Hanover Fair 2008: The Big News – Growth
The leading news at the PI press conference covered the continuing growth of PROFIBUS and our first node count of PROFINET devices. (You can read the full press release here.) I tend to get all excited about PROFINET at the expense of PROFIBUS, so before I get to the PROFINET story, here’s the scoop about…
Read MoreHanover Fair 2008: The Fair
I’m finally able to sit down and blog about this year’s Hanover Fair (starting on the train from Hanover to Frankfurt). The sitting part feels really, really good after four very full days at the fair plus evening meetings. Over the next several posts, I’ll tell you (and show you) what I saw. I’ll start…
Read MoreImprove Safety, Improve Production
“One in-depth study conducted by a group … with a combined exposure of over 50 billion hours, concluded that production increased as safety increased,” reports Charles M. Fialkowski in “Safety Instrumented System design is all about the process.” Although this is somehow counterintuitive, better safety equals better production. We’ve been preaching this for years. We…
Read MoreSwitch Education
“When Should I Invest in a Managed Ethernet Switch?” is the question posed in the latest issue of the Industrial Ethernet Book. I’ve heard it said elsewhere that you’ll either use a managed switch or wish you had. The logic is that an unmanaged switch has diagnostic information consisting of blinking LEDs. If your line…
Read MoreNews from Nuremberg
There were plenty of press releases pronounced in press conferences at the SPS Drives Show, but the real news was what was waiting to be discovered in conversation in the aisles and booths. We’ll see how long I stay awake here on the flight home to set down what I learned. PROFINET chips. Siemens says…
Read MoreIO-Link, HART for discrete?
IO-Link is a point-to-point wiring system intended for smart sensors and actuators. It communicates over the discrete device’s wires. This reminds me of HART in the process space where communication is superimposed over the 4-20mA signal wires. And similar to HART, you can use an IO-Link device in a standard system and a non-IO-Link device…
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