PROFIblog

Jan 12 2016

PROFINET – Show Me the Money

loading… PROFINET can help you justify your project as these features have financial rewards: Feature: proxies. Benefit: Maps legacy networks into PROFINET using an open standard. The money: no need to rip and replace.  Leave your current network intact and add a proxy to integrate the devices into a new PROFINET-based controller. Gain the benefits…

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Jan 5 2016

Picking PROFINET Cities

loading… PI North America chooses 16 or 17 cities around the continent for each year’s free PROFINET one-day training classes.  Here is our formerly top secret selection methodology: Never on a Monday… or Friday.  Students face an uncertain start of their week so we avoid Mondays.  Fridays are the days engineers scramble to finish tasks…

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Dec 22 2015

How to Spend Your Christmas Vacation – The Sequel

loading… Updated from last year with new and better “technical journals.” Whenever I think of spending some downtime without the daily pressures of work, I think of Star Trek, especially “The Trouble with Tribbles.” You remember the scene – Chief Engineer Scotty is confined to quarters after starting a bar room brawl with some Klingons….

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Dec 16 2015

Top 5 Reasons Your PROFIBUS Network Failed

loading… There are more PROFIBUS DP fieldbus nodes installed than any other network (by a huge margin). But that doesn’t mean there won’t be a problem with the network.  The experts point to these five common problems: 1. Terminator.  The number one most common problem – the cable ends at a PROFIBUS device connected with…

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Dec 8 2015

SPS/IPC/Drives 2015 – Impressions

loading… This year’s SPS/IPC/Drives, in my humble opinion, was one of the most exciting ever. With so many important announcements going on, it seemed like a non-stop barrage of news. First was the announcement about cooperation with CC-Link IE. This cooperation is singularly about the end-users, and making their lives easier. By specifying a “coupler” to…

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Dec 3 2015

SPS/IPC/Drives 2015: the members

loading… There were quite a few PI North America members that had tables at the booth this year at SPS 2015. Here’s a list that sponsored tables: Molex Advantech Innovasic Phoenix Contact Siemens Belden Harting Procentec Murrelektronik Hilscher Mitsubishi ProSoft Comtrol This is by no means an exhaustive list of those that supported the booth,…

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Dec 2 2015

SPS/IPC/Drives 2015 – the PI booth

loading… This year’s theme: PROFINET – The Backbone of Industrie 4.0 See below for a collection of photos from the PI booth at SPS/IPC/Drives 2015 in Nuremberg, Germany. After moving to Hall 2 last year, again the booth was located in Hall 2. The difference was, foot traffic was much greater than in 2014. Maybe people…

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Nov 29 2015

PROFINET and OPC UA – Better Together

loading… One of the big announcements at the SPS Fair last week was the increased cooperation between PI and the OPC Foundation.  This is benefitting users moving to Industrie 4.0 and Industrial Internet of Things.  And the increased cooperation will improve that even more. Remember the FDI Cooperation?  PI, OPC, HART, Fieldbus Foundation, and FDT…

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Nov 10 2015

An Industrial Internet of Things Checklist

loading… What do you need to have an Industrial Internet of Things? Data Collection Analysis Feedback Data. It all starts with the data.  It has to be read from networked industrial devices like I/O, drives, and vision systems.  It has to be integrated from non-Ethernet networks and devices.  It has to be accurate, timely, and…

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Nov 5 2015

The Real Edge of IIoT

loading… Some IoT definers think of edge devices as things like routers and switches. Others think it’s the closest device to the bottom with an IP address. Still others think it’s the gateway device connecting the whatever to the Internet. Those devices may be on the edge of an IT concept of the world, but…

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