Friday, December 12, 2008

Tracking prices This is an interesting insight I saw in Glen Hiemstra's Futurist.org blog that tracks oil prices with US consumer debt. I've seen something similar on insurance--especially liability insurance for physicians. In that latter case, it's not the evil lawyers that drive up rates (well, they drive up something, anyway). Liability insurance rates vary with bond prices. In other words, as the value of insurance company's holdings decreases, they must raise rates. Has little to do with actual losses. In the gas price case, perhaps it has more to do with supply and demand than nefarious collusion and conspiracy. 5:37:06 PM    comment []

CIP Networks As a follow up to my Omron post from Wednesday, ODVA had released the CIP Motion profile a couple of years ago--I think. The PR agency sent me a pdf of the brochure, and I found a news item. The word is that Rockwell Automation plans to have CIP Motion products available next year--this would be products that connect over the EtherNet/IP network. Every other implementation of deterministic Ethernet networking for motion uses firmware. Rockwell and ODVA have insisted on staying with "standard, unmodified" Ethernet. That means the first four layers of the OSI stack go unmodified--standard Ethernet chips, cabling, connectors plus TCP/UDP/IP. So this is implemented using timing in each device. The Omron decision was made in Japan, but it is interesting that this stalwart of DeviceNet and developer of CompoNet has decided for EtherCat for its motion implementation. Time will tell. 5:10:49 PM    comment []