Articles and News

Emerson will provide a wide area data gathering system to connect 19 active wind farms to npower's corporate headquarters, operations center, and regional centers in various locations in the UK.

It is anticipated that the Lumberg Automation Components acquisition will be completed in June or July of 2007.

ICONICS received the Microsoft ISV Trailblazer Partner of the Year Award.

Ethernet Direct's Industrial Ethernet Switches have been approved by the new Korean MIC certificate regulation. The new surge test has already been effective since January 1, 2007, concerning immunity, signal ports and telecommunication ports.

ISaGRAF is compatible with Beck's IPC@CHIPR SC123/SC143 series of embedded web controllers. By using ISaGRAF 5, IPC@CHIPR users have the option of using the IEC 61499 standard to easily create distributed control applications.

At a recent ISA-SP100.11a working group meeting in Karlsruhe, Germany, 60 attendees unanimously approved the scope and systems architecture of Release 1 of the draft standard. Release 1 will assure multi-vendor device interoperability, and will include only 2.4 GHz 802.15.4-2006 radios.

Annual sales of PROFIBUS nodes reached a new high of 3.4 million in 2006 according to figures just released by PI (PROFIBUS and PROFINET International). This brings the total number of PROFIBUS nodes installed worldwide to 18.8 million. PROFIBUS remains on track to surpass 20 million nodes by 2008.

Ethernet Direct now provides 4 support locations in Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore and soon in Delhi.

Invensys Process Systems and Apprion have successfully implemented wireless applications at the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) Lost Pines Power Park. LCRA recently merged these two plants under one functional management system with a layered WiMax/WiFi wireless infrastructure to help link the two plants.

ARC Informatique has been appointed distributor of Network Vision's IntraVue. IntraVue is a tool developed for the support of network equipment and the IP addressable devices connected to it.

The OMAC HMI Working Group organized a joint project between Boeing, Okuma and NIST to evaluate the integration of CNC to ERP and determine if part accountability could be achieved with minimal integration efforts using OPC/OMAC technologies.

This program allow data center managers to know that their building management system has been integrated and proven out with PDI's Branch Circuit Monitoring System (BCMS). BCMS can monitor and report current and voltage measurements on each individual circuit branch breaker which can prevent overloading any of these circuits.

Connect One opened a new office in San Jose, CA, and hired Ehud (Udi) Yuhjtman as President. Connect One manufactures semiconductors and device servers for Internet connectivity for machine-to-machine (M2M) applications.

Bosch Rexroth AG increased sales in 2006 by 7.1 percent to approximately $6.2 billion (4.9 billion Euros). Sales grew 16 percent in Middle and Eastern Europe and 14 percent in Asia, including 33 percent growth in China. Sales in North and South America declined slightly in a difficult economic environment.

Ethernet Direct France serves countries in Southern Europe.

SOMA Networks will incorporate McObject’s eXtremeDB High Availability (HA) in-memory embedded database in its FlexMAX Mobile WiMAX System.

The code samples provided in this easy download will help developers who are interested in adding OPC client capabilities to their Visual Basic and Visual C++ applications. VB OPC client code follows the code structure found in the OPC Automation Interface 2.0 specification.

GE Supply Company is now a stocking distributor for SIXNET industrial connectivity products and Ethernet I/O products. Based in Shelton, CT, GE Supply is comprised of more than 150 locations across the U.S., Puerto Rico and internationally.

Strong economic activity in Asia is spurring the growth of manufacturing, which in turn is propelling the growth of the automation market in the region. The Asian market for Distributed Control Systems (DCS) is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.0% over the next five years, according to a new ARC Advisory Group study.

A committee of industry leaders and academia met at ISA headquarters to begin work on the learning objectives for an automation engineering curriculum for universities. "Our goal is to develop curriculum content for a 4-year automation engineering degree program," said committee chair Randy Buchanan of the University of Southern Mississippi.