SPS 2012: The PI booth
As usual the PI booth was well done and well attended. In addition to the reception stand, the presentation theater, and the lounge, the booth sported functional areas for PROFINET PROFIenergy PROFIdrive PROFIsafe Process including PROFIBUS and PROFINET (and others!) IO-Link I’ll cover each of those in individual, subsequent posts, but here is an overview…
Read MoreSPS 2012: The Show
This year I am thankful that I got to spend Thanksgiving in the States and have turkey instead of turkey schnitzel. Usually for Thanksgiving I’m in Nuremberg, but this year the SPS/IPC/Drives Show was the week after Turkey Day. This is the first in a series of posts on the show. There is lots of…
Read MoreFieldbuses – it’s a competition, not a war
Fieldbuses – it’s a competition, not a war – I said back in 2006 in The Great Thing about Standards is… in defense of competing fieldbus and Industrial Ethernet standards. Now my friend James Powell weighs in with a similar conclusion in Selecting an open digital protocol in process automation. He begins: “If you want…
Read MoreFour kinds of wireless
PROFIBUS and PROFINET are involved in three of the four kinds of wireless. (Yes, wireless is not one monolithic thing: Wireless or Wireless.) My take on the four kinds: Long-distance like to RTUs Process instrument networks like WirelessHART (PI cooperated with HART Communication Foundation and Fieldbus Foundation to standardize this: Simplified Wireless Communication) Discrete sensor…
Read MorePROFINET Project Webinar
If you’ve attended a PROFIBUS one-day training class, you’ve watched as we walked you through a PROFIBUS DP project and then a PROFIBUS PA project. Now we have scheduled a webinar to walk you through PROFINET in the same way. Drawing on my old OEM and System Integrator experience, I’ve created a PROFINET project step-by-step.…
Read MoreIT and Automation Synergies
“The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language,” George Bernard Shaw is supposed to have said. I said something similar in my first year of blogging: IT and engineering – two organizations separated by common technology. One of my pet peeves then, as it is now, is the notion…
Read MoreThe future of PROFINET
To finish up comments from the Minneapolis PROFINET one-day training class, in addition: “Future of PROFINET. What are they working on now?” Good question. PROFINET is stable; the specification has been at version 2.3 for a couple years now. But that does not mean there is not more to do – just not at the…
Read MoreA chip off the old PROFINET
I’m just back from Minneapolis and a very full PROFINET one-day training class there. I really enjoy reviewing the Course Evaluations – not because they’re always positive (although there’s a lot of that), but because there is always food for thought. The comment that caught my eye from Minneapolis: “Talk about the PROFINET chips, specifically,…
Read MorePROFINET infrastructure by design
Over on the Belden blog Brian Oulton was accused of being snarky. (Actually, I’m a fan of snarky.) Anyway, in Infrastructure – More than a Big Word he said, “You’ll see a lot of discussion from Belden about industrial Ethernet infrastructure. That’s code for ‘a network you designed’ and the opposite of ‘a bunch of…
Read MoreStrength. Scope. Power.
“Strength. Scope. Power.” That’s the tagline for one of our landing pages on www.allthingsprofinet.com Each word summarizes unique benefits of using PROFINET and the differentiating features that support them. Allow me to explain. First, STRENGTH When we say “strength” we are talking about the strength of the PROFIBUS and PROFINET technologies and the international PI…
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