Hanover Fair First Impressions
In the hotel bar after the first day of the show, a guy two stools away observed that we had obviously not been impressed by the show. For us it was just another show. The guy two stools down was from Indiana and it was his first show. He was more impressed than we were. …
Read MorePROFINET and IT Protocols
At ControlDesign.com Jim Montague writes that P Is for Protocol. He points out four IT protocols that help diagnose Ethernet performance and manage traffic: Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) Jim defines each of those. To his list, I would add…
Read MorePROFIpeople
It’s not always about the technology – as solid at the PROFIBUS and PROFINET technologies are. Sometimes it’s about the people who are the public face of the technologies. When you call the PI North America office during business hours, a person answers. We don’t have “press star for a company directory.” We don’t have…
Read MoreManufacturing in America
Manufacturing in America That was the title for last week’s symposium sponsored by Siemens that was accompanied by the following tagline: Community. Collaboration. Innovation. The symposium revolved around a series of talks from End-Users, OEMs, and other industry experts. There was a strong focus on the automotive industry, due in part to its high level…
Read MoreIndustrial Ethernet Security in X Steps
Are fieldbuses less secure than Industrial Ethernets? I think not (in a rare disagreement with Mike Miclot and Brian Oulton from Belden in the webinar “Industrial Security in the Real World: Practical Steps”). They said Industrial Ethernet is more secure. I think the potential security problem with fieldbuses is that they connect to controllers which…
Read MoreOn the PROFI Road
Perhaps you’ve noticed – I like talking about PROFINET and PROFIBUS. Sometimes here, sometimes on the road. I’m just back from on the road in Seattle and the first PROFINET one-day training class of 2013 (with 10 more PROFINET and 7 more PROFIBUS to go). The material is new, revised, re-ordered, and more detailed, so…
Read MoreDueling Views of PROFINET’s Place in System Architecture
I was amused by these dueling viewpoints in recent Control Engineering articles: Ethernet for sensor networks? Why it makes sense today Consider a sensor network to ease connections The first one argues for network-connected, machine-mounted IO that can be close to the sensors and actuators. That’s a good argument and I fully agree with it. …
Read MorePROFINET Video Roundup
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a video worth? Rather than answer that and waste words, here are some PROFINET videos (with referrals to more): Some application stories: GE Intelligent Platforms: Also see a recent blog post for the GE Intelligent Platforms answer to PROFINET – Why Choose…
Read MoreAre FOUNDATION fieldbus and PROFIBUS PA the same thing?
Are FOUNDATION fieldbus and PROFIBUS PA the same thing? is the title of an excellent blog post on the Pepperl+Fuchs USA Blog. In fact, I liked the title so well I “borrowed” it to title this post. The short answer to the question is “no.” But there are some nuances. PROFIBUS PA and Foundation Fieldbus…
Read MoreAnother PROFI Milestone
Any history buff’s out there? We just published a bit of a retrospective of the PI organization viewed through the lens of newsletters past. PI began publishing PROFINEWS to an international audience almost 20 years ago, in 1994, more specifically. View the commemorative Issue 100. Relive the early days of PROFIBUS and PROFINET in the…
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