Chatting last evening at the Emerson Process User Conference reception with Jerry Moon who is with Emerson's media relations and Industrial Automation Insider editor and occasional Automation World contributor Andrew Bond about the significant things we saw at the conference and what we could safely say about them.
The most significant thing I saw during my brief stay was a working demo of a Zigbee-based wireless mesh networked transmitter. Caution: this is not a released product and Emerson was reluctant to talk much about it to the media, but this is a significant step forward toward the dream of ubiquitous sensors in process plants. The amount of information that would be available from this development could help bring to reality the promise of PAT that I wrote about yesterday.
Invensys Process Systems did reveal a partnership with Apprion this week also geared toward achieving the reality of wireless sensors in process. A beta installation at the PPG plant in Lake Charles, LA is unfortunately on hold as the area recovers from the effects of Katrina. Apprion provides a wireless gateway to multiple protocols and uses an IEEE 802.16 WiMax backbone.
As Dylan said, "The times, they are a'chagin' ".
2:09:37 PM 
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