PROFIblog

Oct 27 2011

PROFINET Development Tools

loading… 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…

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Aug 22 2011

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your PROFINET

loading… 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…

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Aug 11 2011

Where have we been?

loading… Where have we been?  Not blogging as much; instead, preparing for our annual members meeting this October and traveling across the US conducting our one-day training classes.  Mike, Michael, and Ron are in Denver today conducting a PROFIBUS class and I’ll be in Boston (Westborough, actually) in two weeks for a PROFINET class.  We’ve…

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Jul 18 2011

Quantitative PROFIenergy Energy Savings

loading… 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…

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Jun 13 2011

It’s about Community

loading… 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,…

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May 27 2011

PROFItelevision

loading… 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…

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May 25 2011

PROFIBUS is dead; long live PROFIBUS

loading… As excited as we are with the success of PROFINET, old reliable PROFIBUS continues to grow, too.  Last week in Indianapolis we had a PROFIBUS one-day training class.  With 127 in attendance this was one of our larger classes.  We had to bring in extra seats at the last minute – our magic formula…

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May 23 2011

Hanover Fair 2011 Summary

loading… 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:…

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May 20 2011

Hanover Fair 2011 Part 6: The Lighter Side

loading… 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…

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May 18 2011

Hanover Fair 2011 Part 5: IO-Link

loading… 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.” …

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