One of our pet peeves is when we hear about people lumping all wireless types together and treating them as one. Wireless is not one monolithic thing, there are four wireless types, or use-cases in industrial automation: 1. Backhaul (as ISA characterizes it) Typically this is long distance, point to point radio bringing data from a Remote Terminal Unit (RTU) perhaps at a wellhead […]
A great advantage of PROFINET over some other competing automation networks is the included support in the specification of wireless technology and most importantly the Industrial features available. This opens up a wide variety of applications which are very difficult or impossible when it comes to normal copper cabling. Some of these applications might be Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs), slip rings, a rough environment, shipping and […]
Wireless Architectures When speaking about wireless PROFINET communications for industrial automation, there are a variety of architectures available depending on the application. Overall, there are four main possible architectures: Point to Point Point to multipoint (Infrastructure) Wireless distributed system Mesh Also, there is an option between Wifi or Bluetooth. PROFINET devices with Wifi/Bluetooth capabilities are readily available by a variety of vendors. […]
PROFIsafe, PROFIdrive, PROFIenergy… these terms are pretty common in the PI world. How are they used in the real world? And how do they actually work? What is the definition of an application profile?
What is PROFIdrive? PROFIdrive is a vendor-neutral application profile from PROFIBUS and PROFINET International (PI) which is focused on drives, encoders, motors, and their applications, which range from simple to very demanding motion control tasks. It supports both PROFIBUS and PROFINET technologies. PROFINET allows scalable update times starting from 31.25μs and a jitter of less than 1μs for the most demanding […]
The redundant title of this article is your first clue to the topic of this article: PROFINET media redundancy. PROFINET media redundancy is optional with all conformance classes, but in some applications, it is critical for correct operation (for example, hot backup in a safety application). PROFINET offers network media redundancy through a ring topology. PROFINET has two main media […]
There is a common feature available on every PROFINET device that is commonly overlooked and sometimes misunderstood. This is known as the DCP signal service or the ‘flash LED’ function in the engineering tool. In this article, we will cover the benefit of this service and clarify the requirements for product developers. DCP Signal Service Nowadays, devices usually have some […]
PROFINET Commander is one of many PROFINET tools available that provide value to a variety of users interested in interacting with PROFINET devices. For automation product developers, it provides the ability to quickly test a new device or system under development. Meanwhile, vendor salespeople can demonstrate a product without extra hardware. End-user engineers can configure a device to check before employing […]
PROFINET Commander is a software utility that allows for simple setup of a PROFINET device or network without PLC logic. It can act both as a PROFINET IO controller and IO supervisor on a Windows PC. This allows reading and writing of device IO data, parameters, and access to data record objects. Additional functions are assignments of the device name […]
