Automotive Instigates PROFIBUS, then PROFINET
At the PI North America General Assembly Meeting last month we had an automotive theme. This put me in a reflective mood, thinking about the roots of PROFI. In 1989 the German automotive industry asked the government to help them by creating a fieldbus. Thirteen companies and 5 universities responded to the call and created…
Read MorePROFINET Development Tools
How did it get to be three weeks since the PI North America General Assembly Meeting ended?! It was an exciting time and probably featured the best presentations in memory. (And my memory goes back to the very first one in 1995!) Over the next couple posts, I’ll fill you in on what you missed.…
Read MoreDouble Your Pleasure, Double Your PROFINET
North American users say they expect to double their use of PROFINET within three years according to a recent IMS Research study. When I received an announcement about the study from its author, John Morse, I knew that as a non-profit we could not afford to actually buy the study. So I asked John if…
Read MoreQuantitative PROFIenergy Energy Savings
In my last blog post, I mentioned that we were in Lucerne, Switzerland for the PI International annual organization meeting. One of the presentations we were given was about a recent study conducted by Prof. Dr. Fritjof Klasen on PROFIenergy. He is from the Institute for Automation & Industrial IT (AIT) at the University of…
Read MoreIt’s about Community
I’m on my way back from a meeting of organizations within the PI community (PI = PROFIBUS and PROFINET International) in Lucerne, Switzerland. Almost all parts of the world were represented by their Regional PI Associations, PI Competence Centers, PI Test Labs, and PI Training Centers. The current numbers of those organizations is 27, 40,…
Read MorePROFItelevision
I love to talk about PROFINET. I’ve discovered that I’m even happy to talk about PROFINET if there’s a camera running. We now have two YouTube channels that you might want to subscribe to: PROFItelevision and PROFIblogger. Here’s a five-minute introduction to PROFIenergy from PROFItelevision: Here’s a slightly longer video, a summary of PROFINET benefits:…
Read MoreHanover Fair 2011 Summary
Finally finished all the Hanover Fair blog posts: Hanover Fair 2011 Part 1: First Impressions Hanover Fair 2011 Part 2: PI Booth Hanover Fair 2011 Part 3: PROFIenergy Hanover Fair 2011 Part 4: PI North America Member Products Hanover Fair 2011 Part 5: IO-Link Hanover Fair 2011 Part 6: The Lighter Side Other reports: Jörg…
Read MoreHanover Fair 2011 Part 6: The Lighter Side
What do these have in common: chocolate rabbits, ceramic “iPods”, logoed hard-boiled eggs, happy hour, a band, and stuffed animals (including one “driving” an AGV)? They were all in the PI booth! Hanover Fair is not all about the technology and drinking beer; there’s a lighter side, too. At the PI booth we were giving…
Read MoreHanover Fair 2011 Part 5: IO-Link
IO-Link was once again displayed in many locations, including the PI booth. I especially liked this pictorial explanation of the benefits of IO-Link: [click for larger image] The benefits can be summarized as “You don’t have to manually go to each device to configure it, re-configure it, or extract asset management information from it.” In…
Read MoreHanover Fair 2011 Part 4: PI North America Member Products
Quite a few PI North America members had products in the PI booth. Some were on the PROFINET walls, like the Innovasic development kit: Some had larger displays in the PI booth like Harting and Molex. Here’s the Molex stack running on an iPad: Some had PROFINET products in their own booths like Phoenix Contact. …
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