Posts Tagged ‘show report’
SPS Report 1: The Show
There were not many of us from the US at the SPS/IPC/Drives Show in Nuremberg. So for the benefit of US blog readers who enjoyed Thanksgiving at home, here is the first of several reports about the show. There is no longer a comparable show in the US. Here there are many halls filled with…
Read MoreTrekker Tweeting Technology
I’ve been using an iPhone for a couple months now and I almost love it. (The camera has no flash and it does not sync my tasks from Outlook, hence the “almost.”) At the Houston PROFIBUS class and the Seattle PROFINET class I was able to tweet throughout the day – yes, there’s an app…
Read MoreFive Criteria for Choosing an Industrial Ethernet
As Manny walked the exhibition floor at ISA he encountered device vendors who needed an Industrial Ethernet. PROFINET would have fit the bill for them, but some were leaning toward something else and some had already chosen something else. One of those device manufacturers encountered told Manny that Modbus/TCP was the most popular protocol. (Clearly…
Read MoreDeath of an EXPO – Life of Technology
PROFIBUS and PROFINET news from the last ISA EXPO: Manny was our lone PTO attendee at the ISA show this year. He compared its size to the ISA show in Edmonton. Those of us who had attended in the (not-really-so-distant) past recall the glory years. All the major companies were there. All the trade organizations…
Read MoreThe PROFIBUS Stops in Calgary
One of our privileges as PTO staffers is speaking at PTO members’ events. Manny recently returned from Calgary with this report: Last week in Calgary, Alberta Canada the PTO was a guest speaker at a Siemens event called “Catch the Process Fieldbus.” The event was a huge success. Registrations maxed out at 164 attendees for…
Read MorePROFINET Developer Tools (Hanover Fair 2009 Report 5)
The section of the booth devoted to the PI Competence Centers featured an outline of the PROFINET Design Process. A number of Development Tool providers were represented in the booth and at the fair: Hilscher, Siemens, HMS, NEC, KW-Software, IXXAT, and Molex among them. Here is Molex’s panel in the PI booth (next to PTO…
Read MoreProduct Updates (Hanover Fair 2009 Report 4)
In addition to the new PROFIsafe products I mentioned several posts ago, there were other new products as well. First up, a Phoenix Contact PROFIBUS Proxy with built-in 4-port switch, highlighted in green here. Shown among many other PROFINET devices from Phoenix Contact. Siemens also introduced its new PLC, the S7-1200. Karsten Schneider (former manager…
Read MoreTechnology Updates (Hanover Fair 2009 Report 3)
There was news of progress in a number of technology areas: IO-Link, wireless, PROFIBUS, and PROFINET. IO-Link products are appearing more rapidly. IO-Link is not a fieldbus, but allows digital communications over the device’s cable. This led me to characterize it as “HART for discrete.” Conventional devices can be interchanged with IO-Link devices easing the…
Read MorePROFIsafe in Hanover (Hanover Fair 2009 Report 2)
The PROFIsafe wall gets longer with every fair. Befitting its longevity, I suppose. PROFIsafe began over 10 years ago. Through last year there were 630,000 PROFIsafe nodes installed. Based on the ARC report that the total number of bus-capable safety devices is 700,000, PROFIsafe has a 90% market share. PROFIsafe is the only bus-based safety…
Read MoreABB Worlds of PROFI
I’m on my flight back home from Orlando and ABB Automation and Power World. There was lots of news about PROFIBUS and PROFINET there. The trade press covers the general news, so I’ll fill in the fieldbus and PROFI news. At last year’s conference, ABB talked about a concept to use Industrial Ethernet across…
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