National Manufacturing Week 2
I forgot to point out the popcorn machine at the National Instruments booth. Actually, popcorn may have been the theme of the show in the automation part anyway. Many booths had the traditional popcorn machine. But the ultimate techies at NI had to build a machine that used many of its products. Here's how it works: Hopper drops corn on a small conveyor; vision system counts kernels dropping in the popper; when n=30, then it stops conveyor (OK, it's a small popper); system turns on popper; popped corn drops into storage area; heating light bulbs (lamps in the trade) controlled by PID loops keep product warm. Some very interesting stuff in their booth.
Mark Davidson at Wonderware touted the growing acceptance of customers buying its ArchestrA enabled products and some of the benefits accruing to them (the customers). Especially auspicious is the ArchestrA (which is among other things a Web service) to SAP link via ISA S95.
Based upon other conversations at the show, user acceptance of S95 and links to SAP is almost a basic theme of the show. Even NI is talking about links to the MES layer of software, something I find telling about the acceptance of users' needs to tie their systems together. Check out Lighthammer>/a> and watch for more from a company called DataWorks.
Avantis has extended ties to its asset management condition monitoring software including OPC and from devices by SmartSignal.
7:23:05 AM 
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