PROFIblog

Oct 11 2010

PROFIsafe at ISA

loading… UPDATED (scroll to bottom for additions) In Houston this year I was on the functional safety panel with colleagues from HART Communication Foundation and Fieldbus Foundation plus one user.  The 45 or so attendees were mostly interested in hearing from the user and mostly about Foundation Fieldbus.  To make up for that, I promised…

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Oct 4 2010

PROFIBUS News from Emerson Exchange

loading… I’m in Houston and headed for the ISA Week sessions tomorrow.  I’ll be on a panel discussing functional safety, so look for a post on that later this week.  In the meantime, James Powell was presenting at Emerson Exchange last week and provided this report: The end of the bus wars have led to…

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Sep 23 2010

Not Enough Detail in Toronto

loading… Outside Toronto for the PROFINET one-day training class, I was in one of my old neighborhoods (I’ve lived a lot of places).  On the downside, I was so wrapped up with the class that I did not have time to visit my old Avantis colleagues.  On the upside, the class went very well.  When…

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Sep 21 2010

PROFINET or Ethernet in Montreal?

loading… I’m just back from a week in Canada where we held PROFINET one-day training classes in Toronto and Montreal.  I was really pleased by the engagement of the attendees in both cities.  They asked really good questions.  Here are a couple questions from Montreal: “Where should we use PROFINET instead of Ethernet?” “Tell me…

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Sep 15 2010

Denver PROFINET Bandwidth

loading… Rocky Mountain High… er, highlights, from the PROFINET one-day training class in Denver on September 2:  It seems bandwidth was on the minds of some attendees, especially the few IT folks there.  We are always glad to see IT folks attend, of course – anything we can do to help foster IT’s understanding of…

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Sep 8 2010

PROFIBUS in a Chemical Plant

loading… Brad Hart from PI North America member C&E Sales presented a PROFIBUS application story from a chemical plant at the General Assembly Meeting.  It featured some AS-I, some PROFIBUS DP, some PROFIBUS PA, and some plans for PROFINET.  The usual benefits were realized in wiring and related hardware savings plus labor savings.  The real…

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Sep 1 2010

Long, Long Ago in the Land of pi Tapes

loading… Ok, this post is way off topic, but reminiscing about working at the wire and cable company reminded me of a TV episode I saw last week.  This is about pi tapes (lower case and equals 3.14159…), not about PI tapes (upper case letters – PROFIBUS and PROFINET International). The best show on TV…

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Aug 31 2010

Long, Long Ago in the Land of Cleve, Part 2

loading… Continuing the report from the Cleveland PROFINET one-day training class… That interesting comment that deserves a longer response: “Was not any discussion of economics – PROFINET vs. competitors.  Not sure how PROFINET is funded.  How end users pay.  Software cost and licensing.  How comparisons of cost vary per vendor.” I always focus on the…

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Aug 30 2010

Long, Long Ago in the Land of Cleve

loading… As I was flying back from the Cleveland PROFINET one-day training class I had some time to compose a few thoughts about the class and the memories it conjured up from my own Cleveland area work history. There were a few developers of automation devices in the class.  The class provided an overview, but we try…

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Aug 26 2010

Social Media in Technology Markets

loading… Emerson is a PI North America member and Jim Cahill is their prolific blogger and social media guru.  At the General Assembly Meeting, Jim presented an engaging overview of the breadth of social media. Since his keynote was right after lunch, he started with an informative, high-volume, high-energy video on trends from YouTube. I…

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