General Assembly Meeting, PROFIsafe, and a road trip
loading… We’ve nailed down most of the details for the PTO General Assembly Meeting. This is our 12th and my 11th. Where does the time go? And more importantly, how could I have missed one? I really get excited about these events. Learn lots. Teach some. Visit old friends. Make new ones. Observe the competitive…
Industrial Ethernet Survey
loading… Network Vision, a PTO member, has some clever tools to help maintain Industrial Ethernet networks. We demonstrate them at the PROFINET one-day training events to show how standard tools can help troubleshoot the PROFINET network. They’ll be exhibiting at our free upcoming Boston one-day training class on May 31. The news is that they…
Why Use Industrial Ethernet?
loading… One of the topics we cover in the PROFINET one-day training classes is the industrial automation trends that have led users to Industrial Ethernet. And more importantly, the results they can expect in using Industrial Ethernet, especially PROFINET. We were recently able to expand on that topic in an article in Control Engineering. It’s…
Whither Wireless? Which one?
loading… Whither Wireless? Which one? We talk about wireless as if it were some monolithic thing. It’s not. There was a lot of wireless stuff at Hanover, even a wireless pavilion with many displays. My observation is that wireless means many different things. I see four broad categories: device-level fieldbus-level Ethernet RTU-level The first one…
FDT vs. EDDL
loading… The raging controversy between FDT and EDDL continued at Hanover. This is just silly. My advice to those who are so wrapped up in one that they can’t tolerate the other is this: get over it! Neither is going away. The users will pick which one they want… IF THEY CARE. And they don’t…
IO-Link, HART for discrete?
loading… 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…
Are you going to Hanover Fair…
loading… Not Scarborough Fair… and no parsley, sage, rosemary, or thyme. Are You Going to Hanover Fair could have been the tune at Hanover Fair on Monday (with apologies to Simon and Garfunkel). Monday attendance seemed off from prior years; one company said they had 20% fewer leads. Fortunately Tuesday picked up and Wednesday was very…
Manchester-Encoded Safety Airport Lounge
loading… En route to Hanover I am spending some hours in the Manchester (UK) airport… too many, actually, but more than enough time to read and ponder a Briefing in Friday’s ARCwire on HIMA’s Safety Systems. In the last paragraph this bit causes me to wonder: “HIMA offers open integration solutions based on common hardware…
Safety Has Evolved
loading… “Safety has evolved from being a cost burden and “necessary evil” to a strategy for improving productivity and reducing downtime.” –from the “The Business Case for Safety” section of the new ARC White Paper, PROFIsafe: Networked Safety for Process and Factory Automation. We engineers sometimes get so excited about the technology we forget about…
Grand Ole PROFINET
loading… Live from the PROFINET one-day training event in Nashville – lunch is over and we are resuming with the PROFINET IO demo. Good questions at this event and a blend of Control Engineers and IT. I love to see that gap overcome. At these events, when we ask if there is cooperation or tension…