFIBUS, and WirelessHART courtesy of EDDL.
Good friend of the PTO James Powell was on hand at the booth to take attendees through the world of PROFIBUS and EDDL. For those of you not familiar with James Powell, he is the author of Catching the Process Fieldbus, and more importantly a fellow Canadian!
[BTW, Happy Thanksgiving to our Canadian friends today.]
Some of our members support EDDL exclusively and others support FDT/DTM exclusively. PROFIBUS and PROFINET support both. In fact we were instrumental in the creation of the EDDL Cooperation Team (ECT) that is now driving convergence between the two.
–Carl Henning