I'm at the Honeywell User Group meeting in Phoenix this week. There were three main items of news--two concerned wireless strategy and one instrumentation.
Citing the benefits of providing process information to plant applications, Honeywell Process Solutions announced the "OneWireless" strategy at its HUG conference. In an interesting engineering solution to what was once a big wireless divide among process control suppliers, Honeywell unveiled a multi-radio, multi-port wireless access point that also supports multiple industrial protocols and applications simultaneously. Along with this "universal network" strategy, the company announced eventual support for IEEE 802.15.4 mesh network radios when the ISA SP-100 committee publishes its specification. Thus Honeywell will support mesh sensor networks, WiFi, FHSS radio (Honeywell's current solution) all in one box. The electronics provide for bandwidth control that will give increased security and capacity in a customer's wireless installation. The company claims it is scalable to 30,000 devices. In addition to sensor devices, it also supports mobile worker devices such as the company's IntelaTrac PKS and Mobile Station products.
In a release sure to be a boon for worker safety, the company also announced and demonstrated for assembled media the Honeywell Instant Location System (HILS). It integrates such identification and location technologies as Ultra-Wideband, Global Positioning Systems, Wi-Fi and active RFID with Experion Process Knowledg System. Receivers can pinpoint the location of an employee, contractor or piece of equipment bearing a tag and send the information to the HILS server, which directly feeds the information to the operator's workstation.
Finally, Honeywell announced that it is entering the flow meter market. The VersaFlow line is manufactured by Krohne to Honeywell specs. Available models include an electromagnetic flow meter, ultrasonic flow meter, vortex flow meter and coriolis mass flow meter.
9:38:37 PM 
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