Industrial Data Xchange

In June 2012 David Bean, from IDX, traveled to Indiana (USA) to complete the FOUNDATION CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL qualification at Trine University and establish a framework to bring their certified courses to South Africa.  David has subsequently applied to become a CERTIFIED FOUNDATION Instructor enabling him to run courses in South Africa. IDX will work with local vendors over the next few months to establish the necessary training laboratories while also finding out who is interested in receiving training. The Certified Foundation Professional course comprises of two parts: Part 1: Students register online and complete the necessary theory in their own time in the weeks prior to attending the course at IDX Academy. The online learning modules include a number of “open book” tests for submission. Part 2: Students come to the IDX Academy and spend four days doing detailed “hands on” work with Foundation Fieldbus – from making up cables to configuring an in the fi

PROCENTEC has released their new version of the Profitrace and in true PROCENTEC style have added some new and useful features.   Some of you may not know but in version 2.6.2, PROCENTEC released the ability to search through the GSD catalogue (list of loaded GSD files) by; Ident Number, Model Name, Vendor Name, Found in Live List or by the Last Network Scan. This is very useful when setting up a device. The latest offering that PROCENTEC has brought to the table is the ability to see the all the device's oscilloscope images displayed on the Live List. The advantage of this is that you can see all the waveforms in one view. The normal Profitrace oscilloscope functionality filters the oscilloscope images based on the responses of a single slave, when that slave has been selected you will only see the waveforms from that device. When networks are very large, you would need to view every device's waveform on the network to determine if there are problems, at time

Anybus has created a wireless bridges that allows industrial Ethernet based devices to communicate using wireless technology seamlessly. This makes it possible to bridge protocols such as PROFINET, Ethernet/IP, Modbus-TCP, BACnet/IP, etc. over a distance up to 1000m (open air range) Industrial factories and plants are generally very "noisy" environments which cause disruptions in wireless communications. Bluetooth is an excellent option for these environments because Bluetooth switches between different frequencies allowing it to be more reliable and noise immune. The Ethernet bridge is ideal for situations where Ethernet cable needs to be replaced with a robust maintenance free solution. The Ethernet bridge features an intelligent gateway making it easy to install, configure and use. The low emission mode solves potential interference problems that can occur between Wireless LAN and Bluetooth. The key features of Bluetooth are its robustness and low power con