PROFIblog

loading… The PTO General Assembly Meeting was, as usual, an exciting (wow) and exhausting (whew) experience.  And interesting as well.  You’ll find reports from Peter Welander (1, 2) and Gary Mintchell (1, 2, 3) in their blogs and magazines, but here are my conclusions from the meeting, gleaned from presentations and hallway conversations: Fieldbuses are…

loading… On the road again, again… (still?).  Nothing like a long plane trip to allow time to catch up on blogging.  As I write this I’m en route to Germany for meetings with colleagues from PI and the PI Support Center.  I did get to spend two and a half days in the office between…

loading… I’m just back from Denver and the PROFINET one-day training class.  We really appreciate attendees filling out a Course Evaluation after the class.  We hear some good things usually, but we also appreciate the constructive criticism.  When you get too close to a technology, the acronyms just roll off your tongue with ease.  We…

loading… We completed our fourth webinar today – a PROFINET Overview.  With Hunter waiting in the wings to help with the questions, I did all the presenting this time.  (You should find it in the archives first thing tomorrow morning.)  I never really know how these are going to turn out so I was pleased to…

loading… My last post missed some important Automation Summit topics: catching up on KÀ, first-time fieldbus experience, PROFINET overview, and the PROFIBUS in the Process Industry class. Jim Tomlinson followed up last year’s presentation (at the Summit and the PTO General Assembly Meeting) with an update.  I’ve blogged about this before here and here.  This…

loading… One of my favorite activities at events like this is discovering PROFINET applications I have not seen before.  Nicholas Heise highlighted many I had not seen in his presentation: * Tobacco Production (China) using PROFINET CBA for flexibility with modular machines * a Cigar Production (USA) application reduced engineering time and costs in route…

loading… It’s always fun to meet a fellow blogger in the real world, too.  I met Eric Murphy at the OPC DevCon here in Scottsdale.  He told me Tuesday morning that his OPC Exchange blog celebrated its first birthday then.  Join me in wishing him a happy blogiversary.  He promised to blog about some of…

loading… I see in the ARCwire that another company is going down the closed, proprietary route instead of the open route.  This time it is drive configuration capability that’s integrated into proprietary PLC programming software. The PROFIBUS and PROFINET community believes this need (integrating configuration software) calls for an open standard solution.  So we developed…

loading… I just can’t leave this topic alone: node counts.  I wouldn’t bring it up again except Jim Montague said this in “Can Foundation fieldbus (FF) stay hungry?” – “To be fair, I know installed nodes are important milestones for fieldbuses because they measure how far and wide it’s being adopted, but these totals have…

loading… Roomba fighting and turning your VCR into an automatic cat feeder – if these sound like activities you’d enjoy, read “The Hobbyist Renaissance” in IEEE Spectrum.  The article gives you resources for gadget hacking (also called MacGyvering). It’s all about perspective: yesterday the radio meteorologist gave his forecast as “very cool today… high of…