I thought I would be reporting this week from Hanover Fair, but… well, the transportation to Europe was disrupted. It’s not the first time my travel has been disrupted; in fact, not even the worst disruption. At least I’m stuck at home instead of halfway to somewhere like I was on 9/11/2001. So, I’ll get my Hanover news second hand and miss seeing my colleagues in person. In the meantime, here’s news from our PROFINET one-day training classes:
During our one-day training classes we try to explain the appropriate use of many of the industrial networks not just PROFIBUS and PROFINET. WirelessHART, AS-interface, and IO-Link all complement PROFIBUS and PROFINET. Since IO-Link is relatively new we spend some extra time explaining it in the PROFINET classes. The explanation has been well-received by the attendees. I was a little uncertain how that would go over, but folks are happy to hear about this new technology that fills an important gap. Many of the vendors that exhibit at the classes have IO-Link products in addition to PROFIBUS and PROFINET, so attendees can see real product. Speaking of real product, we do a short demo to show how an IO-Link sensor can be configured over the PROFINET network.
For more on IO-Link, download the IO-Link brochure from our White Papers page. You can find additional information in earlier posts; I especially recommend the report from last year’s SPS/IPC/Drives show: SPS Report 3: IO-Link. Even better, attend one of our PROFINET one-day training classes for an in-person look.
–Carl Henning