ODVA
This week I'm in San Antonio for the second time this fall--this time for what would have been called the ODVA general assembly (Open DeviceNet Vendors Association) but is now called the 2004 CIP Networks Conference and 10th Annual Meeting. You might notice a not so subtle change. CIP (Common Industrial Protocol) is the protocol common to DeviceNet and ControlNet (independent organizations) and is the basis of EtherNet/IP. No, I don't think that that means DeviceNet is slipping away. Just a push to identify the real advantage.
And the advantage--CIP is just another protocol on the standard Ethernet TCP/IP message packet. In this way, it is just like FTP, HTTP and other protocols. All you need is software at each end to read the packet when it sees it. No special firmware or the like. As far as I can tell, everyone else requires some special silicon for their Ethernet implementations of industrial networking.
They had the press sit through the "marketing track" yesterday where nine presenters talked about new DeviceNet products and/or applications. Phoenix Contact has a new EtherNet/IP bus coupler for its Inline I/O. Omron made an interesting presentation on diagnostics over DeviceNet. And Frontline Test Equipment has a very interesting network analyzer that works for RS232 as well as Ethernet, DeviceNet and EtherNet/IP.
By the way, for those who believe that ODVA is a one-vendor organization (Rockwell Automation), sorry. I've seen very few Rockwell people here so far, and none that I know. Omron has a larger presence, and Wago and Phoenix Contact are prominent. Popular belief is that all the major fieldbuses are "run" by one dominant supplier--Rockwell and DeviceNet, Emerson and Foundation Fieldbus, Schneider and Modbus TCP, and Siemens and Profibus. The latter two are probably the closest to the myth, but all are open organizations with much input from a variety of vendors. Plus, they all seem to be slowly gaining traction in the market.
6:45:39 AM 
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