Posts Tagged ‘show report’
Hanover Fair – Diagnostics
PROFINET diagnostics are a huge differentiator for PROFINET. Building on the concepts pioneered by PROFIBUS (at the device, module, and channel level), PROFINET adds diagnostics for the Industrial Ethernet network. Because PROFINET is just Ethernet, it leverages IT protocols to prevent or quickly find problems. How does that help? This short animation, introduced at the…
Read MoreHanover Fair: The News – PROFI Growth
I almost hate to talk about the numbers of PROFIBUS and PROFINET nodes – the growth is so great that it just seems like bragging. I did say “almost.” The numbers through the end of 2012: PROFINET jumped to 5.8 million nodes installed. PROFIBUS grew to an installed base of 43.8 million of which 7.5…
Read MoreHanover Fair: The News – New Competence Center
There was news of PROFIBUS and PROFINET at Hanover Fair: “50th PI Competence Center (PICC) Established” and it’s in the US! KW Software has become the fourth PICC in North America, joining the PROFI Interface Center (PIC), Molex, and HMS Networks. The PIC is a PICC for both PROFIBUS and PROFINET, the others for PROFINET. …
Read MoreHanover Fair First Impressions
In the hotel bar after the first day of the show, a guy two stools away observed that we had obviously not been impressed by the show. For us it was just another show. The guy two stools down was from Indiana and it was his first show. He was more impressed than we were. …
Read MoreSPS 2012: Summary
My posts: The Show The PI Booth Member Booths PROFINET Faster PROFINET Chips PROFIdrive PROFIBUS and PROFINET in Process PROFIenergy IO-Link In the news: Automation World Industrial Ethernet Book The Instrumentation Signpost Blog And finally, this video from the PI Support Center: –Carl Henning
Read MoreSPS 2012: IO-Link
IO-Link also featured prominently in the PI Booth. Our relationship with IO-Link is a bit peculiar. The consortium responsible for IO-Link relies on the PI infrastructure. If you have not encountered IO-Link before, I call it HART for discrete because it superimposes the digital communications over the three-wire DI/DO cable. IO-link is therefore not a…
Read MoreSPS 2012: PROFIenergy
PROFIenergy is a big deal. It’s one of the really big benefits of using PROFINET. Products have been available for some years now and they are starting to appear in very large projects in the automotive industry. At the PI press conference Michael Lebrecht of Daimler presented their ongoing project using PROFIenergy. During the Q&A…
Read MoreSPS 2012: PROFIBUS and PROFINET in Process
Did you notice in the post about the PI Booth that there were two process walls in the booth? One was for PROFIBUS and the other for PROFINET! If you look closely you may also notice Foundation Fieldbus, HART, and WirelessHART. All of these can have a potential role in a PROFINET/PROFIBUS architected system. On…
Read MoreSPS 2012: PROFIdrive
PROFIdrive is an application profile that sits above the PROFIBUS and PROFINET communications protocols. It arranges the data in a consistent fashion to simplify the interchange of information. Drive vendors can choose not to use PROFIdrive, but then the drive parameters are not so easily exchanged. To make it easier for drive vendors to adopt…
Read MoreSPS 2012: PROFINET Chips
I continue to be amazed at the number of chip-based solutions available for PROFINET. I’ve lost count of the actual number. But Innovasic, KW-Software, and Hilscher were in the PI booth with their solutions. Molex was in the booth, too, and they announced a partnership with profichip for a PROFINET solution. I walked over to…
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