The Automation Podcast

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Filippo Boido of Agile Automation to discuss their PLC Coding AI Agent, TcAgent, in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.Special thanks to our members for supporting our work! Learn more about becoming a member here: https://theautomationblog.com/join

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s training courses visit The Automation School at https://TheAutomationSchool.com. And to become a member and support his work visit The Automation Blog at https://TheAutomationBlog.com/join

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Elias Panasuik of Foxboro to discuss their new SDA DCS in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.The Automation Podcast, Episode 278 Show Notes: Special thanks to Elias for coming on the show, and to Schneider Electric for sponsoring this episode!

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Eric Eckman of Paessler to discuss their IT and OT Network and Device Monitoring Solution in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.Special thanks to Eric for coming on the show, and to Paessler for sponsoring this episode. To learn more, please visit the below links:- Eric Eckman, OT Channel Manager, NA: www.linkedin.com/in/eckmaneric- GET PAID for Your Input: Help Define PRTG’s EtherNet-IP(CIP) Sensor Roadmap: https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=httpsforms.microsoft.comeVSi2wJf86A&data=0502eric.eckmanpaessler.com02a112824d1b4b75ec0908dec7b460d51a0d6b98862b4e8e8326e493e5b1d53210639167774685645792UnknownTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ0&sdata=4TGUUXLyM32KPW55qwGEBvexPINbYJIGwcgOQ6Oeo&reserved=0- Industrial IT & OT Monitoring with PRTG: https://www.paessler.com/industry/industrial-it-monitoringUntil next time, Peace ✌️Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorIf you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content :-)

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Adam Cumick of Synergy Logix to discuss their Modbus TCP SLM-MX I/O as well as their soon to be released Raspberry Pi Based, OpenPLC Compatible SLM-RP4 controller in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.Show Notes: Special thanks to Adam for coming on the show, and to Synergy Logic for sponsoring this episode. To learn more, please visit the below link:Synergy-logic.comUntil next time, Peace ✌️Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast, Content Creator, and Automation Instructor

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Aidin Allyarzadef of Schneider Electric to discuss Digital Twin powered Physical AI and the journey from Automation to Autonomy in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast. The Automation Podcast, Episode 275 Show Notes: Special thanks to Aidin for coming on the show, and to Schneider Electric for sponsoring this episode. To learn more, please visit the below links:- Co-Authored white paper with NVIDIA at SE’s portal LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aidin-aliyarzadeh-21a9816b_digital-twin-powered-physical-ai-ugcPost-7461027426723270657-QNZr/?utm_source=TheAutomationPodcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=sponsored_episode_275- EcoStruxure Machine Expert Twin: https://www.se.com/us/en/product-range/97196554-ecostruxure-machine-expert-twin/120043277145-logistics-and-warehouse-license?utm_source=TheAutomationPodcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=sponsored_episode_275- EcoStruxure Automation Expert/Software Defined Automation: https://www.se.com/us/en/product-range/23643079-ecostruxure-automation-expert/?utm_source=TheAutomationPodcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=sponsored_episode_275- Schneider Electric Motion Control and Robotics landing page: https://www.se.com/us/en/product-category/87303-motion-control-and-robotics/?filter=business-1-industrial-automation-and-control&utm_source=TheAutomationPodcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=sponsored_episode_275- NVIDIA Isaac landing page: https://developer.nvidia.com/isaac?size=n_6_n&sort-field=featured&sort-direction=desc&utm_source=TheAutomationPodcast&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=sponsored_episode_275Vendors, learn about sponsoring our episodes at: https://TheAutomationBlog.com/Media-Guide- To see all our articles and videos visit: https://TheAutomationBlog.com- To see our affordable online and in-person courses visit: https://TheAutomationSchool.comUntil next time, Peace!

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Maria Santella and Robert Murao of ICP DAS USA to learn about their new Modbus RTU, TCP, and other products in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 274 Show Notes:Special thanks to Maria and Robert for coming on the show, and to ICP DAS USA for sponsoring this episode. To learn more about these products, please see the below links: Modbus Gateways * Modbus Touch Screen Controllers * Modbus RTU DAQ * Serial Port Sharing Devices * Modbus over Cellular*

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Support our work and gain access to hundreds members only articles and videos by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You’ll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Nick Rosner of Schneider Electric to discuss VFD and HVAC Applications in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 273 Show Notes:Special thanks goes out to Nick Rosner of Schneider Electric for coming on the show, and to Schneider Electric for sponsoring this episode.Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Rylan Pyciak of Cleveland Automation Systems to discuss Control System Migrations and more in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 272 Show Notes:Special thanks to Rylan for coming on the show, and to Cleveland Automation Systems for sponsoring this episode! Below you’ll find more information on what we discussed:* Read “A Decade in the Automation Industry: Reflecting on 10 Years of Change” * Read “The Lost Art of Industrial Troubleshooting: Why Real Problem Solving Still Matters” * Explore “The ROI Calculator” – A Free Resource for Maximizing Your Investments with Data-Driven Insights * Explore “How to Write a URS” – A Free Guide for Writing Specifications That Drive Automation Success * Explore CAS Services – How Our Engineers Help You Keep Pace with Industry Changes

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Phillip Swinson and Mike Stoup of ISA Tampa to discuss the upcoming Florida Automation Expo in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 271 Show Notes:Special thanks to our Members who support our work! To learn more about memberships, checkout this link.Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Christine Bush of Schneider Electric to discuss What’s New and Next in Robotics in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 270 Show Notes:Special thanks goes out to Christine Bush of Schneider Electric for coming on the show, and to Schneider Electric for sponsoring this episode.Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Chuck Ridgeway of Horner Automation to learn about their new Modular PLCs in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 269 Show Notes:Special thanks to Chuck Ridgeway of Horner Automation for coming on the show, and to Horner Automation for sponsoring this episode. To learn more about these products, please see the below links:* Horner Automation’s YouTube Channel * Horner Automation’s LinkedIn * Horner Automation’s Modular Controllers * Horner Automation’s OCS360 Cloud Service * Horner Automation’s Academic Program

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Felipe Polido of Reframe Systems to learn how they are using Automation to change the process of building homes in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.Unlock access to the ad free EXTENDED EDITION by joining our channel at https://TheAutomationBlog.com/join or https://youtube.com/@InsightsIA/join.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast, Free Edition:

Note: Below member’s will also find an ad-free and extended edition of this episode. To unlock the ad free extended episode, you can become a member here.

Watch the Members’ Extended Edition:

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Mohua Ghosh of Schneider Electric to learn about their AI Assistant for PLC Code Generation in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.Unlock access to the ad free EXTENDED EDITION by joining our channel at https://TheAutomationBlog.com/join or https://youtube.com/@InsightsIA join.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast, Free Edition:

Note: Below member’s will also find an ad-free and extended edition of this episode. To unlock the ad free extended episode, you can become a member here.

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Steven Mustard to talk about his new book on Operational Technology (OT) System Risk Management in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.To learn more about becoming a member, visit https://TheAutomationBlog.com/join or https://youtube.com/@InsightsIA/join.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast:

Note: To support our work and keep new episodes coming, consider becoming a member here.

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Links to Steven’s Book:

Amazon Link
Publisher Link

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Johann Kotze of Rockwell Automation to learn what’s new in FactoryTalk View 15 & 16 in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.Unlock access to the ad free EXTENDED EDITION by joining our channel at https://TheAutomationBlog.com/join or https://youtube.com/@InsightsIA join.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast, Free Edition:

Note: Below member’s will also find an ad-free and extended edition of this episode. To unlock the ad free extended episode, you can become a member here.

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Hany Fouda of Schneider Electric to discuss What’s Driving Open Automation initiatives in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 264 Show Notes:Special thanks goes out to Hany Fouda of Schneider Electric for coming on the show, and to Schneider Electric for sponsoring this episode.Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with John DeTellem of Siemens to walk through the steps of migrating an existing S7 PLC and its Program to TIA Portal v21 in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 263 Show Notes:Special thanks to John DeTellem of Siemens for coming on the show, and to Siemens for sponsoring this episode. For more information please see the below links:* TIA Portal V21 Sales & Delivery Release * TIA Portal V21 Technical Slides * TIA Portal V21 Trial Download * TIA Portal in the Cloud * TIA Portal Documentations

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Soroush Karimzadeh of Novarc to discuss their AI-Powered Autonomous Welding Robotics in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 262 Show Notes:Special thanks goes out to Soroush Karimzadeh for coming on the show, and to Novarc for sponsoring this episode. To learn more about their AI-Powered Autonomous Robotic Welding solution, see the below links:* Soroush Karimzadeh, LinkedIn, CEO & CoFounder, Novarc Technologies Inc.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/soroushkarimzadeh * Novarc Technologies, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/novarc-technologies-inc- * Novarc Technologies Website: https://www.novarctech.com/ * NovAI™ – Adaptive Welding: The full power of AI and machine vision in welding automation: https://www.novarctech.com/products/novai/ * Spool Welding Robot (SWR™): https://www.novarctech.com/products/spool-welding-robot/

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Karim Kozman of Schneider Electric to discuss What’s Next for Industrial Automation in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 261 Show Notes:Special thanks goes out to Karim Kozman of Schneider Electric for coming on the show, and to Schneider Electric for sponsoring this episode.Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Manish Sharma of Emerson to learn about the Next Generation of PACSystems Industrial PCs in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.Unlock access to the ad free EXTENDED EDITION by joining our channel at https://youtube.com/@InsightsIA/join or https://TheAutomationBlog.com/joinFor any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast:

Note: Below member’s will also find an ad-free and extended edition of this episode. To unlock the ad free extended episode, you can become a member here.

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with John DeTellem of Siemens to learn what’s new in TIA Portal v21 in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 259 Show Notes:Special thanks to John DeTellem of Siemens for coming on the show, and to Siemens for sponsoring this episode. For more information please see the below links:* TIA Portal V21 Sales & Delivery Release * TIA Portal V21 Technical Slides * TIA Portal V21 Trial Download * TIA Portal in the Cloud * TIA Portal Documentations

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Dante Vaccaro of Schneider Electric to discuss Digital Transformations and Trends in Industrial Automation in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 258 Show Notes:Special thanks goes out to Dante Vaccaro of Schneider Electric for coming on the show, and to Schneider Electric for sponsoring this episode.Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

2026 Sponsorship Notice: When a company offers to underwrite some of our production costs (aka sponsors an episode) it has no effect on our opinions, and all guests (sponsored and unsponsored) are invited to freely share information about their products, services, and companies. Sponsorships do grant the sponsor (1) to have ads disabled on the episode for the first 12 months, (2) to have the episode published on platforms that don’t support ads, (3) we offer to include some of their links in the show description, and (4) it may grant the sponsor a license to re-publish the episode after 30 days. It should also be noted that all opinions expressed in any of our episodes are those of the respected hosts and guests, and not those of Insights In Automation.

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This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Matthew Dulcey of PRONETIQS, and Stefan Hild of Spur Insights, to learn how PRONETIQS helps Measure, Monitor, and Maintain Control Systems in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 257 Show Notes:Special thanks goes out to Matthew Dulcey of PRONETIQS, and Stefan Hild of Spur Insights, for coming on the show, and to PRONETIQS for sponsoring this episode. If you’d like to learn more, please visit the below links:* Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pronetiqs * SID 5: https://pronetiqs.com/sid5 * IntraVUE: https://pronetiqs.com/intravue * Service & Support: https://pronetiqs.com/service-and-support * Trainings: https://pronetiqs.com/trainings

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

2026 Sponsorship Notice: When a company offers to underwrite some of our production costs (aka sponsors an episode) it has no effect on the content of our interviews, as all guests are invited to share information about their products freely. What a sponsorship does grant the sponsor is (1) to have ads disabled on the episode for the first 12 months, (2) to have the episode published on platforms that don’t support ads, (3) we offer to include some of their company links in the show description, and (4) it may grant the sponsor a license to use the episode for their own use. It should also be noted that all opinions expressed in any of our episodes are those of the respected hosts and guests, and not those of Insights In Automation.

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Drew Allen of Grace Technologies to discuss Automation, Safety, the history of Grace, and more in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 256 Show Notes:To learn about becoming a member and unlocking hundreds of our “member’s only” videos, click here.Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Erik Nieves of Plus One Robotics to discuss Robotics in Warehouse Automation in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 255 Show Notes:To learn about becoming a member and unlocking hundreds of our “member’s only” videos, click here.Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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Shawn Tierney recaps his trip to Schneider Electric’s Innovation Summit Las Vegas in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 254 Show Notes:Special thanks to Schneider Electric and their Marketing Partners for sponsoring my trip to this year’s Innovation Summit! Below are all the links I mentioned in this episode:* Innovation Summit 2025 – All Videos and Images * Modicon Edge I/O NTS: Unbox, Setup & Use with Logix * First Time Programming a Modicon M262 PLC * Schneider’s Altivar Solar ATV320 VSD (P218) * Pro-face HMIs & IPCs by Schneider Electric (P195) * Schneider Altivar Machine Drives (P187) * Harmony HMIs and iPCs from Schneider Electric (P176) * TeSys Island: Smart Motor Starters from Schneider Electric (P170) * Modicon Machine Level PLC Product Line Update (P161) * Next Generation Automation with Schneider Electric (P96)

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host): coming

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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Shawn meets up with Travis Cox of Inductive Automation to learn about the new features found in Ignition 8.3 in this episode of The Automation Show.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Show, Season 2 Episode 37 Show Notes:Special thanks to Travis for coming on the show, and to Inductive Automation for sponsoring this episode so we could release it ad free! To learn more about Ignition, please see the below links:* What’s New in Ignition 8.3 * Download Ignition 8.3 * Ignition User Manual 8.3 Documentation * Learn Ignition and earn a free credential * Schedule an Ignition demo * Travis’ first appearance back in episode TAP 124

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host): coming later

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content 🙂

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Mark Berger of Siemens to learn how Siemens integrates SIRIUS ACT devices (push buttons, selector switches, pilot lights) with PROFINET in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 253 Show Notes:Special thanks to Mark Berger of Siemens for coming on the show and sending us a sample!

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host): coming

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Eliminate commercials and gain access to my weekly full length hands-on, news, and Q&A sessions by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You'll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Henrik Pedersen and Jacob Abel to learn about OTee Virtual PLCs in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 252 Show Notes:Special thanks to Henrik Pedersen and Jacob Abel for coming on the show, and to OTee for sponsoring this episode so we could release it “ad free!” To learn about the topics discussed in this episode, checkout the below links:* OTee Virtual PLCs website * Schedule an OTee demo * Connect with Henrik Pedersen * Connect with Jacob Abel

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host): Thank you for tuning back into the automation podcast. Shawn Tierney here from Insights. And this week on the show, I meet up with Henrik Pedersen and Jacob Abel to learn all about virtual PLCs from OTee. That’s o t e e. And, I just thought it was very interesting.

So if you guys have ever thought about maybe running virtual PLCs to test some processes out, I think you’ll really enjoy this. With that said, I wanna welcome to the show for the very first time, Hendrik and Jacob. Guys, before we jump into your presentation and learn more about what you do, could you first introduce yourself to our audience?

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. Sweetly. So my name is Hendrik. I am the cofounder, COO, OT, a new industrial automation company, that, we’re really glad to present here today. I have a background from ABB.

I worked eleven years at ABB. In terms of education, I have an engineering degree and a master degree in industrial economics. And, yeah, I’m I’m excited to be here. Thanks, Rom. And I’ll pass it over to Jake.

Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): I’m, Jacob Abel. I’m the principal automation engineer at Edgnot. EdgeNaught is a systems integrator focusing on edge computing and virtual PLCs. My background is in mechanical engineering, and I’m a professional control systems engineer, and I have thirteen years experience in the machine building side of industrial automation, specifically in oil and gas making flow separators. And I’ll hand it back to Henrik here.

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): K. Great. So OT, we are a a new industrial automation company, the new kid on the block, if you will. We’re a start up. So, we only started, about three years ago now.

And, we focus solely on virtual PLCs and and the data architectures allow you to integrate virtual PLCs in in operations. And, you know, some of the listeners will be very familiar with this first, thing I’m gonna say, but I think it’s valuable to just take a take a little bit step back and and remember what has happened in in history when when it comes to to IT and OT and, and and what really what really happened with that split. Right? So it was probably around the ‘9 you know, around nineteen nineties where the the the domain computer science were really split into these two domains here, the IT and OT. And, and that, that was, that was kind of natural that that happened because we got on the, on the IT side of things, we got Internet, we got open protocols and, you know, we had the personal computers and innovation could truly flourish on the IT side.

But whereas on the OT side, we were we were kind of stuck still in the proprietary, hardware software lock in situation. And and that has that has really not been solved. Right? That that that is still kind of the the situation today. And it this is what this is obviously what also, brought me personally to to really got really super motivated to solve this problem and and really dive deep into it.

And I experienced this firsthand with with my role in NAD and, how how extremely locked we are at creating new solutions and new innovation on the OT side. So so we’re basically a company that wants to to truly open up the the the innovation in this space and and make it possible to adopt anything new and new solutions, that that sits above the PLC and and, you know, that integrate effectively to to the controller. So I I have this this, you know, this slide that kind of illustrates this point with with some some, you know, historical events or or at least some some some big shifts that has happened. And, Aurene mentioned a shift in nineteen nineties. And it wasn’t actually until ’20, 2006 that Gartner coined this term OT, to explain the difference really what what has happened.

And and, you know, as we know, IT has just boomed with innovation since since the nineties and OT is, is, is slowly, slowly incrementally getting better, but it’s still, it’s still the innovation pace is really not, not fast. So, this is also, of course, illustrated with all the new developments in in GenAI and AgenTic AI, MCP, and things like that that is kinda booming on on the IT side of things. And and and yeah. So, but we do believe that there is actually something happening right now. And and we have data that they’re gonna show for for that.

Like, the the large incumbents are now working on this as well, like virtual PLCs, software defined automation and all kinds of exciting things going on on the OT side. So we do believe that that we will see, we will see a shift, a true big shift on the OT side in terms of innovation, really the speed in which we can, we can improve and adopt new solutions on the OT side. And this is kind of exemplified by, like, what what is the endgame here? Like, you could say that the endgame could be that IT and OT once once again becomes the same high paced innovation domain. Right.

But then we need to solve those underlying problems, the infrastructural problems that are still so persistent on the OT side of things. The fine point of this slide is to just illustrate what’s happening right now. It’s like cloud solutions for control is actually happening. Virtual PLC, software based automation, AI is happening all at once. And we see it with the big suppliers and and also the exciting startups that’s coming into this space.

So I think there’s there’s lots of great excitement now that we can we can expect from the OT side, in in next few years.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, I wanna just, just for those listening, add a little, context here. If we look at 1980, why was that so important? Why is this on the chart? And if you think about it, right, we got networks like Modbus and, Data Highway in nineteen seventy eight, seventy nine, eighty.

We also got Ethernet at that time as well. And so we had on the plant floor field buses for our controls, but in the offices, people were going to Ethernet. And then when we started seeing the birth of the public Internet, right, we’re talking about in the nineties, people who are working on the plant floor, they were like, no. Don’t let the whole world access by plant floor network. And so I think that’s where we saw the initial the the divide, you know, was 1980.

It was a physical divide, just physically different topologies. Right? Different needs. Right? And then and and as the Internet came out in the early nineties, it was it was now like, hey.

We need to keep us safe. We know there’s something called hackers on the Internet. And and I think that’s why, as you’re saying in 2006, when Gartner, you know, coined OT, we were seeing that there was this hesitant to bring the two together because of the different viewpoints and the the different needs of both systems. So I think it’s very interesting. I know you listeners, you can’t see this, but I kinda want to go back through that and kinda give some context to those early years.

And and, you know, like Henrik says, you know, now that we’re past all that, now that we’re using Ethernet on the plant floor everywhere, right, almost everywhere, on all new systems, definitely, that that becomes the right now on this on the today on the, on the chart. And I’ll turn it back to you, Henrik.

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. I’ll search that. I just wanna echo that as I think that there are really good reasons for why this has happened. Like, the there has you could argue that innovation could flourish on the IT side because there was less critical systems, right, less, more, you know, you can do to fail fast and you can do, you can test out things on a different level. And so so there’s really lots of good reasons for why this has happened.

We do believe that right now there is some really excitement around innovation, the OT side of things and and this pent up kind of, I wouldn’t call it frustration, but this pent up potential, I think is the right word, is is can be kind of unleashed in our industry for for the next, next decade. So so we are like this is really one of the key motivators for me personally. It’s, like, I truly believe there’s something truly big going on right now. And and I I do I do encourage everyone, everyone listening, like, get in get in on this. Like, this is happening.

And, you know, be an entrepreneur as well. Like, build your company, build and, you know, create something new and exciting in this space. I think I think this is this is a time that there hasn’t been a better time to create a new new technology company or a new service company in this space. So this this, this is something at least that motivates me personally a lot. So let me move over to kind of what we do.

I mentioned I mentioned that we focus solely on the virtual PLC. This this is now presented in the slide for those that are listening as a as a box inside a open hardware. We can deploy a virtual PLC on any, ARM thirty two thirty two and and sixty four bit processor and x eighty six sixty four bit with the Linux kernel. So so there are lots of great, options to choose from on the hardware side. And and, and yeah.

So you can obviously when you have a Virtual PLC you can think of it new in terms of your system architecture. You could for instance, you know deploy multiple Virtual PLCs on this on the same hardware and you can also, think about it like you can use a virtual PLC in combination with your existing PLCs and could work as a master PLC or some kind of optimization deterministic controller. So it’s it’s really just opening up that, you know, that architectural aspect of things. Like you can think new in terms of your system architecture, and you have a wide range of hardware to choose from. And, and yeah, So the the flexibility is really the key here, flexibility in how you architect your system.

That CPU that you deploy on will will obviously be need to be connected to to the field somehow, and that’s that’s true, classical remote IO, connections. So we currently support, Modbus TCP and Ethernet IP, which is kind of deployed to to, our production environment, as it’s called. So moving on to the next slide. Like, this is kind of the summary of our solution. We have built a cloud native IDE.

So meaning anyone can can basically go to our website and log in to into the solution and and give it a spin. And, we’ll show you that afterwards with with Jake. And the system interacts through a PubSub data framework. We use a specific technology called NUTS, for the PubSub communication bus. And you can add MQTT or OPC UA to the PubSub framework, according to your needs.

So, and from that, you can integrate with, whatever whatever other, software you might have, in your system. So we have these value points that we always like to bring up. Like, this obviously breaks some kind of vendor lock in in terms of the hardware and the software. But it’s also, our virtual PLC is based on on the six eleven thirty one. So it’s not a lock in to any kind of proprietary programming language or anything like that.

There is, there’s obviously the cost, element to this that you can potentially save a lot of cost. We have, we have verified with with with some of our customers that they estimate to save up to 60% in total cost of ownership. This is there is obviously one part is the capex side and the other part is is the opex. And and is this data framework, as I mentioned, is in in in which itself is is future proof to some extent. You can you can integrate whatever comes comes in in a year or or in a few years down the line.

And, there’s environmental footprint argument for this as you can save a lot on the on the infrastructure side. We have one specific customer that estimates to save a lot on and this this particular point is really important for them. And then final two points is essentially that we have built in a zero trust based security, principle into this solution. So we have role based access control. Everything is encrypted end to end, automatic certification, and things like that.

The final point is, is that this is the infrastructure that allows you to bring AI and the classical, DevOps, the the thing that we’re very used to in the IT side of things. Like, you you commit and merge and release, instead of, instead of the traditional, way of working with your automation systems. So I know this is like, this is pro pretty much, like, the boring, sales pitch slide, but, but, yeah, I just wanted to throw this this out there for for the guys that there is some there is some, intrinsic values underneath here. The way the system works, you will you will see this very soon, through the demo, but it’s basically you just go to a website, you log in, you create a project. In there, you would create your your PLC program, test, you code, you simulate.

You would onboard a device. So onboard that Linux device that you you want to deploy on. This can be as simple as a Raspberry Pi, or it can be something much more industrial grade. This depends on on on the use case. And then you would deploy services like, as I mentioned, MQTT and OPC UA, and then you would manage your your your system from from the interface.

And, I have this nice quote that we got to use from one of the customers we had. This is a global, automotive manufacturer that, basically tells us that it’s, they they highlighted the speed in which you can set this up, as as one of the biggest values for them, saving them a lot of hours and setting setting up the system. So I also wanted to show you a real you know, this is a actual real deployment. It was it was deployed about a year ago, and this is a pump station, or a water and wastewater operator with around 200 pump stations. They had a mix of of Rockwell and Schneider PLCs, and they had a very high upkeep, and they were losing a lot of data from these stations because they were connected over four g.

When the Internet was a bit poor, they lost a bit of data in their SCADA systems, so they had these data gaps and things like that. So pretty pretty, you know, standard legacy setup to be to be honest. Quite outdated PLCs as well. So what they what they did for the first, pump station was they they, you know, removed the PLC. They put in a Raspberry Pi for for, like, â‚¬60 or, like, $70, connected it to to a to a remote IO Ethernet IP module they had, in in the storage, and deploy this data framework as I’m showing on the screen now.

So so they that was that was the first station they put online, and they they chose a Raspberry Pi because they thought, okay, this is interesting, but will it work? And then they chose a pump station, which was was really just poor from before. So they had very little to to to lose to to deploy on this station. So so, yeah, this has been running for a year now without any any problems on a Raspberry Pi. We have obviously advised against using a Raspberry Pi in a critical environment, but they just insisted that that what that’s what they wanted to do for this first case.

Shawn Tierney (Host): And I’ll back that up too. Your generic off the shelf Raspberry Pi is just like a generic off the shelf computer. It’s not rated for these type of environments. Not that all pump houses are really bad, but they’re not air conditioned. And I think we’ve all had that situation when it’s a 120, 130 out that, you know, off the shelf computer components can act wonky as well as when they get below freezing.

So just wanted to chime in there and agree with you on that. For testing, it’s great. But if you’re gonna leave it in there, if you were in my town and you say you’re gonna leave that in there permanently, I would ask to have you, assigned somewhere else for the town.

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. No. So and and that point is also illustrated with the second station they brought online.

So there they chose a much more industrial grade CPU, that, that, was much, you know, cost cost a bit more, but it’s more suited for the environment. And, and yeah. So this was, I can disclose it was a Bayer Electronics, CPU. So so yeah. And, and they reported, some good, good metrics in terms of, like, the results.

They they said around 50 on the hardware, 75% on the management of the PLC system. So this relates more to that they have very a lot of, you know, driving out with the car to these stations and doing changes to their systems and, and updates. They no longer have any, any data loss. It’s local buffer on the data framework. They’ve increased tag capacity with 15 x, resulting in in four fifty five x better data resolution and a faster scan frequency.

And this is actually on the Raspberry Pi. So so just just think of it as as the the even the even the, kind of the lowest quality IT off the shelf, computers, are are able to to, to execute really fast in in in, or fast enough for for, for these cases. So, Shawn, that was actually what I wanted to say. And, and also, you know, yeah, we are we are a start up, but we do have, fifth users now in 57 different countries across the world. And it’s it’s really cool to see our our our, our technology being deployed around the world.

And, and yeah. I’m really, really excited to to, to get more, users in and and hear what they what they, think of the solution. So so yeah. I’ll I’ll with that, I don’t know if, Shawn, you wanna you shoot any questions or if we should hand it over to Jake for for for a demo.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Just before we go to Jake, if somebody who’s listening is interested, this might be a good time. It said that, you already talked about being cloud based. It’s, o t e e. So Oscar Tom, Edward Edward for the the name of the company.

Where would they go if if they like what Jake’s gonna show us next? Where will they go to find out more?

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. So I would honestly propose that they just, reach out to to me or Jake, on on one of the QR codes that we have on the presentation. But they can also obviously go to our website, 0t.io,0tee.io, and just, either just, log in and test the product, or they could reach out to us, through our website, through the contact form. So yeah.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Perfect. Perfect. Alright, Jake. I’ll turn it over to you.

Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): Thanks, Shawn. Fantastic stuff, Henrik. I wanna take a second too to kinda emphasize some of the technical points that you, presented on. Now first, the the fact that you have the built in zero trust cybersecurity is so huge. So, I mean, the OT cybersecurity is blowing up right now.

So many certifications, you know, lots of, consulting and buzz on LinkedIn. I mean, it’s a very real concern. It’s for a good reason. Right? But with this, zero trust built in to the system, I I mean, you can completely close-up the firewall except for one outgoing port.

And you have all the virtual PLCs connected together and it’s all done. You know, there’s no incoming ports to open up on the firewall to worry about, you know, that security concern. You know, it’s basically like, you know, you’ve already set up a VPN server, if you will. It’s it’s not the same, but similar and, you know, taking care of that connection already. So there’s an immense value in that, I think.

Shawn Tierney (Host): And I wanted to add to the zero trust. We’ve covered it on the show. And just for people, maybe you’ve missed it. You know, with zero trust is you’re not trusting anyone. You authorize connections.

Okay? So by default, nobody’s laptop or cell phone or tablet can talk to anything. You authorize, hey. I want this SCADA system to talk to this PLC. I want this PLC to talk to this IO.

I want this historian to talk to this PLC. Every connection has to be implicitly I’m sorry. Explicitly, enabled and trusted. And so by default, you know, an an integrator comes into the plant, he can’t do anything because in a zero trust system, somebody has to give him and his laptop access and access to specific things. Maybe he only gets access to the PLC, and that makes sense.

Think about it. Who knows whether his laptop has been? I mean, we’ve heard about people plug in to the USB ports of the airport and getting viruses. So it’s important that person’s device or a SCADA system or a historian only has access to exactly what it needs access to. Just like you don’t let the secretary walk on the plant floor and start running the machine.

Right? So it’s a it’s an important concept. We’ve covered it a lot. And and, Jake, I really appreciate you bringing that up because zero trust is so huge, and I think it’s huge for OT to have it built into their system.

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): I wanted to highlight too the Henrik mentioned that the the backbone of the system is running on a technology called NATS. That’s spelled n a t s. And why that’s important is this is a a lightweight messaging, service, and it’s designed to send millions of messages per second. You know, that’s opposed to, you know, probably the best Modbus TCP device that you can find. You might get a couple 100 messages through per second.

It’s millions of messages per second. It’s, you know, especially with, you know, we’re dealing with AI machine learning, you know, training models. I mean, we’re data hungry. Right? So this gives you the backbone too.

You know, it’s like it can push an immense amount of tag data, you know, with ease. I think that’s another really important point. With that, though, I’ll I’ll get on to the demo.

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Oh, that’s great. We do we do see that, Jay, that most of our customers report on that, you know, 400 or 700 x better data resolution. And so it’s it’s a step change for for for the data resolution there. Yeah.

Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): Excellent. So one of the things that I personally love about OT is how quickly you can get into the PLC once everything’s set up. So this is OT’s website, obviously, ot.io. So once you’re here, you just go to log in. And that brings in the login screen.

Now I’m are I’m using my Google account for single sign on, so I can just click continue with Google. And this brings me into the main interface. And another thing that I love is that, you know, it is very simple and straightforward, you know, and simple is not a bad thing. Simple is a good thing. I mean, the way that things should be is that it should be, it should be easy and the finer details are taken care of for you.

So right here, we have our main project list. I just have this one benchmarking program that I’ve imported in here. And you also have device lists, just a a test device that I’ve installed the runtime on. Just real quick. You know, you have a Martha, the AI assistant in the corner here.

And, the documentation guides is up here. So you can get help or look into reference material very easily. It’s all right there for you. So I’m gonna open up this program here. So just a quick tour here.

Right up here in the top left is basically where where most everything’s done. So if you click on this little down arrow, you can choose what virtual PLC runtime to attach it to. I’ve already attached it to the device. I installed the runtime on. You can add, you know, a new program, driver, function blocks, custom data types real quick here.

Compile your program, download it to the device. Check the release history, which is really, really great. As you can, you can go into release history and you can revert to a prior version very easily. We got built in, version control, which is another, great feature.

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): I can also just comment on that, Jake, that we do have we do have, in the quite short term roadmap to also expand on that with Git integration, that, a lot of our customers are are asking for. So yeah.

Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): Awesome. Yeah. I mean, that’s that’s another, very hot topic right now. It’s, you know, getting getting the revision control systems, as part of, you know, at least the textual, programming languages. See, so, you know, we have a few, like, housekeeping things here.

I mean, you can delete the program, export it. It’s a good good point here is that, OT complies with the PLC open, XML specification. So you can import or export programs, in this XML format, and it should work with solid majority of other automation software out there. You know, if you need to, you want to transition over to OT, you know, you can export it from your other software and import it rather easily. Got your program list here and, you know, just the basic configuration of, you know, you can add global variables that you wanna share between the different programs and POUs or, you know, change the, cycle rate of the periodic tasks, add more tasks.

Let’s just get jump into this program here. Both the system uses the IEC sixty one one thirty one dash three standard structured text. So here’s just a little, quick benchmark program that I’ve been using to do some performance testing. Like you, you have the, the code right here, obviously. And on our, our right, the variable list, very easy to add a new variable and pick out the type.

You can set a set of default value, add some notes to it. Super easy. So let’s go online. So if you have these little glasses up here in the top, right, you display live tag values. And so it’s grabbing from the runtime that’s running and plopping it right in here in the editor, which I I love the way it’s displayed.

It makes it. And, you know, it’s one of the question marks is if you’re doing structured text instead of letter logic, like how it’s gonna show up and how readable is it gonna be. I think the, the text, like the color contrast here helps a lot. It’s very, very readable and intuitive. And we also have the tag browser on the right hand side.

Everything is, organized into, you know, different groups. There’s the the resources and instances that you’ve set up in the configuration tab. So the by default, the tag the tags are all listed under there. And here too, you know, you can set tag values doing some performance testing, as I said. So this is, recording some some jitter and task time metrics.

And that’s that’s really it. That’s the that’s the cloud IV in a nutshell. Super easy, very intuitive. I mean, it’s there there’s zero learning curve here.

Shawn Tierney (Host): For the, audio audience, just a little comment here. First of all, structured text to me seems to be, like, the most compatible between all PLCs. So, you know, everybody does ladder a little bit differently. Everybody does function blocks a little bit differently. But structured text and, again, I could be wrong if you guys think out there in the in listening, think I’m wrong about that.

But when I’ve seen structured text and compared it between multiple different vendors, it always seems to be the closest from vendor to vendor to vendor. So I can see this makes a great a great place to start for OT to have a virtual PLC that supports that because you’re gonna be able to import or export to your maybe your physical PLCs. The other thing is I wanted to comment on what we’re seeing here. So, many of you who are familiar with structured text, you know, you may have an if then else, or an if then. And and you may have, like, tag x, equals, you know, either some kind of calculation, you know, maybe, you know, z times y or just maybe a a constant.

But what we’re seeing here is as we’re running, they have inserted at a in a different color the actual value of, let’s say, tag x. So in between you know, right next to tag x, we see the actual value changing and updating a few times a second. And so it makes it very easy to kinda monitor this thing while it’s running and see how everything’s working, and I know that’s that’s huge. And I know a lot of vendors also do this as well, but I love the integration here, how it’s so easy to see what the current values are for each of these variables. And, I’ll turn it over to you, Hendrick.

I think I interrupted you. Go ahead.

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. No. I was just gonna comment on that. Jake said, like, this is the this is the POC editor, and the next the next big feature that we’re releasing very soon is essentially the service, manager, which is the, which is the feature that will allow our users to deploy any kind of service very efficiently, like another runtime or OPC UA server or an entity server or or or whatever other, software components that that, you want to deploy, like a Knox server or things like that. So and that’s that’s, we were really excited about that because, that will kind of allow for a step change in how you kind of orchestrate and manage your system and your, your system and your, your, you have a very good overview of what’s going on with versions of, of the different software components running in your, your infrastructure and your devices and things like that.

So we’re really excited about that, that it’s coming out. And it might be that actually when when this, episode airs, who knows if it’s if it’s done or or not, but we’re very close to release the first version of that. So excited about that.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Now I have a question for you guys, and maybe this is off topic a little bit. So let’s say I’m up here in the cloud. I’m working on a program, and I have some IO on my desk I wanna connect it to. Is that something I can do? Is there a connector I can download and install my PC to allow the cloud to talk to my IO?

Or is that something where I have to get a a, you know, a local, you know, like we talked about those industrial Linux boxes and and test it here with that?

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. So I think you what you what you’re you’re after is, like, the IO configuration of, if you wanna deploy a driver, right, or, like, a modbus driver and how you figure out the system. Right?

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Because this is in the cloud. It’s not on my desk. The IO is on my desk. So how would I connect the two of them?

How would I is is that something that can be done?

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yep. Yeah. Exactly. That’s that’s actually the you know, I I think, Jake, you might just wanna show why you deploy a driver. Right?

Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): Sure. Sure. And I just wanna take a second to, clarify. You know, it’s something that kinda comes up often, and I I don’t I don’t think it gets it’s it’s cleared up enough is that so, you know, we have this cloud ID here. So, you know, you can open this from anywhere in the world.

But the virtual PLC run times get installed on computers preferably very locally, you know, on the machine, on the factory floor, something like that. I I’ve got, an edge computer right here. Just as an example. I mean, this is something you would just pop in the control panel and you can install OT on this. So to answer your question better, Shawn, you know, to get to, you know, the remote IO that you need essentially, or actually in the, in the case of this, this has onboard IO.

You know, you’re looking at connecting with MOBAs, PCP, Ethernet IP. I I know that a lot more protocols are coming. Profinet. So how you would do that is that you have that plus sign up here and add a driver config. We’re just gonna do, Modbus real quick.

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Mhmm.

Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): And we wanna add a TCP client. So you can name the client, tell it how fast to pull, you know, any delays, put in the IP address. Just an example. Do the port number if you need and then add your requests. You know, you have support for, all the main function codes and mod bus right here, you know, read holding, read input, you know, write multiple coils, all that good stuff, you know, tell address how many registers you wanna do, timeouts, slave ID.

And then, you know, once you’ve done that, so let’s say, you know, I’m gonna read, and holding registers here, the table on the right auto updates. You can do aliases for each one of these. You can just do register one Mhmm. As an example

Shawn Tierney (Host): It’s showing just for the audio audience, it’s showing the absolute address for all these modbus, variables and then, has the symbols, and he’s putting in his own symbol name. It has a default symbol name of symbol dash something, and he’s putting his own in, like, register one, which makes it easier. Yeah.

Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): Good point. Yeah. Good point. Thanks, Shawn. So, yeah, once once you put in your request and you can throw in some aliases, for the different registers, you know, you can go back to your program and here’s this, sample variable that I just added from earlier.

You know, you can the registers are 16 bits. I’m gonna select, an int. And what you can do here now is select those modbus requests that you just set up. So it automatically maps these to those variables for you. So that that way you don’t have to do anything anything manual, like have a separate program to say, you know, this tag equals, you know, register 40,001.

You know, it’s already mapped for you. So that’s that’s essentially how you would connect to remote IO is, just add a client in the driver configs and, fill in all your info and be off and running.

Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s excellent. I really liked how you were able to easily map the register to the modbus value you’re reading in or writing to to your, variable so you can use that in your program. That was very easy to do.

Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): Oh, yeah. Yeah. It’s that it’s like I said, that’s one of the things that I love about this interface is that everything is just very straightforward. You know, it’s it’s super easy to just stumble upon whatever it is you need and figure it out.

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): And just just, to add to to kinda your your processors, like, once you have created that connection between the IO and and and the program, you basically just, compile it and download it to the to the runtime again, and and it executes locally the based on the yeah. Nice.

Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): Oh, right. Good point. Yeah. Of of course, after we add something, we do have to redownload. So

Shawn Tierney (Host): Very interesting. Well, that answers my question.

Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): I think that’s that’s about it for the the demo. I mean, unless, Shawn, you have any more questions about the interface here.

Shawn Tierney (Host): No. It looked pretty straightforward to me, Hendrik. I don’t know. Did you have anything else you wanted to discuss while we have the demo up?

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Nope. Not nothing related to this except for that, you know, this is probably something that’s quite new in the OT space is that this is a software service, meaning that there are continuous development going on and releases, and improvements to the software all the time. Like literally every week we deploy new improvements. And, and what, I typically say is that like, the, you know, if you if you if you sign up with OT, what you what you will experience is that the actual software keeps on becoming better over time and not is not going to become outdated. It’s going to be just better over time.

And I think that’s part of what I really loved about the innovation space, innovation happening around IT is that that, that has become the new de facto standard in how you develop software and great software. And I think we in, in, in the OT space, we need to adopt that same methodology of developing software, something that continuously becomes better over time.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And I would just say, you know, if you’re if you’re on the OT side of things, you wanna be in six eleven thirty one dash three languages, because these are things that your staff, you know, what you know, your electricians and technicians and even engineers, you know, should know, should be getting up to speed. I don’t know. We’re at the automation school. We’re teaching, structured text.

And so, easier. I look at this, and I’m like, this is a lot easier than trying to learn c plus or or JavaScript. So in any case, I think, you know, if it’s an OT side real IO control, real control system or data collection, you know, you know, very important, you know, mission critical data collection, then, you know, I’d rather have this than somebody trying to write some custom code for me and, you know, use some kind of computer language who doesn’t understand, you know, the OT side of things. So, I could definitely see the advantage of your system, Henrik.

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yep. I I I also wanted to say to that, Stike, the I I do not believe the EIC standards in general will disappear. They exist for a very good reason. Right. Exists to standardise to to ensure safety and determinists, determinism in this.

So I don’t think they will disappear. But there are obviously advances now with AI and things like that that can can help us create these things much faster and much more efficient and things like that. So, so but, but the EIC standards, I think, will be there for a very long time. Obviously, the 06/4099 standard is is really exciting, and and we believe that that can be, yeah, that that can clearly be there, but it’s still a new EIC standard. So,

Shawn Tierney (Host): it’s not think what we’re gonna see is we’re gonna see a lot more libraries fleshed out. There’ll be a lot less writing from scratch. We’ve interviewed on the History of Automation podcast. We’ve interviewed some big integrators, and they’re at a point now, you know, twenty, thirty years on that they have libraries for everything. And I think that’s where we’ll see, you know, much like the DCS, I think, vendors went two years ago.

But I still think that the there’s a reason for these languages. There’s a reason to be able to edit things while they run. There’s a reason for different languages for different applications and different, people maintaining them. So I agree with you on that. I don’t I don’t think we’re we’re gonna see the end of these, these standard languages that have done us very well since the, you know, nineteen seventies.

Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): I just wanna add a bit on there about, Shawn, you mentioned, you know, doing less code. I I did show earlier in the bottom right hand corner here, we have our our little AI assistant, Martha. I don’t believe the feature, it has been released yet. You know, Henrik, correct me if I’m wrong, but I know one of the things that’s coming is, AI code generation, you know, similar to that of cloud or chat GPT. So it’s going to, you know, you can open this guy up here.

You know, right right now, I think it’s just for, help topics, but you’ll be able to talk to Martha and she’s gonna generate code for you in your program there all built in.

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s coming really fast now. So, it’s it’s not been implemented yet, but it’s, it’s right around the corner.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And it’s it’s not gonna be able to it’s you’re not gonna be able to hook a camera up to it and, like, take pictures of your machine and say, okay. Write the control code for this. But, you know, if you had a, you know, process that had 12 steps in it, the AI could definitely help you generate that code and and other code. And we’ll have to have Henrik and Jake back on to talk about that when it comes out, but, you know, it’s gonna be able to save you, reduce the tedious part of the the coding.

You know, if you need an array of so many tags and so many dimensions or, you know, the stuff that, you know, it would just be the typing intensive, it’s gonna be able to help you with that, and then you can actually put the context in there. Just like, you can pull up a template in Word for a letter, and then you can fill in the blanks. You know? And and, of course, AI is helping make that easier too. But, in any case, Henrik, maybe you can come back on when that feature launches.

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. Absolutely. And I’m also excited about just a simple a use case of of translating something. Right? Translating your existing let’s say if it’s a proprietary code or something like that, like, getting it getting it standardized and translating it to the ESE six eleven thirty one standard, for instance, or, so so the obviously AI is, like, perfect for this space.

It’s there is no doubt, And and it’s, like, that’s also why I’m so excited about, like, what’s going on at the moment. It’s like there’s so much innovation potential, in the on the OT side now that, they are with all these new technologies.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, gentlemen, was there anything else you wanted to cover?

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): I think just just one final thing from from me is, like, we thought a lot about it, like, before this this episode, and we thought, like, let’s offer let’s offer the listeners something something of of true value. So so we thought, the, you know, after this after this episode launched, we want to want to offer anyone out there that’s listening a free, completely hands on trial of our technology, in their in their in their environment or on their Raspberry Pi or whatever. So just just reach out to us if you wanna do that. And, and I yeah. We’ll get you set up for for for testing this, and it’s not gonna cost you anything.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, that’s great. And, guys, if you’re listening, if you do take advantage of that free trial, please let me know what you thought about it. But, Henrik, thank you so much for, that offer to our listening audience. Guys, don’t be bashful. Reach out to him.

Reach out to Jake. Jake, thank you for doing the demo as well. Really appreciate it. My pleasure. Any final words, Henrik, before we close out?

Henrik Pedersen (OTee): No. It’s been great. Great, being here, Shawn, and thanks for for helping us.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode. I wanna thank Hendrik and Jacob for coming on the show, telling us all about OT virtual PLCs, and then giving us a demo. I thought it was really cool. Now if any of you guys take them up on their free trial, please let me know what you think. I’d love to hear from you.

And, with that, I do wanna thank OT for sponsoring this episode so we could release it completely ad free. And I also wanna thank you for tuning back in this week. We have another podcast coming out next week. It’ll be early because I will be traveling and doing an event with a vendor. And so expect that instead of coming out on Wednesday to come out on Monday if all goes as planned.

And then we will be skipping the Thanksgiving, week, and then we’ll be back in the in the, in December, and then we have shows lined up for the new year already as well. So thank you for being a listener, a viewer, and, please, wherever you’re consuming the show, whether it’s on YouTube or on the automation blog or at iTunes or Spotify or Google Podcasts or anywhere, please give us a thumbs up and a like or a five star review because that really helps us expand our audience and find new vendors to come on the show. And with that, I’m gonna end by wishing you good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace.

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Ivan Spronk of Siemens to learn about the SINAMICS G220 Clean Power Drive in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 251 Show Notes:Special thanks to Ivan Spronk of Siemens for coming on the show, and to Siemens for sponsoring this episode so we could release it “ad free!” To learn about the topics discussed in this episode, checkout the below links:* White Paper – Drives Harmonics – Siemens US * SINAMICS G220 Website * SINAMICS G220 Catalog * Siemens Product Configurator (SPC) for quick part number selection and access to data sheets and CAD files * Siemens energy savings calculator, SinaSave

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host): Thank you for tuning back into the automation podcast. My name is Shawn Tierney from Insights and Automation. And this week, I meet up with Iren Sprock from Siemens to learn all about their g two twenty clean power drive. I also wanna thank Siemens for sponsoring this episode so I can bring it to you completely ad free. So with that said, I wanna welcome back to the show Ivan from Siemens to talk about VFDs.

And, this is something we’ve been wanting to talk about for a while. But before you jump into your presentation, Ivan, could you introduce yourself to our audience for those who maybe didn’t catch your last appearance?

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Thanks a lot for just having me, back to the show here. I got a slide up here that introduces myself. I’m the product manager for the Synamix variable frequency drives for Siemens here in The US. So, yeah, happy to be back on your show. And what I would, like to talk to you about and discuss with you is our latest variable frequency drive.

It’s the g two twenty and specifically the clean power drive. This is a best in class solution for a grid friendly power quality when using variable frequency drives. So Shawn, you audience may be wondering why we should discuss power grids and variable frequency drives, but I’ll just say if you’ve been around variable frequency drives or VFDs as I’ll refer to them, you’ve likely had conversations or heard something about VFDs creating or generating harmonics on the power grid.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Yeah. Or maybe you’ve, you know, someone in the audience has been involved in a situation where harmonic current and associated voltage distortion on your plants electrical grid were causing overheating on transformers and cabling or potentially causing circuit breakers to trip their fuses to open. Or maybe you’re just an engineer looking to select and specify a variable frequency drive and you may need to answer some questions about harmonics that typical VFDs generate. You can relate to any of those or if you’re just interested to know more about this topic, we’ll invite you to stay tuned here for the next thirty five to forty minutes for discussion on power quality and VFDs. So, Shawn, I’d like to just ask you, have you heard anything about the power grid lately?

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, yes. I’ve heard lots about the power grid. I know that this is more and more becoming a big issue because when you have a lot of VFDs producing all kinds of harmonics, that can cause lots of problems like the ones you just mentioned. But, also, the utilities are starting to to see this and saying, why are we putting up with this? So aside from the power grid needing to be hardened against all kinds of things, everything from EMTs to, you know, just, you know, Yahoo’s shooting transformers in the middle of nowhere.

This has been a, I think, a big and growing issue. That’s why I’m glad that you’re on the talk about this because in the preshow, we just really I really got a sense of how important this was, you know, in 2025 and going into 2026.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Lots of conversations about the grid and really how the grid electrical grid is being stretched. And with all of the, you know, data centers being built, you know, lots of conversations about how power is gonna be supplied with those. In other words, I think for maybe the first time in twenty five to thirty years, they’re anticipating our usage and power requirements going up. So that’s why I think all these utilities and plant operators are interested in the grid. So some reasons to discuss then the power grid and variable frequency drives is variable frequency drives very useful for motor control, but left unchecked, they can introduce several power quality issues.

Harmonics, as you can see on the screen here, typical VFDs use rectifiers that generate nonlinear currents that also distort the voltage waveform and these harmonics can propagate through the electrical grid. And, you know, with that voltage waveform potentially affecting other equipment or you know at worst case other utility customers. These voltage fluctuations can lead to flicker in lighting and perhaps even take other sensitive devices offline. Typical VFDs some of them can negatively impact power factor. Again, something that’s of interest to utilities and plant operators.

And just you know there could be some resonant frequencies set up that may interfere with other things. So those are all things that yeah, harmonics, and you know, the voltage fluctuation, things that are unfavorable I’ll say. And what I’d like to do here Shawn is just gonna introduce, you know, what I want to tell you is we have a very unique product here in the SINAMICS g two twenty clean power drive. Three advantages of this product we’ll wanna talk about here through through the course of this podcast. One is the clean power technology.

So you can see total harmonic current distortion is well under the strictest harmonic standards there at less than 2%. It delivers near unity power factor under almost any load conditions. And I’ll just say, you know, there has been technologies out there that have been able to produce, you know, those two attributes of of, you know, low current harmonic distortion and near unity power factor. But what’s most unique about, this product we’re that we’re launching here is the compact space saving design, and it is the smallest low harmonics drive in the market. And also available, it’s all self contained, so there’s nothing extra to install.

It’s all in one footprint. And I’ll give you an example here. This product is released up to a through 150 horsepower now. By the end of the year we’ll have it released up through 200 horsepower. So this is a relatively new product on the market.

But that 200 horsepower drive imagine this Shawn less than three feet tall, less than 12 inches wide, and about 14 inches deep. That’s a 200 horsepower drive, that will guarantee these, things I’ve got got here with low distortion and near unity power factor.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, that’s not something I would have thought of is that these clean drives are more clean power drives are typically larger than their standard cousins. And so the fact that you’ve been able to get these smaller and closer to the sizes of the standard drive is pretty impressive.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): You’re quite we we’d like to think so. Let’s dig into, you know, first of all, if, you know, I I said variable frequency drives or typical very free frequency drives can generate harmonics. So why why would people wanna use VFDs? Turns out variable frequency drives are really good at two things. One, saving energy, and two, improving processes.

So just, you know, kind of as a reminder, why do people wanna use variable frequency drives? Just a reminder. Yeah. Half the world’s electricity is used by motors operating pumps and fans and compressors. And just as a reminder, Shawn, if you’ve got a 20 horsepower motor operating and I just use twelve hours a day, two sixty five days a year, I used average commercial power rate of 12Â¢ a kilowatt hour, that electric motor is gonna cost you running across the line around $5,500.

If I operate that motor with a VFD and I’ve got opportunity to adjust the speed, you know, based on demand, electricity cost is half of it. So $2,500 And that even gets more grows your savings grow if I consider a 100 horsepower motor operating twelve hours a day, two fifty days a year, again, with that same kilowatt hour. You know, that running that electric motor across the line is gonna cost you, you know, I’ve got on the screen here $28,000. I’ve got the opportunity to adjust speed and control speed as I do with the VFD, and the application can, of course, doesn’t have to be run at full speed. You know, just typical savings again is gonna it’s gonna cost you less than half to run that electric motor.

So I like to put those numbers in front of people, Shawn, because I think people lose sight of how much it costs to run an electric motor. So any thoughts on that?

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, when I first got in this industry back in ’90, this was big. This was talked about all the time. They were like, if you get a fan or pump and you don’t have a VFD on it, you’re just wasting money. And and and to some extent too soft status.

But the point being that, you know, if the way you drove your car was you just put the pedal to the metal everywhere you went, you could just realize that’s not gonna be very efficient, you know, fuel wise. And so, you know, putting aside the process thing, because many processes, you can’t just do a cross line starter. Right? It would be great for the process, but, typically, fans and and pumps, I mean, the the amount of savings is tremendous. And I know for a very long time, this was, you know, it was up there with, lighting, up upgrading your lighting in your plant.

You’re just installing VFDs or upgrading VFDs from very old VFDs. A lot of times, the cost savings and the rebates would make the the project pay for itself within a year or two, if not sooner. So it’s, for anybody listening, I know all the old timers out there are like, yeah, know all about this, but maybe he’s listening and you haven’t taken a look at that, definitely call your, local representative and ask him about energy savings with VFDs because it’s huge. I mean, it’s just massive. As you show in this slide, you know, but it’s it’s it’s just it’s it’s super.

Now at your second point, processes, yeah, some processes I mean, they wouldn’t be possible if all you had was across the line. You know, we we think about, you know, needing a very precise control, very precise movement, maybe not servo control, but in some cases, you know, just, you know, starting the VFD across the line would, you know, would break things. Right? You need to coast up and coast down, and, you know, be able to vary the speed based on the but what part of the what product you’re making sometimes. But let me turn it back to you.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Sure. So one of the links that I’ve got in my resources is a a a link to it’s called CNA Save. It’s just our Siemens name for our, energy savings calculator. So somebody, you know, with that link, somebody could go in there and very quickly, you know, put in their own horsepower and speed profiles and energy costs and see for themselves, you know, more dialed in. So yeah.

And I liked your your conversation about the process. I mean, so I think what I’m trying to establish on this slide really is VFDs are very useful and very effective at helping manage costs and improve process. So, you know, VFDs are not going away. So now let’s then dive into figuring out, okay, how do we handle harmonics that typical drives generate. So first, Shawn, let’s start with a conversation about what are line harmonics, and I’ve just got a few slides here to talk about that.

But we’ll relate it to, you know, what we call linear loads, which is like an induction motor or resistors or incandescent lamps. They draw sinusoidal or linear current proportional to voltage. So in other words, for the audience on the looking at this slide here you can see very nice looking sine waves. Yeah. In this country of course that’s coming from our power plants at 60 Hertz.

Looks very nice, right? Well, when you put a nonlinear load on your electrical distribution center system, yeah, and nonlinear loads are any power electronic device that’s converting AC power to DC power. So that’s what we’re doing in a VFD, we’re converting AC power to DC power. But also computers, you know, that’s obviously not the same talking in the same magnitude of power, but this is what computers are doing. Same thing with LED lamps now, Discharge lighting.

And very interestingly enough, this is also what’s going on in EV charging stations. You know, you’re converting AC power to DC power, so that’s considered a nonlinear load. And what happens there in a nonlinear load is it doesn’t draw, it just draws power in pulses when the capacitors need to charge. So think about these capacitors charging more at the top of the waveform, And that’s then what causes these variations in both voltage and current, from the fundamental sine wave. And you know, in very simple terms, that’s what these harmonics are.

Yeah. They’re non sinusoidal, they’re nonlinear, and even since it’s changing with the applied voltage. So there’s some things that they, you know, negative impacts we’ll say. And again, for the audience that’s looking at the slide there, you can kind of see some of these nonlinear currents stacked up there. Point is it creates a much more complex waveform, and there’s current flowing at those multiple frequencies.

So Shawn, I’ve got for for people that are maybe having a hard time visualing this up, I’ve got a little example. So can you think, Shawn, of a musical group that sings in parts?

Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Even if we can’t mention them on the air, you can we can all think of, you know, a group that’s in Yep. Yep. Yeah. Exactly. So here we go.

We’ve got a musical group singing in different parts, and these different musical parts are sung at different pitches or frequencies. And that all blends together to make a richer sound. Right? Well, we can think of that fuller sound that’s flowing at those frequencies. That’s kinda like more current flowing in there.

So, you know, to back to our harmonics example. So, yeah, there’s world flowing at these other frequencies other than 60 Hertz, and that kind of fundamentally becomes a problem we need to deal with. And then in that in that group, Shawn, can you think of someone what does it sound like when they sing off key?

Shawn Tierney (Host): Absolutely. Who doesn’t sound good.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Does it so maybe we’ll think of that as voltage distortion. So we gotta gotta do something about that too. So

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. I’d like to you know what? For me, you know, to and I think the charts for those listening, I think the charts really spell it out. They’re color coded, and they show the different harmonics. And for me, I think charting it is kinda one of the ways to understand it visually because if you think about let’s say you have a large rock, a medium rock, and a small rock, and you throw all three at the same time into a pond.

You can visually see the big ripple, the medium ripple, and the small ripple, but it’s really hard for you to understand as they’re spreading out what the effect would be on, you know, any any, you know, maybe toy boats that your kids have in the water or grandkids have in the water. Right? And so it it’s it’s a very tough for for human beings to try to keep in their head more than three things happening at a time. Right? And so and so I I love seeing the chart here, and it shows the relationship to when the capacity of charging and how that affects the primary and the sympathetic and the different waveforms.

And I just know that these are, you know, inducing currents, And each one of these are inducing currents, but it’s like that throwing multiple rocks into into a body of water. I just can’t I, you know, I need to see it. I need to draw it out. I just can’t, you know, understand. Hey.

Well, that me means this little boat’s gonna go to the Northwest because, you know, you know, and this is where I think it’s it’s easy to overlook the effects that these harmonics have because it is it does get kinda complicated to visualize.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Yeah. No. I I like that analogy of, the rocks and the water too. You can see those wave forms and yeah. It becomes, you know, more current flow that has to be dealt with.

And and the voltage notching is something again, talking about typical VFDs. I’ve got a little picture here of yeah, showing in the center of the screen there. Just main section of a typical VFD with the rectifier front end that’s a six pulse, standard six pulse rectifier in there that’s what you know is very very common. You can see the DC link capacitors in the middle there, and of course the inverter section on the output which is recreating that sine wave. But let’s turn our attention to you know the input waveform that we’re showing.

You can see you know drawing power creating those that notched waveform. And really what I want to point out on this slide is okay that’s kind of at the top of the slide I’ve got a picture of OneDrive doing that that you know on any given distribution system there’s a variety of loads right? Each with its own signature that interacts with each other, So you end up in trying to show down in this down in the orange section here of this drawing. Okay all of these different loads combined with their own signature to create kind of a system signature if you will. And then what happens is, okay, you’ve got standards that we’ll talk about here a little bit, but standards and specifications, you know, you’ll see if you’re an engineer dealing with harmonics, you know, they often refer to this point of common coupling.

So that’s kind of what I’m trying to come across on this slide here as well is when you have a system, you know, it’s very useful to identify this point of common coupling where you’re gonna measure, these harmonics. So you’ll see that in a lot of specifications. Not sure if you ever seen that, Shawn.

Shawn Tierney (Host): No. And and and just the point of common coupling, when you’re saying that you’re referring to go ahead. Give me that again. What what does that actually mean?

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): If you notice over on the right side here, we’ve got a different loads. I’m showing I’m showing a couple of different drives. I’m showing few motors operating across the line, each with their own signature, but that ends up creating, you know, on the distribution system, you know, a system signature. So we need some place, you know, to decide, you know, if you’re trying to meet a spec, well, tell me then where I have to measure it. So that becomes that’s what this point of common coupling is.

And I just wanted to get that term out there because people have often heard of this. Sometimes it’s right at the we’ll say the you know connection to the Utility Transformer. If you’re a plant operator maybe you’ve got a handful of buildings over here and you want to define a point of common coupling between some of these other buildings. Mhmm. But it’s just a, yeah, place to define for a measurement.

Shawn Tierney (Host): So in this case they have let’s say they have a transformer here. This transformer feeds two, let’s say, VFDs and then two motor starters. So they’re exactly at that point, you know, on the outfeed of the transformer, which we know we have four loads on, to be that point of common coupling. Because what’s gonna happen is we have all these different loads, so we have all these different waveforms. We have the different harmonics from the VFDs.

So that’s gonna average together to give us a a waveform that’s the combination of those four devices, And that’s point of common coupling. Alright, I’m with you. Thank you.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Exactly. Again, just one other factor, just to talk about a factor that impacts the magnitude of harmonics, is something else you’ll see in a lot of specifications is what’s called the relative short circuit ratio. And really this is just a metric that’s used when evaluating the grid’s ability to support variable frequency drives and and really any other nonlinear load, which, you know, we mentioned LED lighting and there’s other nonlinear loads out there too. But what it does is compares the strength of the grid or distribution system maybe that you have in your plant to the size of the connected load. And of course, this ratio and therefore the magnitude of the harmonics is impacted by transformer size, by what you all got connected if I’ve got other reactors, how much cable I’ve got connected.

And then probably most importantly by load size and type. In other words, by load size I mean, okay is this 50 horsepower or 200 horsepower? And by type meaning, is this 300 horsepower running across the line or is it on a with a VFD? I like to give an example there, Shawn. Water treatment facilities often you hear a lot about harmonics in those facilities because often there’s such big motor loads being controlled by VFDs and that is by far the largest represents the largest percentage of load on that transformer.

Right? So I’ve got to imagine kind of this remote water treatment facility, you know, what’s out there? Probably four to five to six depending on how big it is, you know, huge motors running pumps, right? And not much else. So there’s an example of people that would be you know very concerned about how much you know what percentage of nonlinear load do I have on my transformer?

So that’s kind of all relates back to this short circuit ratio. Again, something you see in a lot of specs. So just trying to give some definition around what that is. Sure if you got anything, any questions or anything you wanted to add or?

Shawn Tierney (Host): No. I I appreciate that. Appreciate you going over.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): No. Kind of a point I’m trying to make is, you know, there’s multiple factors that impact the magnitude and lots of things to think about and figure out. It’s like, wow. If you’re a plant engineer with responsibilities for a power grid, wouldn’t it be great not to have to think about this? And I guess ask you to remember, you know, why I showed you at the beginning of this is, well, our our product, you know, take that whatever’s I drive is giving you no distortion at the terminals, no, you know, near unity power factor.

So it becomes something that can really simplify. Yeah. Make make make a life of a plant engineer much simpler by specifying products that are you know low harmonic content. So let’s talk just okay so we kind of defined variable frequency drives. We we like them.

They do a lot of good things. But okay there’s some things going on with harmonics. Okay so what’s what’s necessarily bad about these harmonics? So I’ve got a couple slides here showing that’ll walk us through the effects of, you know, kind of the pain points of harmonics. So, you know, with regards to transformers, generally, remember we talked about there’s there’s more current flowing at these other frequencies.

So that’s gonna induce some additional heating and additional losses, likely to see some insulation stress, possibly even some resonant frequencies that are gonna set up core vibrations. So those are some of the, you know, undesirable things with generators. You know, there’s most good sized facilities have a standby generator. Right? Well, now if I’m operating a lot of nonlinear loads, I’d really start to need need to start to pay attention to, okay, is my generator gonna work to power these nonlinear loads?

So something to consider there. And what what ends up happening is you people may have to oversize that generator

Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): To be able to run these nonlinear loads. And dropping down to cables and conductors again, if I’ve got more current flowing through them, that’s gonna increase your cable losses due to increased cable resistance caused by the skin effect, which is something that in tendency of alternating currents to flow primarily along the surface of the conductor. Yeah. Increasing or decreasing its ability to, you know, do its job and really deteriorating the the insulation, due to excessive heating. So those are all, you know, negative things that happen when you have a lot of harmonics.

Right? Alright. Looking at one more slide of just some, you know, negative impact on circuit breakers or that may trip prematurely or fuses that may open prematurely. Again, thermomagnetic circuit breakers have these bimetallic strips that may be impacted by those additional currents flowing. Electronic type circuit breakers use current sensors which need to account for, you know, these harmonic currents.

Yeah. Most circuit breakers are designed to trip at a zero crossover point. So with these distorted currents, you know, there may be some spurious zero crossovers. And then kind of some similar problems with fuses again due to heating effect. This RMS current and non uniform current distribution through the fuse element.

You know, what tends to happen is people may have to oversize fuses. But of course, I’m also, you know, to match that actual RMS curve that’s flowing with these harmonics. But okay, that’s not necessarily unless somebody’s out there measuring it, they don’t know what that is. Right, Shawn? And I’ve got codes to meet.

I can’t just put a way bigger fuse in. So, you know, it kind of becomes this balancing act. Right? Yep. So Yeah.

So those are all things, you know, that happen when you have a lot of harmonics. Again, I can kind of summarize them on one slide here. Line, you know, line harmonics produced by these nonlinear loads cause overheating, inefficient operation, you know, and more losses, perhaps some premature line tripping, perhaps some system oscillations and instability, perhaps noise, and and yeah. And reduced power factor. So none of those are good.

Right? In general, reduced efficiency, increased power loss and energy costs, and of course then higher carbon emissions as well. And yet to kind of summarize this all up, current distortion is is bad, infects your all your systems. You gotta account for it. Voltage distortion is often the one that will get people that it’s much worse because that goes all other systems as well if if left unchecked.

So that’s my kind of my summary slide there of effects of harmonics and why we wanna do things to control them. So any any thoughts or questions there, Shawn?

Shawn Tierney (Host): No. I think I think the slide does a good job of showing that, you know, this isn’t not just for your VFD, VSD. It’s the other things on the line too that you’re affecting. Right? So so now I’m sure some of the, some of those, listening or watching have have stories of where, you know, one drive, two drive wasn’t a problem, four, five, six drives, and they started seeing these issues because it was cumulative.

Right? You know, the more drives you have. So, I’d love to hear any stories you guys that are listening and watching have about this and what you did to resolve it. But, this is this is I mean, in some cases, you may just need to get a VFD, like this clean power drive that eliminates this problem versus, you know, other ways of dealing with it.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Sure. Oh, so, yeah, that that leads well into my next kind of couple of slides here. I mean, harmonics are not new. Line harmonics voltage distortion isn’t something that’s new. I mean, this this has been around for as long as VFBs has been around.

So people have come up with, you know, ways to mitigate this. And I’ve got, you know, five of those methods listed on the screen. And we’re just gonna kinda very quickly step through these. But the last one there is really we’re gonna get to okay. What is in the g two twenty that makes it unique, and why do I wanna talk about it?

So again, what and we’ll come back to this summary slide at the end here, but just okay. Like I said, people have come up with a handful of different ways to try and mitigate harmonics. First one is just, you know, a simple line reactor. And what you also see is some manufacturers, and Siemens has done this too, to some of our lines. We have DC chokes in the, you know, in that DC link section.

You know, it’s an inductor and really all that’s doing is imposing, you know, opposing rather the rate of change of current flowing through it. So it kinda takes the top off of those notches if you you will. Yeah. It’s simple, probably economical. It’s usually applied to each VFD.

If you know something about what impedance you need, there’s there’s a selection you know available in these AC line reactors. You can select the impedance you want. But some of the negative things is they take up more panel space. They gotta wire it. And in reality, it only offers kind of a small improvement.

So people invented other things. So the next thing I got here is people came up with, they call them massive harmonic filters. They’re also called line harmonic filters, you know, LHF, you see that or harmonic trap filters. And what these do is they eliminate or control kind of those dominant lower order harmonics. I didn’t talk about this much, but these harmonic currents that are flowing they’re they’re much more dominant kind of at the lower end of the frequency range so they these harmonic trap filters work on, you know, those low order harmonics.

And they they can be effective for, you know, putting in front of a drive. Kind of what they consist of is a LC circuit there, maybe with a damping resistor, and they get tuned to these specific frequencies. So but again, it’s a device that takes up panel space. I have to install that separate from the drive, so I gotta wire it. And then they don’t do a very good job because they still have, you know, voltage notching and instability on gen generator operation is a a is a known problem with these things.

And okay you’re introducing more losses to the system. So that’s passive harmonic filters. The next thing I’ve got here is, you may have this has been pretty common in the industry. It’s called the 18 pulse front end. And really what this does is uses takes your incoming three phase power and really converts it to nine phases with a, you know, special transformer, that creates a phase shift between these different, now nine phases, so I can now I gotta have this 18 pulse, diode bridge and you can kinda see that on the on the slide here too.

So I need, you know, this involves a lot of equipment. I need this auto transformer, I need a different rectifier bridge, you know, a much bigger one really, but it does do a really good job of yeah. So I’m not drawing current in big chunks anymore, I’m drawing current more often. Right? Because I’ve got this, you know, 18 pulse rectifier.

So it really does a good job of meeting, you know, there’s a standard out there called IEEE five nineteen that’s referenced, that we’ll talk about just a little bit more here in a bit. And these also, work relatively well with the standby generator. Some of the negative things is, okay, you know, soon as I introduce that transformer and more switching, that reduces my system efficiency. And really the big one is this takes a ton of space to not only mount that transformer, but that, 18 pulse rectifier. I got a wire between all of that.

So it ends up being a pretty substantial product cost in terms of component cost and and floor space cost. So, but you know has been widely used in the industry but a lot of metal, you know copper and iron, being used in that solution. Next IBT bridge and a DC bus much like the front end, front two parts of that AC drive that I showed you. So we’ve got kind of a the front end and a DC bus set in there. And what this really does is monitors the current and then really generates compensation current in opposite phase to offset harmonics.

So this can be, you know, effective. The waveform looks pretty good. It’s unaffected by impedance changes because it’s managing the switches. But yeah, it tends to be you know more complex, it’s more expensive than passive filters, and again it becomes another device to install. Permissioning can be a bit of a challenge because you gotta get this tuned to obtain optimal performance.

Although there are some self tuning ones out there that, you know, help take that burden away. But, yeah, you gotta install another piece of equipment that takes up think of it as, you know, two thirds of another VFD setting out there. Right?

Shawn Tierney (Host): I would think it is also less energy efficient too because so we all know we have noise canceling headphones. They take power to generate a cancel waveform. Right? So we were already losing power because of harmonics, and now we’re generating another waveform to cancel out the harmonics. So it just seems like we’re losing more energy to produce this canceling wave.

So it I mean, I could if this is the option that works, then you have the space granted, but it seems like it’s less energy efficient than maybe a passive filter. Right? But I don’t know. What do you I mean, two thirds more of the panel space as a as just the VFD alone. That sounds like a lot of equipment.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Give you a a fucking waveform. So I think that’s why people like it. But, yeah, it is definitely something that’s more complex. And and again, I think also there’s that commissioning aspect. And another thing is okay.

So you get it set up on a given distribution system and it’s doing great. Okay what happens when I add a couple of more drives on this distribution system? It’s gonna change the dynamics and may need to do some recommissioning. So again it’s something that a plant operator would would need to you know pay attention to. So all those methods and and what I’m gonna get to next is something that’s actually in the G220.

So all these previous method methods you know kind of works to a degree and each kind of has its maybe strong points and and not so strong points. But what I want to talk about now is something that’s called active front end. And this is you know, the g two twenty clean power drive is a version of this active front end. So active front ends. So what do we mean by that?

Basically, it’s, you know, a sinusoidal input rectifier. And we are controlling the commutation or when we’re conducting energy. So with that we can get, you know, if done right we can have a high dynamic response. So we can respond to, changes for instance, you know, voltage dips in the distribution center excuse me, distribution system. And and because of that, then we we can also kinda get because we’re controlling when we’re conducting current, you know, it’s it’s near you unity power factor.

So, yeah. These active front ends have been versions of these drives out there as well. What’s unique about the g two twenty is that it’s a two quadrant active front end. So power is flowing only in one direction. So in other words from the supplier line source, you know, through the drive to the motor.

These are called clean power. So you hear the name clean power infeed that’s because okay the, you know, the infeed or line supply is is clean. This is known as something, out in the industry. They’re called Vienna bridge rectifiers. Vienna bridge rectifiers, something that was invented in the mid nineties.

And basically, I I just put up a, you know, bigger diagram of kinda what’s going on here. There you can kinda see, okay, it is only two quadrant, but there’s this three level switching process that really reduces all these lower ordered harmonics. So this provides them a stable controllable. The advantage is five voltage DC output, so there’s no voltage reduction going on. Makes it ideal for high power applications like VFDs.

And again, remember I mentioned earlier in the conversation here, electric vehicle chargers. So this is a technology that’s been popularized by some of the people. Yeah. Making electric vehicle chargers as well. So and really, yeah.

What we’re doing here is using on smaller sizes MOSFETs or on larger sizes, you know, IGBTs here in the power section. Mhmm. And then using a very, you know, part of the sauce here is the control or of the pulse width modulation to manage power inflow is is really, as short a sentence as I can come up to describe what’s going on here. With this, because we’re only controlling power in one direction, there’s some ability, you know, we we don’t have as many switching losses. Again, because we’re only dealing with two quadrants, it’s a compact size, but it is non regenerative.

And I I just what I’ll do here is I’ll put up, you know, a four quadrant comparison. So there are active front ends out there that are four quadrant, which has more of a full IGBT, you know, front end to it. The advantage of that is you do get power flow. It is regenerative. You do get power flow in both directions.

But of course now I have higher losses because I’m switching in both directions and and you know, just a little bit less efficient. So really kind of coming back to what’s in the the g two twenty clean power drive is this two quadrant Vienna Bridge rectifier. Again because we’re only controlling power in one direction there’s some space savings that that come from that. So yeah and I’ll just add a two quadrant so that’s why this is targeted at you know, non regenerative load applications like pumps and fans. Right?

And compressors. Those are not regen load applications. If you need something, you know, four quadrant that would be, you know, like think of a hoisting application or something like that. Maybe large centrifuges or something like that that has a lot of mass that’s been accelerated up and yet can capture some region on the D cell. But that’s kind of, what’s in the g two twenty clean power drive.

So, Shawn, I’ll just kinda stop there and the and by the way, the waveform is fantastic. Just dialed that in there. So any thoughts or questions or what’s on your what’s on your mind there?

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. No. That’s important to know. So, you know, you got the two quadrant version in the Clean Power g two twenty. And the important thing here is you’re gonna get beautiful.

You’re gonna get beautiful elimination of harmonics. You’re gonna have a beautiful waveform. But when you make this choice, you’re also opting out of, regen, like you said, like a hoist or a large inertia load. There’ll be no regenning, which in some cases, you’d be choosing a different VFD. That’s just a different application.

Right?

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Exactly.

Shawn Tierney (Host): But I think most VFD applications, at least the ones I’ve seen over the years, do not have any regen. Right? They’re your standard purpose, even your high performance VFDs are not doing regen or anything any any type of regeneration capabilities. So I think for most applications, that’s not gonna be an issue, but it’s important to point out.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): What do you think? In the you know, some people we’ve asked questions about, why didn’t you just make it four quadrant? Well, let me ask you, Shawn. What do you think’s less expensive to make? A a two quadrant or four quadrant version?

Shawn Tierney (Host): I got a feeling the four quadrant may be twice as much. Yeah. Well, at least that part of it. Right? The front end.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): And when do you think would, you know, take up more handle space

Shawn Tierney (Host): at two quadrant or four quadrant? Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): So, I mean, it’s it’s a very targeted, again, targeted at those, applications that are non region load applications, which Yeah. I’ll I’ll submit that’s at least 80% of them, you know, what’s out there. So if so, again, this really just to emphasize, it’s it’s a Vienna bridge rectifier. So, you know, some uniqueness there. But then really, also the software side of it, you know, building the, algorithm to manage that power flow and assure efficient operation is what’s been done in the g two twenty drive.

And yeah. With regards to nice looking waveforms, it’s a lights out, you know, the best looking waveform out there. And matter of fact, I’ve got one more slide here that shows just, you know, development team took one of our g two twenty products, you know. So this is what’s shown over on the left side here is just your standard our, you know, waveform. You can see kind of the double humped waveform there.

If you put a passive harmonic filter in front of the g two twenty, you know, waveform starts to look pretty good. But now if you just use a clean power drive, you get a very nice looking waveform. All that worrying about what the effect of harmonics how they’re generated you don’t have to think about that anymore because right at the input terminals of the drive you know, we’re giving you very very low turn harmonic distortion. So and and also that near unity power factor. So that’s really the advantages of the clean power drive.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, and I you know, just for the audio audience, I mean, we’re looking at the standard g two twenty, right, your standard drive. You’re looking at a total harmonic distortion of, let’s say, 33. Well, you put that passive harmonic filter on, that’s standard drive. Now we’re down to around 4%. Right?

But if you have a lot of those drives, that may not be enough. Right? So with the clean power g two twenty, we’re down to under 2%, 1.9 total harmonic distortion. And you see that I know you guys listening can’t see it, but you can see that in the waveforms. All the viewers who are watching can see the waveforms definitely the improvement as you go through each of these options.

And, again, you’ll know if you need clean power. Right? I’m fairly sure that, you you know, if you don’t need clean power, you don’t need it. Right? But if you need it Right.

And and this is something that I think we’ll see more and more because quite honestly, I mean, power fact, we all know how that affects your utility bill and how our company thinks about that. And so we can accept more stringent controls over time as, yes, the systems become more advanced. You know, you’re gonna get dinged if you have really bad power, you know, the quality of the power. If you’re causing problems down, you know, for the rest of the block or for the rest of the, business park, they’re gonna start tracking that. So let me turn it back to you, Evan.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Yep. We’re kind of to the end. I’ve got a couple of slides just to summarize what we’ve talked about here. You know, the the g two twenty is, a new drive for us. It’s our next generation SINAMICS product.

And really this drive was designed and built on four pillars of digitalization. So in the form of you know, having a digital twin capability to help engineers shorten design and engineering efforts when sizing a drive system, and then tools to optimize operation once it’s up and running. You can see another pillar of secure, meaning security, with regards to cybersecurity and and safety that protects people from machines and protects machines from people as well and other sinister actors. And ease of use, you know, next generation product starting with a clean sheet of paper. Okay.

Some things were done with regards to selection, configuring, commissioning, training, things like that with making the product as easy to use as possible. And then this fourth pillar of being sustainable, you know optimizing manufacturing resources and materials used, even operational efficiency during the life of the product and then even considering you know the end of the product life cycle. So all of those things designed into the Sinamics G220 and then if we look again specifically at the advantages of the clean power drive, you know that nice clean low low total distortion that complies with the harmonic standards, near unity power factor, and again, in that space saving design. And just to kinda give you an idea, I’ve I’ve been telling you it’s small, and I think I maybe let the cat out of the bag at the beginning of the, presentation as well. Yeah.

Here’s here’s kind of a table that shows dimensions, and there’s that 200 horsepower drive that I referenced. So, yeah, this this technology, you know, it’s not like buy the drive and buy buy something else to add on to it. It’s all in one package. And, yeah, that that 200 horsepower drive, you know, 31 inches tall, less than 12 inches wide, and about 14 inches deep. That’s a 200 horsepower clean power drive that would yeah.

You wouldn’t have to think about all this harmonic stuff. And I’m not gonna put up a chart that shows competitor a, b, and c and and our product next to it. But you can take that table and go find go look at other people’s solutions and you’ll see yeah. It’s it’s a very compact device. So that’s kind of the point of that slide there, Shawn.

And, yeah, really my last slide then just kind of I have drawn heavily from a white paper that my counterpart, Nikun Shah, wrote. So we’ll give you a link to go download that, white paper. That discusses a little bit more. I’ve kinda mentioned on and off, I triple e five nineteen. That is by far the prevalent standard in this country for, yeah, describing what harmonics are, different medication techniques.

And then, you know, there’s tables in there. It’s like, okay, if you’re being called to meet specification at triple eight five nineteen, you know, here are the harmonic current distortion levels and voltage distortion levels that that you need to meet. So that’s all laid out in that white paper. Yeah. And then we’ll give you a a link to our website, to the g two twenty catalog.

I have another very useful feature shown that I’ll give you a link to is the seamless product selector where you can go and, you know put in a part you know very quickly pick a part number and then get to some you know CAD models of it. And then I’ve mentioned that energy savings calculator at all. So Shawn that’s kind of what I had for today. I hope that was interesting to you and, more importantly, interesting to your audience.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And I just wanna remind the audience that we had you on to talk about the g two twenty a while back. We also had Jackie on that go through commissioning the one twenty and the two twenty. So if you’re kinda curious, how do you do that in TIA portal? Because I’ve never done that before.

So Jackie came on, and she walked us through that for both of these two models. We also have received some samples from Siemens. So we will be, trying those out them ourselves here in the in the studio. Don’t know. Don’t have a date on that.

We’re a little backed up here. But, definitely, they’re right in front of me every day, so I don’t forget about them. So we’ll be doing that as well. And, then we’ll make those available to our in person students who come to the school as well as we’ll add those as lessons to the online course over at the automation school. But so lots of stuff.

We’ve had a lot of coverage. If you have any questions, check out this white paper. I’m sure we just touched the surface of what’s in there. And, of course, Ivan and all his colleagues at Siemens would love to hear from you. And, Ivan, let me, pass it back to you for the final word.

Ivan Spronk (Siemens): Yeah. Just thank you so much for having me on, Shawn.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode. I wanna thank Ivan for coming on the show and giving us that very technical presentation, which I totally enjoyed. I hope you guys did too. Also wanna thank Siemens for sponsoring this episode because you guys know I love to really stem completely ad free and available to the entire public. So with that said, I also wanna thank you for tuning back in this week.

If you think about it, please give me a thumbs up or a like or a five star review. That is the best way for me to find new vendors to come on the show. And with the exception of Thanksgiving week, we should have a show every week up until the last two weeks of the year, and we are already recording shows for next year. So I’m excited about that. If you know any vendors you think we should be on the show, please reach out to them.

I’m working on a new media guide as well, and so, we’d love to have them on the show this coming year of 2026. So with that said, I just wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace.

Until next time, Peace ✌️

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Michael Warren of Wieland Electric to learn about the Samos PRO MOTION Safety Controller in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 249 Show Notes:Special thanks to Michael Warren for coming on the show, and to Wieland Electric for sponsoring this episode so we could release it “ad free!” To learn about the topics discussed in this episode, checkout the below links:* SAMOS® PRO Safety Motion Controller * Safety Products * Free Download of Samos Plan6 Programming Software * Safety Training – Become a Safety Expert!

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host): coming soon

Until next time, Peace ✌️

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Gerry Abbey, Gavin Schalliol, and Kaitlin Lockridge of Copia Automation to learn about the new AI features added to DeviceLink, as well as review the new 2025 Industrial DevOps survey results and report in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 249 Show Notes:Special thanks Gerry, Gavin, and Kaitlin for coming on the show, and to Copia for sponsoring this episode so we could release it “ad free!” To learn about the topics discussed in this episode, checkout the below links:* Second Annual State of Industrial DevOps Report Download * Copia Demo Request * Streamlining Cyber Insurance and Recovery with Industrial DevOps * Ransomware Ready Playbook for OT * Amazon Uses Copia to Connect 1000+ PLCs across 35+ Sites

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host): coming soon

Until next time, Peace ✌️

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Connor Mason of Software Toolbox to learn their company, products, as well as see a demo of their products in action in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 248 Show Notes:Special thanks to Software Toolbox for sponsoring this episode so we could release it “ad free!” To learn about Software Toolbox please checkout the below links:* TOP Server * Cogent DataHub * Industries * Case studies * Technical blogs

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host): Welcome back to the automation podcast. My name is Shawn Tierney with Insights and Automation, and I wanna thank you for tuning back in this week. Now this week on the show, I meet up with Connor Mason from Software Toolbox, who gives us an overview of their product suite, and then he gives us a demo at the end. And even if you’re listening, I think you’re gonna find the demo interesting because Connor does a great job of talking through what he’s doing on the screen. With that said, let’s go ahead and jump into this week’s episode with Connor Mason from Software Toolbox.

I wanna welcome Connor from Software Toolbox to the show. Connor, it’s really exciting to have you. It’s just a lot of fun talking to your team as we prepared for this, and, I’m really looking forward to because I just know in your company over the years, you guys have so many great solutions that I really just wanna thank you for coming on the show. And before you jump into talking about products and technologies Yeah. Could you first tell us just a little bit about yourself?

Connor Mason (Guest): Absolutely. Thanks, Shawn, for having us on. Definitely a pleasure to be a part of this environment. So my name is Connor Mason. Again, I’m with Software Toolbox.

We’ve been around for quite a while. So we’ll get into some of that history as well before we get into all the the fun technical things. But, you know, I’ve worked a lot with the variety of OT and IT projects that are ongoing at this point. I’ve come up through our support side. It’s definitely where we grow a lot of our technical skills.

It’s a big portion of our company. We’ll get that into that a little more. Currently a technical application consultant lead. So like I said, I I help run our support team, help with these large solutions based projects and consultations, to find what’s what’s best for you guys out there. There’s a lot of different things that in our in our industry is new, exciting.

It’s fast paced. Definitely keeps me busy. My background was actually in data analytics. I did not come through engineering, did not come through the automation, trainings at all. So this is a whole new world for me about five years ago, and I’ve learned a lot, and I really enjoyed it.

So, I really appreciate your time having us on here,

Shawn Tierney (Host): Shawn. Well, I appreciate you coming on. I’m looking forward to what you’re gonna show us today. I had a the audience should know I had a little preview of what they were gonna show, so I’m looking forward to it.

Connor Mason (Guest): Awesome. Well, let’s jump right into it then. So like I said, we’re here at Software Toolbox, kinda have this ongoing logo and and just word map of connect everything, and that’s really where we lie. Some people have called us data plumbers in the past. It’s all these different connections where you have something, maybe legacy or something new, you need to get into another system.

Well, how do you connect all those different points to it? And, you know, throughout all these projects we worked on, there’s always something unique in those different projects. And we try to work in between those unique areas and in between all these different integrations and be something that people can come to as an expert, have those high level discussions, find something that works for them at a cost effective solution. So outside of just, you know, products that we offer, we also have a lot of just knowledge in the industry, and we wanna share that. You’ll kinda see along here, there are some product names as well that you might recognize.

Our top server and OmniServer, we’ll be talking about LOPA as well. It’s been around in the industry for, you know, decades at this point. And also our symbol factory might be something you you may have heard in other products, that they actually utilize themselves for HMI and and SCADA graphics. That is that is our product. So you may have interacted it with us without even knowing it, and I hope we get to kind of talk more about things that we do.

So before we jump into all the fun technical things as well, I kind of want to talk about just the overall software toolbox experience as we call it. We’re we’re more than just someone that wants to sell you a product. We we really do work with, the idea of solutions. How do we provide you value and solve the problems that you are facing as the person that’s actually working out there on the field, on those operation lines, and making things as well. And that’s really our big priority is providing a high level of knowledge, variety of the things we can work with, and then also the support.

It’s very dear to me coming through the the support team is still working, you know, day to day throughout that software toolbox, and it’s something that has been ingrained into our heritage. Next year will be thirty years of software toolbox in 2026. So we’re established in 1996. Through those thirty years, we have committed to supporting the people that we work with. And I I I can just tell you that that entire motto lives throughout everyone that’s here.

So from that, over 97% of the customers that we interact with through support say they had an awesome or great experience. Having someone that you can call that understands the products you’re working with, understands the environment you’re working in, understands the priority of certain things. If you ever have a plant shut down, we know how stressful that is. Those are things that we work through and help people throughout. So this really is the core pillars of Software Toolbox and who we are, beyond just the products, and and I really think this is something unique that we have continued to grow and stand upon for those thirty years.

So jumping right into some of the industry challenges we’ve been seeing over the past few years. This is also a fun one for me, talking about data analytics and tying these things together. In my prior life and education, I worked with just tons of data, and I never fully knew where it might have come from, why it was such a mess, who structured it that way, but it’s my job to get some insights out of that. And knowing what the data actually was and why it matters is a big part of actually getting value. So if you have dirty data, if you have data that’s just clustered, it’s in silos, it’s very often you’re not gonna get much value out of it.

This was a study that we found in 2024, from Garner Research, And it said that, based on the question that business were asked, were there any top strategic priorities for your data analytics functions in 2024? And almost 50%, it’s right at ’49, said that they wanted to improve data quality, and that was a strategic priority. This is about half the industry is just talking about data quality, and it’s exactly because of those reasons I said in my prior life gave me a headache, to look at all these different things that I don’t even know where they became from or or why they were so different. And the person that made that may have been gone may not have the contacts, and making that from the person that implemented things to the people that are making decisions, is a very big task sometimes. So if we can create a better pipeline of data quality at the beginning, makes those people’s lives a lot easier up front and allows them to get value out of that data a lot quicker.

And that’s what businesses need.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, I wanna just data quality. Right? Mhmm. I think a lot of us, when we think of that, we think of, you know, error error detection. We think of lost connections.

We think of, you know, just garbage data coming through. But I I think from an analytical side, there’s a different view on that, you know, in line with what you were just saying. So how do you when you’re talking to somebody about data quality, how do you get them to shift gears and focus in on what you’re talking about and not like a quality connection to the device itself?

Connor Mason (Guest): Absolutely. Yeah. We I kinda live in both those worlds now. You know, I I get to see that that connection state. And when you’re operating in real time, that quality is also very important to you.

Mhmm. And I kind of use that at the same realm. Think of that when you’re thinking in real time, if you know what’s going on in the operation and where things are running, that’s important to you. That’s the quality that you’re looking for. You have to think beyond just real time.

We’re talking about historical data. We’re talking about data that’s been stored for months and years. Think about the quality of that data once it’s made up to that level. Are they gonna understand what was happening around those periods? Are they gonna understand what those tags even are?

Are they gonna understand what those conventions that you’ve implemented, to give them insights into this operation. Is that a clear picture? So, yeah, you’re absolutely right. There are two levels to this, and and that is a big part of it. The the real time data and historical, and we’re gonna get some of that into into our demo as well.

It it’s a it’s a big area for the business, and the people working in the operations.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. I think quality too. Think, you know, you may have data. It’s good data. It was collected correctly.

You had a good connection to the device. You got it. You got it as often as you want. But that data could really be useless. It could tell you nothing.

Connor Mason (Guest): Right. Exactly.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Right? It could be a flow rate on part of the process that irrelevant to monitoring the actual production of the product or or whatever you’re making. And, you know, I’ve known a lot of people who filled up their databases, their historians, with they just they just logged everything. And it’s like a lot of that data was what I would call low quality because it’s low information value. Right?

Absolutely. I’m sure you run into that too.

Connor Mason (Guest): Yeah. We we run into a lot of people that, you know, I’ve got x amount of data points in my historian and, you know, then we start digging into, well, I wanna do something with it or wanna migrate. Okay. Like, well, what do you wanna achieve at the end of this? Right?

And and asking those questions, you know, it’s great that you have all these things historized. Are you using it? Do you have the right things historized? Are they even set up to be, you know, worked upon once they are historized by someone outside of this this landscape? And I think OT plays such a big role in this, and that’s why we start to see the convergence of the IT and OT teams just because that communication needs to occur sooner.

So we’re not just passing along, you know, low quality data, bad quality data as well. And we’ll get into some of that later on. So to jump into some of our products and solutions, I kinda wanna give this overview of the automation pyramid. This is where we work from things like the field device communications. And you you have certain sensors, meters, actuators along the actual lines, wherever you’re working.

We work across all the industries, so this can vary between those. Through there, you work up kind of your control area. A lot of control engineers are working. This is where I think a lot of the audience is very familiar with PLCs. Your your typical name, Siemens, Rockwell, your Schneiders that are creating, these hardware products.

They’re interacting with things on the operation level, and they’re generating data. That that was kind of our bread and butter for a very long time and still is that communication level of getting data from there, but now getting it up the stack further into the pyramid of your supervisory, MES connections, and it’ll also now open to these ERP. We have a lot of large corporations that have data across variety of different solutions and also want to integrate directly down into their operation levels. There’s a lot of value to doing that, but there’s also a lot of watch outs, and a lot of security concerns. So that’ll be a topic that we’ll be getting into.

We also all know that the cloud is here. It’s been here, and it’s it’s gonna continue to push its way into, these cloud providers into OT as well. There there’s a lot of benefit to it, but there there’s also some watch outs as this kind of realm, changes in the landscape that we’ve been used to. So there’s a lot of times that we wanna get data out there. There’s value into AI agents.

It’s a hot it’s a hot commodity right now. Analytics as well. How do we get those things directly from shop floor, up into the cloud directly, and how do we do that securely? It’s things that we’ve been working on. We’ve had successful projects, continues to be an interest area and I don’t see it slowing down at all.

Now, when we kind of begin this level at the bottom of connectivity, people mostly know us for our top server. This is our platform for industrial device connectivity. It’s a thing that’s talking to all those different PLCs in your plant, whether that’s brownfield or greenfield. We pretty much know that there’s never gonna be a plant that’s a single PLC manufacturer, that exists in one plant. There’s always gonna be something that’s slightly different.

Definitely from Brownfield, things different engineers made different choices, things have been eminent, and you gotta keep running them. TopServe provides this single platform to connect to a long laundry list of different PLCs. And if this sounds very familiar to Kepserver, well, you’re not wrong. Kepserver is the same exact technology that TopServer is. What’s the difference then is probably the biggest question we usually get.

The difference technology wise is nothing. The difference in the back end is that actually it’s all the same product, same product releases, same price, but we have been the biggest single source of Kepserver or Topsyra implementation into the market, for almost two plus decades at this point. So the single biggest purchase that we own this own labeled version of Kepserver to provide to our customers. They interact with our support team, our solutions teams as well, and we sell it along the stack of other things because it it fits so well. And we’ve been doing this since the early two thousands when, Kepware was a a much smaller company than it is now, and we’ve had a really great relationship with them.

So if you’ve enjoyed the technology of of Kepserver, maybe there’s some users out there. If you ever heard of TopServer and that has been unclear, I hope this clear clarifies it. But it it is a great technology stack that that we build upon and we’ll get into some of that in our demo. Now the other question is, what if you don’t have a standard communication protocol, like a modbus, like an Allen Bradley PLC as well? We see this a lot with, you know, testing areas, pharmaceuticals, maybe also in packaging, barcode scanners, weigh scales, printers online as well.

They they may have some form of basic communications that talks over just TCP or or serial. And how do you get that information that’s really valuable still, but it’s not going through a PLC. It’s not going into your typical agent mind SCADA. It might be very manual process for a lot of these test systems as well, how they’re collecting and analyzing the data. Well, you may have heard of our Arm server as well.

It’s been around, like I said, for a couple decades and just a proven solution that without coding, you can go in and build a custom protocol that expects a format from that device, translates it, puts it into standard tags, and now that those tags can be accessible through the open standards of OPC, or to it was a a Veeva user suite link as well. And that really provides a nice combination of your standard communications and also these more custom communications may have been done through scripting in the past. Well, you know, put this onto, an actual server that can communicate through those protocols natively, and just get that data into those SCADA systems, HMIs, where you need it.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, I used that. Many years ago, I had an integrator who came to me. He’s like, Shawn, I wanna this is back in the RSVUE days. He’s like, Shawn, I I got, like, 20 Euotherm devices on a four eighty five, and they speak ASCII, and I gotta I gotta get into RSVUE 32. And, you know, OmniSIR, I love that you could you could basically developing and we did Omega and some other devices too.

You’re developing your own protocol, but it’s beautiful. And and the fact that when you’re testing it, it color codes everything. So you know, hey. That part worked. The header worked.

The data worked. Oh, the trailing didn’t work, or the terminated didn’t work, or the data’s not in the right format. Or I just it was a joy to work with back then, and I can imagine it’s only gotten better since.

Connor Mason (Guest): Yeah. I think it’s like a little engineer playground where you get in there. It started really decoding and seeing how these devices communicate. And then once you’ve got it running, it it’s one of those things that it it just performs and, is saved by many people from developing custom code, having to manage that custom code and integrations, you know, for for many years. So it it’s one of those things that’s kinda tried, tested, and, it it’s kind of a staple still our our base level communications.

Alright. So moving along kind of our automation pyramid as well. Another part of our large offering is the Cogent data hub. Some people may have heard from this as well. It’s been around for a good while.

It’s been part of our portfolio for for a while as well. This starts building upon where we had the communication now up to those higher echelons of the pyramid. This is gonna bring in a lot of different connectivities. You if you’re not if you’re listening, it it’s kind of this cog and spoke type of concept for real time data. We also have historical implementations.

You can connect through a variety of different things. OPC, both the profiles for alarms and events, and even OPC UA’s alarming conditions, which is still getting adoption across the, across the industry, but it is growing. As part of the OPC UA standard, we have integrations to MQTT. It can be its own MQTT broker, and it can also be an MQTT client. That has grown a lot.

It’s one of those things that lives be besides OPC UA, not exactly a replacement. If you ever have any questions about that, it’s definitely a topic I love to talk about. There’s space for for this to combine the benefits of both of these, and it’s so versatile and flexible for these different type of implementations. On top of that, it it’s it’s a really strong tool for conversion and aggregation. You kind of add this, like, its name says, it’s a it’s a data hub.

You send all the different information to this. It stores it into, a hierarchy with a variety of different modeling that you can do within it. That’s gonna store these values across a standard data format. Once I had data into this, any of those different connections, I can then send data back out. So if I have anything that I know is coming in through a certain plug in like OPC, bring that in, send it out to on these other ones, OPC, DA over to MQTT.

It could even do DDA if I’m still using that, which I probably wouldn’t suggest. But overall, there’s a lot of good benefits from having something that can also be a standardization, between all your different connections. I have a lot of different things, maybe variety of OPC servers, legacy or newer. Bring that into a data hub, and then all your other connections, your historians, your MAS, your SCADAs, it can connect to that single point. So it’s all getting the same data model and values from a single source rather than going out and making many to many connections.

A a large thing that it was originally, used for was getting around DCOM. That word is, you know, it might send some shivers down people’s spines still, to this day, but it’s it’s not a fun thing to deal with DCOM and also with the security hardening. It’s just not something that you really want to do. I’m sure there’s a lot of security professionals would advise against EPRA doing it. This tunneling will allow you to have a data hub that locally talks to any of the DA server client, communicate between two data hubs over a tunnel that pushes the data just over TCP, takes away all the comm wrappers, and now you just have values that get streamed in between.

Now you don’t have to configure any DCOM at all, and it’s all local. So a lot of people went transitioning, between products where maybe the server only supports OPC DA, and then the client is now supporting OPC UA. They can’t change it yet. This has allowed them to implement a solution quickly and cost and at a cost effective price, without ripping everything out.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, I wanna ask you too. I can see because this thing is it’s a data hub. So if you’re watching and you’re if you’re listening and not watching, you you’re not gonna see, you know, server, client, UAD, a broker, server, client. You know, just all these different things up here on the site. Do you what how does somebody find out if it does what they need?

I mean, do you guys have a line they can call to say, I wanna do this to this. Is that something Data Hub can do, or is there a demo? What would you recommend to somebody?

Connor Mason (Guest): Absolutely. Reach out to us. We we have a a lot of content outline, and it’s not behind any paywall or sign in links even. You you can always go to our website. It’s just softwaretoolbox.com.

Mhmm. And that’s gonna get you to our product pages. You can download any product directly from there. They have demo timers. So typically with, with coaching data hub, after an hour, it will stop.

You can just rerun it. And then call our team. Yeah. We have a solutions team that can work with you on, hey. What do I need as well?

Then our support team, if you run into any issues, can help you troubleshoot that as well. So, I’ll have some contact information at the end, that’ll get some people to, you know, where they need to go. But you’re absolutely right, Shawn. Because this is so versatile, everyone’s use case of it is usually something a little bit different. And the best people to come talk to that is us because we’ve we’ve seen all those differences.

Shawn Tierney (Host): I think a lot of people run into the fact, like, they have a problem. Maybe it’s the one you said where they have the OPC UA and it needs to connect to an OPC DA client. And, you know, and a lot of times, they’re they’re a little gunshot to buy a license because they wanna make sure it’s gonna do exactly what they need first. And I think that’s where having your people can, you know, answer their questions saying, yes. We can do that or, no.

We can’t do that. Or, you know, a a demo that they could download and run for an hour at a time to actually do a proof of concept for the boss who’s gonna sign off on purchasing this. And then the other thing is too, a lot of products like this have options. And you wanna make sure you’re buying the ticking the right boxes when you buy your license because you don’t wanna buy something you’re not gonna use. You wanna buy the exact pieces you need.

So I highly recommend I mean, this product just does like, I have, in my mind, like, five things I wanna ask right now, but not gonna. But, yeah, def definitely, when it when it comes to a product like this, great to touch base with these folks. They’re super friendly and helpful, and, they’ll they’ll put you in the right direction.

Connor Mason (Guest): Yeah. I I can tell you that’s working someone to support. Selling someone a solution that doesn’t work is not something I’ve been doing. Bad day. Right.

Exactly. Yeah. And we work very closely, between anyone that’s looking at products. You know, me being as technical product managers, well, I I’m engaged in those conversations. And Mhmm.

Yeah. If you need a demo license, reach out to us to extend that. We wanna make sure that you are buying something that provides you value. Now kind of moving on into a similar realm. This is one of our still somewhat newer offerings, I say, but we’ve been around five five plus years, and it’s really grown.

And I kinda said here, it’s called OPC router, and and it’s not it’s not a networking tool. A lot of people may may kinda get that. It’s more of a, kind of a term about, again, all these different type of connections. How do you route them to different ways? It it kind of it it separates itself from the Cogent data hub, and and acting at this base level of being like a visual workflow that you can assign various tasks to.

So if I have certain events that occur, I may wanna do some processing on that before I just send data along, where the data hub is really working in between converting, streaming data, real time connections. This gives you a a kind of a playground to work around of if I have certain tasks that are occurring, maybe through a database that I wanna trigger off of a certain value, based on my SCADA system, well, you can build that in in these different workflows to execute exactly what you need. Very, very flexible. Again, it has all these different type of connections. The very unique ones that have also grown into kind of that OT IT convergence, is it can be a REST API server and client as well.

So I can be sending out requests to, RESTful servers where we’re seeing that hosted in a lot of new applications. I wanna get data out of them. Or once I have consumed a variety of data, I can become the REST server in OPC router and offer that to other applications to request data from itself. So, again, it can kind of be that centralized area of information. The other thing as we talked about in the automation pyramid is it has connections directly into SAP and ERP systems.

So if you have work orders, if you have materials, that you wanna continue to track and maybe trigger things based off information from your your operation floors via PLCs tracking, how they’re using things along the line, and that needs to match up with what the SAP system has for, the amount of materials you have. This can be that bridge. It’s really is built off the mindset of the OT world as well. So we kinda say this helps empower the OT level because we’re now giving them the tools to that they understand what what’s occurring in their operations. And what could you do by having a tool like this to allow you to kind of create automated workflows based off certain values and certain events and automate some of these things that you may be doing manually or doing very convoluted through a variety of solutions.

So this is one of those prod, products as well that’s very advanced in the things that supports. Linux and Docker containers is, is definitely could be a hot topic, rightly fleet rightfully so. And this can run on a on a Docker container deployed as well. So we we’ve seen that with the I IT folks that really enjoy being able to control and to higher deployment, allows you to update easily, allows you to control and spin up new containers as well. This gives you a lot of flexibility to to deploy and manage these systems.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, I may wanna have you back on to talk about this. I used to there’s an old product called Rascal that I used to use. It was a transaction manager, and it would based on data changing or on a time that as a trigger, it could take data either from the PLC to the database or from the database to the PLC, and it would work with stored procedures. And and this seems like it hits all those points, And it sounds like it’s a visual like you said, right there on the slide, visual workflow builder.

Connor Mason (Guest): Yep.

Shawn Tierney (Host): So you really piqued my interest with this one, and and it may be something we wanna come back to and and revisit in the future, because, it just it’s just I know that that older product was very useful and, you know, it really solved a lot of old applications back in the day.

Connor Mason (Guest): Yeah. Absolutely. And this this just takes that on and builds even more. If you if anyone was, kind of listening at the beginning of this year or two, a conference called Prove It that was very big in the industry, we were there to and we presented on stage a solution that we had. Highly recommend going searching for that.

It’s on our web pages. It’s also on their YouTube links, and it’s it’s called Prove It. And OPC router was a big part of that in the back end. I would love to dive in and show you the really unique things. Kind of as a quick overview, we’re able to use Google AI vision to take camera data and detect if someone was wearing a hard hat.

All that logic and behind of getting that information to Google AI vision, was through REST with OPC router. Then we were parsing that information back through that, connection and then providing it back to the PLCs. So we go all the way from a camera to a PLC controlling a light stack, up to Google AI vision through OPC router, all on hotel Wi Fi. It’s very imp it’s very, very fun presentation, and, our I think our team did a really great job. So a a a pretty new offering I have I wanna highlight, is our is our data caster.

This is a an actual piece of hardware. You know, our software toolbox is we we do have some hardware as well. It’s just, part of the nature of this environment of how we mesh in between things. But the the idea is that, there’s a lot of different use cases for HMI and SCADA. They have grown so much from what they used to be, and they’re very core part of the automation stack.

Now a lot of times, these are doing so many things beyond that as well. What we found is that in different areas of operations, you may not need all that different control. You may not even have the space to make up a whole workstation for that as well. What this does, the data caster, is, just simply plug it plugs it into any network and into an HDMI compatible display, and it gives you a very easy configure workplace to put a few key metrics onto a screen. So if I have different things from you can connect directly to PLCs like Allen Bradley.

You can connect to SQL databases. You can also connect to rest APIs to gather the data from these different sources and build a a a kind of easy to to view, KPI dashboard in a way. So if you’re on a operation line and you wanna look at your current run rate, maybe you have certain things in the POC tags, you know, flow and pressure that’s very important for those operators to see. They may not be, even the capacity to be interacting with anything. They just need visualizations of what’s going on.

This product can just be installed, you know, industrial areas with, with any type of display that you can easily access and and give them something that they can easily look at. It’s configured all through a web browser to display what you want. You can put on different colors based on levels of values as well. And it’s just I feel like a very simple thing that sometimes it seems so simple, but those might be the things that provide value on the actual operation floor. This is, for anyone that’s watching, kind of a quick view of a very simple screen.

What we’re showing here is what it would look like from all the different data sources. So talking directly to ControlLogs PLC, talking to SQL databases, micro eight eight hundreds, an arrest client, and and what’s coming very soon, definitely by the end of this year, is OPC UA support. So any OPC UA server that’s out there that’s already having your PLC data or etcetera, this could also connect to that and get values from there.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Can I can you make it I’m I’m here I go? Can you make it so it, like, changes, like, pages every few seconds?

Connor Mason (Guest): Right now, it is a single page, but this is, like I said, very new product, so we’re taking any feedback. If, yeah, if there’s this type of slideshow cycle that would be, you know, valuable to anyone out there, let us know. We’re definitely always interested to see the people that are actually working out at these operation sites, what what’s valuable to them. Yeah.

Shawn Tierney (Host): A lot of kiosks you see when when you’re traveling, it’ll say, like, line one well, I’ll just throw out there. Line one, and that’ll be on there for five seconds, and then it’ll go line two. That’ll be on there for five seconds, and then line you know, I and that’s why I just mentioned that because I can see that being a question that, that that I would get from somebody who is asking me about it.

Connor Mason (Guest): Oh, great question. Appreciate it. Alright. So now we’re gonna set time for a little hands on demo. For anyone that’s just listening, we’re gonna I’m gonna talk about this at at a high level and walk through everything.

But the idea is that, we have a few different POCs, very common in Allen Bradley and just a a Siemens seven, s seven fifteen hundred that’s in our office, pretty close to me on the other side of the wall wall, actually. We’re gonna first start by connecting that to our top server like we talked about. This is our industrial communication server, that offers both OCDA, OC UA, SweetLink connectivity as well. And then we’re gonna bring this into our Cogent data hub. This we talked about is getting those values up to these higher levels.

What we’ll be doing is also tunneling the data. We talked about being able to share data through the data hubs themselves. Kinda explain why we’re doing that here and the value you can add. And then we’re also gonna showcase adding on MQTT to this level. Taking beta now just from these two PLCs that are sitting on a rack, and I can automatically make all that information available in the MQTT broker.

So any MQTT client that’s out there that wants to subscribe to that data, now has that accessible. And I’ve created this all through a a really simple workflow. We also have some databases connected. Influx, we install with Code and DataHub, has a free visualization tool that kinda just helps you see what’s going on in your processes. I wanna showcase a little bit of that as well.

Alright. So now jumping into our demo, when we first start off here is the our top server. Like I mentioned before, if anyone has worked with KEP server in the past, this is gonna look very similar. Like it because it is. The same technology and all the things here.

The the first things that I wanted to establish in our demo, was our connection to our POCs. I have a few here. We’re only gonna use the Allen Bradley and the Siemens, for the the time that we have on our demo here. But how this builds out as a platform is you create these different channels and the devices connections between them. This is gonna be your your physical connections to them.

It’s either, IP TCPIP connection or maybe your serial connection as well. We have support for all of them. It really is a long list. Anyone watching out there, you can kind of see all the different drivers that that we offer. So allowing this into a single platform, you can have all your connectivity based here.

All those different connections that you now have that up the stack, your SCADA, your historians, MAS even as well, they can all go to a single source. Makes that management, troubleshooting, all those a bit easier as well. So one of the first things I did here, I have this built out, but I’ll kinda walk through what you would typically do. You have your Allen Bradley ControlLogix Ethernet driver here first. You know, I have some IPs in here I won’t show, but, regardless, we have our our our drivers here, and then we have a set of tags.

These are all the global tags in the programming of the PLC. How I got these to to kind of map automatically is in our in our driver, we’re able to create tags automatically. So you’re able to send a command to that device and ask for its entire tag database. They can come back, provide all that, map it out for you, create those tags as well. This saves a lot of time from, you know, an engineer have to go in and, addressing all the individual items themselves.

So once it’s defined in the program project, you’re able to bring this all in automatically. I’ll show now how easy that makes it connecting to something like the Cogent data hub. In a very similar fashion, we have a connection over here to the Siemens, PLC that I also have. You can see beneath it all these different tag structures, and this was created the exact same way. While those those PLC support it, you can do an automatic tag generation, bring in all the structure that you’ve already built out your PLC programming, and and make this available on this OPC server now as well.

So that’s really the basis. We first need to establish communications to these PLCs, get that tag data, and now what do we wanna do with it? So in this demo, what I wanted to bring up was, the code in DataHub next. So here, I see a very similar kind of layout. We have a different set set of plugins on the left side.

So for anyone listening, the Cogent Data Hub again is kind of our aggregation and conversion tool. All these different type of protocols like OPC UA, OPC DA, and OPC A and E for alarms and events. We also support OPC alarms and conditions, which is the newer profile for alarms in OPC UA. We have all a variety of different ways that you can get data out of things and data’s into the data hub. We can also do bridging.

This concept is, how you share data in between different points. So let’s say I had a connection to one OPC server, and it was communicating to a certain PLC, and there were certain registers I was getting data from. Well, now I also wanna connect to a different OPC server that has, entirely different brand of PLCs. And then maybe I wanna share data in between them directly. Well, with this software, I can just bridge those points between them.

Once they’re in the data hub, I can do kind of whatever I want with them. I can then allow them to write between those PLCs and share data that way, and you’re not now having to do any type of hardwiring directly in between them, and then I’m compatible to communicate to each other. Through the standards of OPC and these variety of different communication levels, I can integrate them together.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, you bring up a good point. When you do something like that, is there any heartbeat? Like, is there on the general or under under, one of these, topics? Is there are there tags we can use that are from DataHub itself that can be sent to the destination, like a heartbeat or, you know, the merge transactions? Or

Connor Mason (Guest): Yeah. Absolutely. So with this as well, there’s pretty strong scripting engine, and I have done that in the past where you can make internal tags. And that that could be a a timer. It could be a counter.

And and just kind of allows you to create your own tags as well that you could do the same thing, could share that, through bridge connection to a PLC. So, yeah, there there are definitely some people that had those cert and, you know, use cases where they wanna get something to just track, on this software side and get it out to those hardware PLCs. Absolutely.

Shawn Tierney (Host): I mean, when you send out the data out of the PLC, the PLC doesn’t care to take my data. But when you’re getting data into the PLC, you wanna make sure it’s updating and it’s fresh. And so, you know, they throw a counter in there, the script thing, and be able to have that. As as long as you see that incrementing, you know, you got good data coming in. That’s that’s a good feature.

Connor Mason (Guest): Absolutely. You know, another big one is the the redundancy. So what this does is beyond just the OPC, we can make redundancy to basically anything that has two things running of it. So any of these different connections. How it’s unique is what it does is it just looks at the buckets of data that you create.

So for an example, if I do have two different OPC servers and I put them into two areas of, let’s say, OPC server one and OPC server two, I can what now create an OPC redundancy data bucket. And now any client that connects externally to that and wants that data, it’s gonna go talk to that bucket of data. And that bucket of data is going to automatically change in between sources as things go down, things come back up, and the client would never know what’s hap what that happened unless you wanted to. There are internal tasks to show what’s the current source and things, but the idea is to make this trans kind of hidden that regardless of what’s going on in the operations, if I have this set up, I can have my external applications just reading from a single source without knowing that there’s two things behind it that are actually controlling that. Very important for, you know, historian connections where you wanna have a full complete picture of that data that’s coming in.

If you’re able to make a redundant connection to two different, servers and then allow that historian to talk to a single point where it doesn’t have to control that switching back and forth. It it will just see that data flow streamlessly as as either one is up at that time. Kinda beyond that as well, there’s quite a few other different things in here. I don’t think we have time to cover all of them. But for for our demo, what I wanna focus on first is our OPC UA connection.

This allows us both to act as a OPC UA client to get data from any servers out there, like our top server. And also we can act as an OPC UA server itself. So if anything’s coming in from maybe you have multiple connections to different servers, multiple connections to other things that aren’t OPC as well, I can now provide all this data automatically in my own namespace to allow things to connect to me as well. And that’s part of that aggregation feature, and kind of topic I was mentioning before. So with that, I have a connection here.

It’s pulling data all from my top server. I have a few different tags from my Alec Bradley and and my Siemens PLC selected. The next part of this, while I was meshing, was the tunneling. Like I said, this is very popular to get around DCOM issues, but there’s a lot of reasons why you still may use this beyond just the headache of DCOM and what it was. What this runs on is a a TCP stream that takes all the data points as a value, a quality, and a timestamp, and it can mirror those in between another DataHub instance.

So if I wanna get things across a network, like my OT side, where NASH previously, I would have to come in and allow a, open port onto my network for any OPC UA clients, across the network to access that, I can now actually change the direction of this and allow me to tunnel data out of my network without opening up any ports. This is really big for security. If anyone out there, security professional or working as an engineer, you have to work with your IT and security a lot, they don’t you don’t wanna have an open port, especially to your operations and OT side. So this allows you to change that direction of flow and push data out of this direction into another area like a DMZ computer or up to a business level computer as well. The other things as well that I have configured in this demo, the benefit of having that tunneling streaming data across this connection is I can also store this data locally in a, influx database.

The purpose of that then is that I can actually historize this, provide then if this connection ever goes down to backfill any information that was lost during that tunnel connection going down. So with this added layer on and real time data scenarios like OPC UA, unless you have historical access, you would lose a lot of data if that connection ever went down. But with this, I can actually use the back end of this InfluxDB, buffer any values. When my connection comes back up, pass them along that stream again. And if I have anything that’s historically connected, like, another InfluxDB, maybe a PI historian, Vue historian, any historian offering out there that can allow that connection.

I can then provide all those records that were originally missed and backfill that into those systems. So I switched over to a second machine. It’s gonna look very similar here as well. This also has an instance of the Cogent Data Hub running here. For anyone not watching, what we’ve actually have on this side is the the portion of the tunneler that’s sitting here and listening for any data requests coming in.

So on my first machine, I was able to connect my PLCs, gather that information into Cogent DataHub, and now I’m pushing that information, across the network into a separate machine that’s sitting here and listening to gather information. So what I can quickly do is just make sure I have all my data here. So I have these different points, both from my Allen Bradley PLCs. I have a few, different simulation demo points, like temperature, pressure, tank level, a few statuses, and all this is updating directly through that stream as the PLC is updating it as well. I also have my scenes controller.

I have some, current values and a few different counters tags as well. All of this again is being directly streamed through that tunnel. I’m not connecting to an OPC server at all on this side. I can show you that here. There’s no connections configured.

I’m not talking to the PLCs directly on this machine as well. But maybe we’ll pass all the information through without opening up any ports on my OT demo machine per se. So what’s the benefit of that? Well, again, security. Also, the ability to do the store and forward mechanisms.

On the other side, I was logging directly to a InfluxDB. This could be my d- my buffer, and then I was able to configure it where if any values were lost, to store that across the network. So now with this side, if I pull up Chronic Graph, which is a free visualization tool that installs with the DataHub as well, I can see some very nice, visual workflows and and visual diagrams of what is going on with this data. So I have a pressure that is just a simulator in this, Allen Bradley PLC that ramps up and and comes back down. It’s not actually connected to anything that’s reading a real pressure, but you can see over time, I can kind of change through these different layers of time.

And I might go back a little far, but I have a lot of data that’s been stored in here. For a while during my test, I turned this off and, made it fail, but then I came back in and I was able to recreate all the data and backfill it as well. So through through these views, I can see that as data disconnects, as it comes back on, I have a very cyclical view of the data because it was able to recover and store and forward from that source. Like I said, Shawn, data quality is a big thing in this industry. It’s a big thing for people both at the operations side, and both people making decision in the business layer.

So being able to have a full picture, without gaps, it is definitely something that, you should be prioritizing, when you can.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Now what we’re seeing here is you’re using InfluxDB on this, destination PC or IT side PC and chronograph, which was that utility or that package that comes, gets installed. It’s free. But you don’t actually have to use that. You could have sent this in to an OSI pi or Exactly. Somebody else’s historian.

Right? Can you name some of the historians you work with? I know OSI pie.

Connor Mason (Guest): Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So there’s quite a few different ones. As far as what we support in the Data Hub natively, Amazon Kinesis, the cloud hosted historian that we can also do the same things from here as well.

Aviva Historian, Aviva Insight, Apache Kafka. This is a a kind of a a newer one as well that used to be a very IT oriented solution, now getting into OT. It’s kind of a similar database structure where things are stored in different topics that we can stream to. On top of that, just regular old ODBC connections. That opens up a lot of different ways you can do it, or even, the old classic OPC, HDA.

So if you have any, historians that that can act as an OPC HDA, connection, we we can also stream it through there.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Excellent. That’s a great list.

Connor Mason (Guest): The other thing I wanna show while we still have some time here is that MQTT component. This is really growing and, it’s gonna continue to be a part of the industrial automation technology stack and conversations moving forward, for streaming data, you know, from devices, edge devices, up into different layers, both now into the OT, and then maybe out to, IT, in our business levels as well, and definitely into the cloud as we’re seeing a lot of growth into it. Like I mentioned with Data Hub, the big benefit is I have all these different connections. I can consume all this data. Well, I can also act as an MQTT broker.

And what what a broker typically does in MQTT is just route data and share data. It’s kind of that central point where things come to it to either say, hey. I’m giving you some new values. Share it with someone else. Or, hey.

I need these values. Can you give me that? It really fits in super well with what this product is at its core. So all I have to do here is just enable it. What that now allows is I have an example, MQTT Explorer.

If anyone has worked with MQTT, you’re probably familiar with this. There’s nothing else I configured beyond just enabling the broker. And you can see within this structure, I have all the same data that was in my Data Hub already. The same things I were collecting from my PLCs and top server. Now I’ve embedded these as MPPT points and now I have them in JSON format with the value, their timestamp.

You can even see, like, a little trend here kind of matching what we saw in Influx. And and now this enables all those different cloud connectors that wanna speak this language to do it seamlessly.

Shawn Tierney (Host): So you didn’t have to set up the PLCs a second time to do this? Nope.

Connor Mason (Guest): Not at all.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You just enabled this, and now the data’s going this way as well. Exactly.

Connor Mason (Guest): Yeah. That’s a really strong point of the Cogent Data Hub is once you have everything into its structure and model, you just enable it to use any of these different connections. You can get really, really creative with these different things. Like we talked about with the the bridging aspect and getting into different systems, even writing down the PLCs. You can make crust, custom notifications and email alerts, based on any of these values.

You could even take something like this MTT connection, tunnel it across to another data hub as well, maybe then convert it to OPC DA. And now you’ve made a a a new connection over to something that’s very legacy as well.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. That, I mean, the options here are just pretty amazing, all the different things that can be done.

Connor Mason (Guest): Absolutely. Well, I, you know, I wanna jump back into some of our presentation here while we still got the time. And now after we’re kinda done with our demo, there’s so many different ways that you can use these different tools. This is just a really simple, kind of view of the, something that used to be very simple, just connecting OpenSea servers to a variety of different connections, kind of expanding onto with that that’s store and forward, the local influx usage, getting out to things like MTT as well. But there’s a lot more you can do with these solutions.

So like Shawn said, reach out to us. We’re happy to engage and see what we can help you with. I have a few other things before we wrap up. Just overall, it we’ve worked across nearly every industry. We have installations across the globe on all continents.

And like I said, we’ve been around for pushing thirty years next year. So we’ve seen a lot of different things, and we really wanna talk to anyone out there that maybe has some struggles that are going on with just connectivity, or you have any ongoing projects. If you work in these different industries or if there’s nothing marked here and you have anything going on that you need help with, we’re very happy to sit down and let you know if there’s there’s something we can do there.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. For those who are, listening, I mean, we see most of the big energy and consumer product, companies on that slide. So I’m not gonna read them off, but, it’s just a lot of car manufacturers. You know, these are these are these, the household name brands that everybody knows and loves.

Connor Mason (Guest): So kind of wrap some things up here. We talked about all the different ways that we’ve kind of helped solve things in the past, but I wanna highlight some of the unique ones, that we’ve also gone do some, case studies on and and success stories. So this one I actually got to work on, within the last few years that, a plastic packaging, manufacturer was looking to track uptime and downtime across multiple different lines, and they had a new cloud solution that they were already evaluating. They’re really excited to get into play. They they had a lot of upside to, getting things connected to this and start using it.

Well, what they had was a lot of different PLCs, a lot of different brands, different areas, different, you know, areas of operation that they need to connect to. So what they used was to first get that into our top server, kind of similar to how they showed them use in their in our demo. We just need to get all the data into a centralized platform first, get that data accessible. Then from there, once they had all that information into a centralized area, they used the Cogent Data Hub as well to help aggregate that information and transform it to be sent to the cloud through MQTT. So very similar to the demo here, this is actually a real use case of that.

Getting information from PLCs, structuring it into that how that cloud system needed it for MQTT, and streamlining that data connection to now where it’s just running in operation. They constantly have updates about where their lines are in operation, tracking their downtime, tracking their uptime as well, and then being able to do some predictive analytics in that cloud solution based on their history. So this really enabled them to kind of build from what they had existing. It was doing a lot of manual tracking, into an entirely automated system with management able to see real views of what’s going on at this operation level. Another one I wanna talk about was we we were able to do this success story with, Ace Automation.

They worked with a pharmaceutical company. Ace Automation is a SI and they were brought in and doing a lot of work with some some old DDE connections, doing some custom Excel macros, and we’re just having a hard time maintaining some legacy systems that were just a pain to deal with. They were working with these older files, from some old InTouch histor HMIs, and what they needed to do was get something that was not just based on Excel and doing custom macros. So one product we didn’t get to talk about yet, but we also carry is our LGH file inspector. It’s able to take these files, put them out into a standardized format like CSV, and also do a lot of that automation of when when should these files be queried?

Should they be, queried for different lengths? Should they be output to different areas? Can I set these up in a scheduled task so it can be done automatically rather than someone having to sit down and do it manually in Excel? So they will able to, recover over fifty hours of engineering time with the solution from having to do late night calls to troubleshoot a, Excel macro that stopped working, from crashing machines, because they were running a legacy systems to still support some of the DDE servers, into saving them, you know, almost two hundred plus hours of productivity. Another example, if we’re able to work with a renewable, energy customer that’s doing a lot of innovative things across North America, They had a very ambitious plan to double their footprint in the next two years.

And with that, they had to really look back at their assets and see where they currently stand, how do we make new standards to support us growing into what we want to be. So with this, they had a lot of different data sources currently. They’re all kind of siloed at the specific areas. Nothing was really connected commonly to a corporate level area of historization, or control and security. So again, they they were able to use our top server and put out a standard connectivity platform, bring in the DataHub as an aggregation tool.

So each of these sites would have a top server that was individually collecting data from different devices, and then that was able to send it into a single DataHub. So now their corporate level had an entire view of all the information from these different plants in one single application. That then enabled them to connect their historian applications to that data hub and have a perfect view and make visualizations off of their entire operations. What this allowed them to do was grow without replacing everything. And that’s a big thing that we try to strive on is replacing and ripping out all your existing technologies.

It’s not something you can do overnight. But how do we provide value and gain efficiency with what’s in place and providing newer technologies on top of that without disrupting the actual operation as well? So this was really, really successful. And at the end, I just wanna kind of provide some other contacts and information people can learn more. We have a blog that goes out every week on Thursdays.

A lot of good technical content out there. A lot of recast of the the awesome things we get to do here, the success stories as well, and you can always find that at justblog.softwaretoolbox.com. And again, our main website is justsoftwaretoolbox.com. You can get product information, downloads, reach out to anyone on our team. Let’s discuss what what issues you have going on, any new projects, we’ll be happy to listen.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, Connor, I wanna thank you very much for coming on the show and bringing us up to speed on not only software toolbox, but also to, you know, bring us up to speed on top server and doing that demo with top server and data hub. Really appreciate that. And, I think, you know, like you just said, if anybody, has any projects that you think these solutions may be able to solve, please give them a give them a call. And if you’ve already done something with them, leave a comment. You know?

To leave a comment, no matter where you’re watching or listening to this, let us know what you did. What did you use? Like me, I used OmniServer all those many years ago, and, of course, Top Server as an OPC server. But if you guys have already used Software Toolbox and, of course, Symbol Factory, I use that all the time. But if you guys are using it, let us know in the comments.

It’s always great to hear from people out there. I know, you know, with thousands of you guys listening every week, but I’d love to hear, you know, are you using these products? Or if you have questions, I’ll funnel them over to Connor if you put them in the comments. So with that, Connor, did you have anything else you wanted to cover before we close out today’s show?

Connor Mason (Guest): I think that was it, Shawn. Thanks again for having us on. It was really fun.

Shawn Tierney (Host): I hope you enjoyed that episode, and I wanna thank Connor for taking time out of his busy schedule to come on the show and bring us up to speed on software toolbox and their suite of products. Really appreciated that demo at the end too, so we actually got a look at if you’re watching. Gotta look at their products and how they work. And, just really appreciate them taking all of my questions. I also appreciate the fact that Software Toolbox sponsored this episode, meaning we were able to release it to you without any ads.

So I really appreciate them. If you’re doing any business with Software Toolbox, please thank them for sponsoring this episode. And with that, I just wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace.

Until next time, Peace ✌️

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Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Lauton Rushford of Endress+Hauser to learn about new innovations in Coriolis Flowmeter Technology in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 247 Show Notes:Special thanks to Endress+Hauser for sponsoring this episode so we could release it “ad free!” To learn about Endress+Hauser, and Coriolis Flowmeters, checkout the below links:* Learn more about Endress+Hauser * Learn more about flowmeter products

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host): Welcome back to the automation podcast. Shawn Tierney here from Insights and Automation, and I wanna thank you for tuning back in. This week on the show, I meet up with Lawton Rushford from Endress and Hauser to learn all about the latest innovations in Coriolis flow meters. And I also wanna thank Endress and Hauser for sponsoring this episode so I could bring it to you completely ad free. With that said, if you’re interested in learning about what’s the latest in technology used in Coriolis flow meters, I think you’ll enjoy this episode.

I know I did. And with that, let’s go ahead and jump right into this week’s show. I wanna welcome to the show, Lawton from Endress and Hauser. Lawton, it’s great to have you on. This is the first time you’re on the show.

We plus, we’ve had your company on before. But, Lawton, if you don’t mind, could you, before we jump into Coriolis flow meters, which is an extremely important technology in our industry, could you first introduce yourself to our audience?

Lauton Rushford (E+H): Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. My name is Lawton Rushford. I am the flow product marketing manager here at Anderson Hauser, based in Greenwood, Indiana, which is about twenty minutes south of Indianapolis, Indiana at our, national headquarters, for Anderson Hauser.

I’ve been with Anderson Hauser for seven years now, a whole bunch of different roles, but, for the last three years, I’ve been in this role, a flow marketing manager. Today, I I really wanted to highlight a couple of awesome innovations that we’ve had in Coriolis flow technology, over the last, we’ll see, about year or so, because I think there’s a lot of, use cases and a lot of awesome, insights we can get from from our Coriolis flow meters. And, yeah. So I guess we can we can kick it off. I did wanna highlight Anderson Hauser as the the manufacturer that I work for, and we have a history, a long history of, of innovation.

And so I’m gonna kinda highlight that, initially, talk about what sort of portfolio we have currently with our Coriolis flow meters, and then talk about a couple of new cool things that that we have released over the last couple of couple of months. And then finish off with, what we call heartbeat technology. It’s our advanced diagnostic system in all of our flow meters and all of our products across the board. It started with flow. So I think there’s a lot of you cool use cases, and I’ll I’ll highlight a couple of those as well.

And then, of course, Shawn is the the audience here. Anytime there’s questions or anything, please feel free to to let me know, and I can I can try and address them as they come up?

Shawn Tierney (Host): Sounds good. Yeah.

Lauton Rushford (E+H): Awesome. Great. So I guess our first Coriolis meter that we introduced into the market was back in, 1986. So it’s been some time. As you can tell by the the slide here, there’s a lot of different designs of Coriolis flowmeters.

There isn’t one right way to do it, but I think that the way that Anderson Houser has approached innovation is is pretty pretty awesome and pretty impressive. Everything from a single tube, design to a dual tube design, dual straight tube design versus a dual bent tube design. There are a lot of different types of Coriolis meters out on the market, and we’ll talk about a couple of, differentiators that we that, Anderson Hauser has on, on some products that we’ve recently released.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, just by looking at the, the slide here, the one that, like, really attracts my eye is the ProMASS. That’s the one that I I think I’ve seen the most in the field.

Lauton Rushford (E+H): Yep. Yep.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, walking around the different plants, and, that was launched in 1998. So that’s been out for quite some time. So just wanted to throw that out there for those listening. That may be the one you’ve seen the most of as in your in your travels.

Lauton Rushford (E+H): Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. There’s a lot of a lot of ProMasses out there. Our endpoint was the first one, but, shortly after that, we released our ProMasses.

And we’ve just been you know, we’ve we’ve had a lot of iterations, which I think is also part of the impressive thing in terms of innovation that Anderson Hauser continues to to to, do in terms of research and development on that. And the one that I always think about is is the the one that kinda looks like a UFO. That is our ProMASS X. It’s a high capacity, large diameter, Coriolis meter with four tubes in there. So it’s kind of bent two separate sys systems and then put together in one, large device, and I always I always think that one’s cool because it kinda looks like a like something out of Star Wars or something.

Yep. Yep. So, yep, so I I think that’s that’s really, really cool. There’s a lot of new things that we’ve released, and this is, I mean, this is a short timeline of of some of the innovations that we have. But, you know, over the last year or so, we’ve we’ve definitely invested a little bit more, into specific applications, and that kind of leads us into our entire portfolio of Coriolis flow meters.

We have 17 different sensors. So that is not a normal thing in the industry. I I think that to some people, it it can be confusing if you’re looking at them all at the same time, a little overwhelming. But I I think it’s really important that I that I kind of talk about this in terms of every application that we look at. We’re not trying to put one flow meter into that application.

We’re taking the application and the requirements of that application and designing a device that’s meant for it. So, in certain applications, you may not have to choose between 17 different sensors. You really have probably two or three that you’re trying to to decide between and weigh, both pressure drop, accuracy, density specifications, things like that that that will ultimately give you the the best meter for that application. But we we don’t wanna take a an approach of trying to, cram a a sensor into an application. We would prefer to design the sensor in and meant for certain applications.

So it does I guess there’s two questions on here. Why so many sensors? Well, because we wanna design our our sensors for specific applications. There’s a lot of different applications out there. Doesn’t that make it confusing?

Well, of course, it makes it a little confusing if you’re looking at it from from the high level 17 different sensors. But, every application that we look at, we’re we’re trying to, there’s a lot of different requirements of of applications in oil and gas versus life sciences, and we wanted to design sensors that fit the market and fit the application that they’re supposed to go into. And in general, all of them work the exact same way. As a as a general rule of thumb, your Coriolis flow meter measurements are mass flow, density, and temperature as a as a starting point. We’ll talk about a couple of features that we’ve started adding to some of our flow meters that that, create more of a multivariable device.

Instead of just measuring those three things, we can add viscosity or, we can do other things or concentration, things like that, with the meters. But in general, the mass flow is is using, the phase shift between your inlet and outlet pickup coils and taking that into account to relate it directly to the amount of mass that’s within those tubes. And then similarly, as the tubes are oscillating, a more dense fluid is going to have a lower resonant frequency. And based around resonant frequencies, we can understand how dense the fluid is inside of the, inside of those flow tubes. And then we also have on every single one of our Coriolis flow meters, PT 1,000, temperature probe that’s attached directly to the inside of the, the outside of the tube within the secondary containment, for additional values, additional multivariable, use uses.

I mean, for for example, on a on a concentration measurement, really what you’re using is density and temperature in conjunction, to relate that to a concentration. So that’s something that that we would that that would add to the use cases for for a a Coriolis flow meter. And one of the the current biggest innovations that we’ve had recently is with our our ProMaths queue. The ProMaths queue is a a little bit of a different design than some of the other ProMasses that you may have seen on on some previous slides. We actually, have a little bit, longer tube that’s, has a more harsher bend in it.

Mhmm. The reason for that is because what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to oscillate these two sensors or these two flow tubes at two at the same frequency, but in two different modes. So in multiple frequencies, at the same time. So, essentially, what we’re doing is our our historic use of a a pro mass meter is kind of in that that top visual where we’re oscillating in one frequency, and one one specific frequency depending on the fluid that’s going through it. And then on the at the bottom, we show an additional mode of oscillation, so an additional frequency that we’re oscillating at that gives us additional information for, specifically challenging applications.

So in in in a lot of these cases, what we what we see in most of these applications is, a lot of whipped products, purposeful entrainment of of air into into, applications. So cement in general, let’s say, as an example, we can start there. Well cement, you’re it’s aerated all the time. So as you are are moving that cement around, air pockets can be filled in inside of that cement and can cause challenges as most things with air cause challenges, especially as as you’re moving into a multiphase fluid. Anytime you have one or more than one fluid phase within the the the meter, the meter can is it’s it’s almost like, the meter is kind of confused.

It it’s not really sure what it’s supposed to be reading and what it is reading and why it’s reading that. So with with multi frequency technology, we can actually compensate internally compensate because we’re oscillating in two modes. We can compensate for the air that’s present and give a, a corrected mass flow and a corrected, density. So Right. A lot of milk milk applications, cream cheese, well cement, anything like that.

Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s awesome. Could you back up one slide for a second? Sure.

Lauton Rushford (E+H): Sure.

Shawn Tierney (Host): I just I find this so interesting, but I I know that the audience, not everybody’s on the same page. So I think this would be a great slide. Could you just, like, vary what the basic the basic operation of a Coriolis flow meter is? Okay. We know we’re trying to measure typically the flow rate, the flow rate.

Right? And, you know, there’s all these variables that go into it. But could you really just, you know, give us the the introductory, you know, how does this thing work?

Lauton Rushford (E+H): Sure. So there are exciters, if if you will, or vibrating electronics that’s going to oscillate those flow tubes.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Okay.

Lauton Rushford (E+H): And they’re gonna if there’s no flow in it, the oscillation is going to basically be, very in line, in sync. Your tubes are going to move out and then move in. And, again, it’s these are a little exaggerated in terms of videos, but the actual tubes will will start vibrating, almost like a tuning fork or you hit a wine glass on the side of a table and you get the vibration out of the wine glass. That’s kind of the same vibration that’s happening. And now as we start flowing product through those flow tubes, we get these these waves that are created.

And the inlet and outlet pickup coil are now not in sync, meaning that we’re using the Coriolis force or we’re essentially looking at a phase shift as those tubes start to create those waves, where where there’s a time difference between the inlet and the outlet pickup coil. And that time difference is ultimately what’s related to phase shift, which is ultimately what’s related to that mass flow that’s inside the tubes. Similarly, as we’re oscillating those tubes, if we have water going through that, those tubes, well, we know what the resonant frequency should be of water. We also know what the resonant frequency is of a more dense or a lighter, less dense fluid. So now we can start understanding what the density is specifically as well.

So that’s where kind of the multivariable, measurements happen within the flow tube. But, essentially, all of it’s based around a time measurement. It’s all based around when does this, this pickup coil pick up this tube, and when does this pickup, outlet pickup coil pick up the the tube coming back. Yep.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And so we talked about the ProMASQ having two modes because when the liquids or, you know, like, the substance, like cement or dairy, you know, cream or whatnot, have a lot of ear in it, that could be a challenge. So you have this other mode. We also talked about having a, the temperature sensor thermocouple built in. Mhmm.

Is is temperature always and I know I’m asking a lot of crazy questions here, but is temperature always a factor? Because I can see definitely products operate very differently than based on the temperature. Is temperature always a factor in, coming up with the calculation?

Lauton Rushford (E+H): So, typically, temperature is going to affect not only the fluid. It’s also going to affect the properties of the tubes themselves. So that’s something that’s often overlooked. And and when when we’re when we’re looking at applications, yes, we care about what the the the temperature of the fluid is because, the density of that fluid may change. There may be more or less mass flow depending, on, how close a pump is.

There’s a lot of installation effects as well. But, ultimately, the the as those tubes are oscillating, if you’re if the temperature is low enough or the temperature is high enough, those tubes are have the potential to move more or less Yeah. As you’re oscillating them. So that’s where temperature plays a really big factor, not only in in measuring temperature, that’s a great added value, but also in the, the thermal, properties of the actual tube’s material themselves.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Thank you for taking my questions. I just find this interesting.

Lauton Rushford (E+H): Yeah. Oh, that’s that’s great. That’s a great question. That is something that that isn’t really thought about, but, we always we always have to take that into account. And and that’s part of, ensuring that the the stated accuracy, their specifications of the device are met throughout the entire, temperature range of the meter’s specification.

So if we know that we’re gonna be operating, this meter is rated for negative 40 degrees f to 300 degrees f, well, we have to make sure that we understand how the tubes will react throughout that entire range. And that’s that again goes back to that innovation that goes back to the research and development that goes into the design of these sensors. So, a lot of important things there. So with that, I guess there’s there’s another added value that that comes into play when, we talk about oscillating that Pro Mask Q at a, at two modes. There’s actually an additional effect that happens to the tubes, And as those tubes because of how long those tubes are, as the tubes start oscillating, at the end of their oscillation, at their maximum amplitude of oscillation, you get a slight twisting motion in the tubes themselves.

And so we have a device that is called our ProMass I that directly measures, viscosity directly out of the meter. And that is using a similar, a similar technology in a torsional oscillation mode. Whereas the ProMAS Q, just by nature of design, actually has some slight twisting motions. So, you know, our our r and d g experts and geniuses over, over over overseas, they they came up with this idea. Well, why couldn’t we do a similar thing with our ProMask Q?

Why couldn’t we look at how much shear we’re placing on the fluid or how much twisting we’re placing on the on the fluid and understand maybe a little bit more about the individual properties of that fluid that’s going through the meter? And that’s where the oscillation the the torsional oscillation or the rotational oscillation, of that that flow tube can give us a little bit more insight into the viscosity of the fluid itself. And so this is where kind of another innovation, which is on the ProMascue, the hydrocarbon viscosity monitoring. We do what’s called we stated it’s for hydrocarbon viscosity, and the reason for that is because hydrocarbons have a very known, viscosity profile across all different pressures and and temperatures. And so we can we can verify on water and ensure that the meter is going to react properly, and and maintain the accuracy that we stated it’s going to have.

And, again, this is a monitoring point. It’s not necessarily a calibrated point. It is plus or minus 10% accuracy, which isn’t very high, but it’s it’s enough to where you can start seeing when you have the difference between a very heavy crude oil and water or a very light crude oil or, like, light hydrocarbon. And the repeatability is ultimately where where the the use case comes in. So this is one of the highlights that I wanted to to point out because I think not only on the monitoring side, it gives us more values, it gives us more information on on what’s happening inside the meter, without us having to open up the meter, and and or open up the the pipe and and look at it.

So a couple of applications, typically you’re gonna see them both, in all parts of oil and gas, which is upstream, midstream, and downstream, all the way into, refining products. A lot of these applications, in in midstream, especially in pipelines, is going to be the addition of some sort of drag reducing agent. So we can understand as adding that as we start adding that drag reducing agent into pipelines, how much effect is it actually having? Are we changing the properties enough of the product, or is it, are we not changing it? Are we changing it too much?

It gives us, more of a, a qualitative understanding of the product that’s going through the meter. So and, you know, I’d I’d mentioned earlier, you know, we do, a lot of industries, but, you know, I guess the two completely opposite industries would be something like oil and gas and, life sciences or pharmaceutical, And that kind of plays into this transition here into our, ProMASS U. This is our, is a relatively new product, that we’ve had out for less than a year at this point. But our ProMASS U is our single use Coriolis technology. In a lot of pharmaceutical applications, there’s a lot of challenges in terms of cleaning, in terms of making sure that there’s no risk of cross contamination.

And the biggest thing with that is, the introduction of single use production. So taking cells, biology, all the way through to a, a marketed medicine or a product, but using all single use products. And that saves on risk for cross contamination, especially in large factories. And, it also actually does save some money because of the amount of chemicals and and cleaning that has to go on in a lot of these pharmaceutical companies. A single use technology kinda fits the need in in that industry very, very well.

Shawn Tierney (Host): So what I’m looking at here is it looks like a a lab tabletop type device Yep. And the the u, right, the the the pipes is replaceable. So Yes. It looks like a cartridge where you would, like, you know, turn a lever. You could let’s say you ran product one and you ran that for a while and then you’re done.

You would turn this lever, release the cartridge, pull it out, and those pipes don’t have to be cleaned. They can be disposed of. And now you put in your new one, and you can run a different product. And we all know, like, a few years ago, we all heard the horror stories of a pharmaceutical that makes two different batches of medicine, and it was like nightmares. Thank god.

That never get out into the real world because only only god knows what would happen. So that’s that’s I like you can’t we can’t exclude that type of cross contamination just can’t happen in Yeah. The twenty first cent in the twenty first century. So but this this is so interesting. Is this c is this something that would be in a I’m just looking at such a nice looking desktop device.

Would this be something that was only used in a lab or could it actually be used in a production line?

Lauton Rushford (E+H): Yeah. So there’s there’s two versions. Okay. There is a tabletop, which is what you can kinda see on the screen where we have this chassis built around, the the there’s really three components in this. There’s a a transmitter that’s kind of sitting at the top there.

There is a base unit, which is where the sensor goes into, that has all the electronics, and then you have your disposable sensor. So the sensor is where all your fluid is gonna be flowing through.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm.

Lauton Rushford (E+H): The base unit is doing all of the, manipulation on the tubes themselves. So we talked about how a Coriolis meter works or oscillating those tubes. The base unit is actually doing that, and then the transmitter is taking all of that raw data, understanding it all jumbled up, and giving it out a flow rate, a very accurate flow rate. And there’s two different versions of this. There is a test desktop version and a panel mount version.

So the panel mount version would be, you know, in a skid of some sort. Mhmm. That would be permanent, but then the the single use cartridge would be pulled out, disposed of, and then a a new one would be replaced there. And and that’s kind of kind of what we’re gonna get to too in a little bit once we start seeing some of the challenges in this industry. So this industry really is is it’s not new, but it is in terms of process instrumentation.

There’s not a lot of manufacturers out there who who have single use flow technologies. So there’s a challenge from our perspective as as the the manufacturer to try and meet all of the requirements of the industry, while providing a robust, accurate, reliable sensor for these applications. And so that’s where our r and d kind of, hit a hit a snag at at one point almost because they’re they’re so used to making robust products that last ten, twenty, thirty years in process. Now we have to look at a product that we want to also do all of those things, but also be disposed of. And so there’s there’s some challenges there.

Similarly, there’s a challenge of of calibration in a lot of pharmaceutical plants because certain products require calibration before they’re even installed. Certain products require calibration before they’re installed and while on-site. And then, if there’s ever a replacement that goes in, there’s an additional calibration that might have to happen. And so what we wanted to do was take all of those constraints, all of those challenges, and try and check the boxes of all of them. And I think that’s kinda where our single use landed.

There are still some, you know, some certain applications that are challenged, but they’re always gonna be a challenge, until there’s some innovation that comes out that that truly meets that need. But, I guess, in general, really, if if you look at a high level, it’s a half a percent accurate device. We have four different sizes of of sensors that can go into the same base unit. We have an eighth inch, a quarter inch, a half inch, and a one inch sensor that will go into this base unit. They all fit into the same base unit.

So as we talked about it with an example, using product A, maybe you’re only flowing at 10 liters per minute, but then product b, you’re flowing at 75 liters per minute. Well, technically, those should probably be two different flow meters, but we can just change the different cartridges out, and and there’s no risk of of contamination, and there’s no need to change anything other than the sensor itself. It is gamma sterilizable, especially in pharmaceutical. That’s really important to make sure that there’s no contamination at all from anything in production, from any anybody’s hands getting on it or anything like that. We don’t do it as a manufacturer.

We would kind of rely on our OEMs, on our, tube set manufacturers to actually put these skids together, and part of that package would be to gamma sterilize all of the fittings, all of the tubing, as well as as well as the the flow sensors. And then we also talked about the different the different designs that we have. It is stainless steel tubes, which is different, and it’s polycarbonate flow splitter. So if you see that purple part on the screen, where our tubing would come into, that is a plastic or a polycarbonate product. And then the tubes themselves where we’re actually performing the measurements is a stainless steel, three sixteen l, material, which is different because at when you think about single use, you think about plastic.

You think about, bags that are plastic, bioreactors that are plastic, because they’re easy to throw away and they they’re inexpensive. But we felt like in order to meet all of those challenges and all of those, constraints in terms of, current, sensor designs, we felt like the most robust way to do that would be to use stainless steel. And we have a long history of of manufacturing stainless steel devices, and so this is just, another way that we could, show our our expertise in in in products and in especially in Coriolis meters. So there are, as I mentioned, three components. You have your base unit or your single, single use disposable sensor.

Down at the bottom there, you have your base unit, which is again where all your electronics are, and then you have your, and then you have your transmitter. And there’s a cable going from the the transmitter to the the base unit. There’s a couple of things I want to highlight on the inside of what the meter is and how it what it looks like. The first thing and probably the most important is that barcode scanner. So every single one of these disposable flow tubes gets calibrated at our factory and then gets imprinted a QR code on the inside of the flow meter.

And that QR code, that two d barcode scanner actually scans that information. So it can it can accurately pull in the calibration information. It can pull in the serial number of the tubes. It can pull in the line size of the tubes. It can pull in a lot of information related to those tubes.

And then it can relay that back to the transmitter, and the transmitter can check to make sure everything seems functional. And that kind of falls into where our heartbeat technology, conversation may come in in in just a little bit. And then again, all the electronics are our sensor electronics boards, our, ISCM or our sensor electronics module, all is based inside that base unit, inside this very large not not very large, but a a very heavy bodied base unit to ensure stability, across the board. And so here’s an example of what that QR code kinda looks like on the on the backside of that that flow tube, and then another, look into kind of what the the the inside of the base unit looks like. You see coil inlet one, coil inlet two, or coil outlet two.

Similarly to kind of what we talked about before, we really care about what’s hap what’s going on in between those tubes, in between those those two coils. And so we’re magnetically oscillating the, the Coriolis flow tubes inside at that back piece, that back, what is that? It’s like a gray type ceramic piece in the back, and that’s ultimately giving us giving us that oscillation that we’re looking for. And then our inlet and outlet, pickup coils are also magnetically coupled to to the sensors, and, we can detect very small changes in those at that oscillations those oscillations. So very very cool, very innovative.

It’s a product that we’ve had out for a while in, a while, less than less than a year, but long enough. And there’s been a lot of interest in in the pharmaceutical space, especially as people are trying to save costs, go closer to maybe a personalized medicine approach, where there’s gonna be smaller, amounts of product going through, more expensive amount of product going through. Accuracy is gonna be the most important there. And so this is where, we kinda talk about a little bit more about how to maintain that data trail, that automated data trail from the cal the calibration in the factory all the way into production. And so in this case, what we what we’re looking at is, here’s the process of what would happen in in in a in a system.

We would calibrate the tubes at our factory. The tubes would go to a tube set manufacturer. The tube set manufacturer puts all of these pieces together. They double bag them in a class seven ISO, ISO class seven environment. Super clean area, no risk of contamination there.

And then just to be even more safe, they’re going to gamma sterilize it there. Then they’re going to bring it on-site where they have their skid created, and they’re gonna plug everything in. And then once they plug everything in and turn the entire skid on, they’re gonna, they’re gonna notice that on the flow meter, it says, hey, we’re doing a function check right now. What does that mean? That’s ultimately what we call heartbeat technology, and that’s doing some advanced diagnostics behind the scenes.

And it’s checking information like electronics in the bit in the base unit. It’s checking, tubes, making sure the tubes are aligned and weren’t damaged in shipping, and ensuring that the the factory calibration is still valid on the current device. So all of that is happening kind of behind the scenes before you, even start running product through it, to ensure that we are fully CGMP or, current good manufacturing practice and operation, on a production side. And that kind of maybe leans leads a little bit into, another product that we’ve recently released, which is our Anderson Hauser ProMASS k 10. It’s the first Coriolis meter, in the world that has IO Link as an output.

And now IO Link, I I think it’s really important to start with a really good basis about what IO Link is, and IO Link is something I call it the three wire digital communication, but it it’s not a 100% accurate. So we’ll maybe dive into that a little bit and talk about what IO Link can do, and how it is, is being accepted in industries, specifically in farms, in in food and beverage and pharmaceutical industries. As a general rule of thumb, most large smart factories are using Ethernet based protocols. So that means that their their the devices that they have, the control system that they have is all digital, which means you can get a lot more data and get a lot of data. You can get so much data you have no idea what to do with.

There’s also, these Ethernet switches that are typically either remote Ethernet switches or switches that are out in the plant that, that are pulling in a lot of this data and then sending it up to whether it’s their asset management system or a control system, and ultimately can give us the most amount of information about the health of the device, any sort of multivariable, values that we have coming out of the device. And then similarly, on the op on the right side here of this screen, you see an IO Link system. IO Link also does a very similar thing where you have a remote, what’s called an IO Link master. It’s connected to a flow meter or connected to a level switch or connected to, a temperature probe, and it pulls all that information in, and then it outputs that information back to their control system. And so historically, we’ve had a lot of Ethernet four wire devices, whether that’s Ethernet IP, PROFINET, Modbus, any sort of digital heart as a as an option as well.

That’s historically been where our Ethernet four wire and two wire devices come from. Now IO Link hasn’t really been a focus for us, but because of our our diversity in different industries, we’ve had to look at IO Link as a feasible, cost efficient choice for basic process needs in under in in flow meters, in pressure transmitters, in a lot of devices, and a lot of a lot of different applications. And so there’s some benefits and pros and cons to both. Ethernet, you have a lot of process devices versus simple simple measurement points. The, the IO Link, you have a specific range in terms of distances.

That’s only about 60 feet, which means it’s really, really good for those skid solutions, that are put out in into many, many factories and especially especially in food and beverage. The IO Link masters are really where the integration happens. And then the data that’s recorded and aggregated is happening inside that IO Link master where typically on a, Ethernet based system, you all have full transparency from, device level all the way up to your your control system, DCS system, throughout and anywhere throughout that system as well. There is uses for both even in the same plants. There’s uses for both in in similar applications, but I I think one of the benefits is being the first, Coriolis manufacturer to have a IO Link device.

What does that mean? Really, what it means is we can get some very good data, not all the data, but in many cases, we don’t need all of the data, and we can be super accurate, extremely fast in terms of data data transmission, and, make things a little easier in terms of of integration and installation of the devices. So typically what a a system or a subsystem might look like with IO Link, you have your IO Link master, that’s where power is is brought to, and it’s also where our connection to that overarching enterprise system or DCS system is. So that IO Link master is a must. You have to have that.

You also have to have a flow meter that is or any device that is capable of outputting in an IO Link protocol, in an IO Link communication method. And then there’s a specific three wire cable that goes from the device to the master. And there this is the often overlooked thing, but it’s an IODD. Essentially what that means is it’s an IO Link device driver. So that device driver is gonna tell the IO link master what and how is this device sending information to me.

So it’s almost like a little roadmap for the IO Link master to understand what’s happening on the on the base the base level of, of that IO Link device. Ultimately, these are the four things to have that you have to have for, basic subsystem components. And then, as you start integrating it to into an overarching system, there’s a little bit more that would be needed as well, but this will at least get you started, and understanding kind of why there’s IO Link masters, and why there’s IO Link protocols and technology in the first place. So again, this is our Coriolis k 10, with our IO Link master. It’s a line size three eighths of an inch all the way up to three inch.

It also has what we call heartbeat technology. It has, three a. It has all of our, approvals for hygienic applications, for food and beverage applications, for pharmaceutical applications as well, and gives us a little bit more flexibility in terms of what we can offer our customers that will meet the need of where they’re at, but also prepare them for for future, expansions and, and and large scale DCS turnarounds and things like that. So, there is a couple of things here, mass flow as a standard with density, temperature, and you get a standard totalizer one as an output. There is, again, food contact materials, eHedge three a, all hygienic process connections as well as standard process connections, available with this device.

And then one other key factor here is when we’re in actually interacting with this device, there’s a couple of ways we can interact with it. We can, of course, use a a touch screen. We can push the device and and be right in front of it. There’s also a method for using a free app that we have on on the Android store and the Apple Apple Store. That’s called SmartBlue.

That’s available for a lot of different devices, but it is using a Bluetooth technology to, tap into the device and configure, everything. And then the other option is using a, a device manager, with a CDI port that’s built inside the transmitter as well. So all different ways to to interact with the same device, even, interacting with it using IO Link is possible as well. So a lot of different functionalities, a lot of different, options, so we can meet the needs where meet the customers where their needs are, and then also where their they wanna get get to. So that kind of takes us into what heartbeat technology is.

And we actually we talk about heartbeat technology as a story because I think if we start talking about what it is before we talk about the story, it’s, it’s it’s it’s hard to to wrap your head around. There’s a lot going into it. And part of that that discussion really starts with a a marketing phrase, which is called taking the pulse of your measurement. And what that really does is is it’s trying to understand how the device is operating currently, and how the device may be operating in the future based on current conditions. And so all all of that is is started with what our customers expect out of a flow meter, expect out of a pressure transmitter, expect out of a pH probe.

All of our customers’ needs and our users’ needs are expanding. So not only do they need excellent measurement performance from a device, they also need a reliable device. I I need to know when something’s going wrong. They also wanna be available. If the device itself isn’t always available, they can’t trust it.

We want our customers to not only trust our device, but trust the measurement performance that they’re getting out of the device. And they also want it easy to easy to use. As we’ve seen in a lot of industries, the, the operations teams, the operators that are on on the plant floor are getting less and less, and maybe they’re moving more towards engineering. But there are a lot of plants that are running extremely lean. And so running lean means they have to run efficiently and they have to run effectively.

And if our devices are not easy to use and easy to understand, we’re we’re kind of failing at at that point. So we also wanna make sure our devices are safe. We wanna make sure our devices are predictive, and we wanna make sure our devices potentially can be connected in the future. And so all of those together is now now we’ve got a difficult puzzle we’ve gotta try and solve, with any one of our measurement devices. And that’s where we think kinda heartbeat technology meets a lot of those needs and bridges the gap between, the excellent measurement performance and and all of these, needs that we have.

So we split heartbeat technology into kind of three categories. We have diagnostics, which is, current, current status, current device diagnostics, advanced diagnostics. That’s the basis of everything. So if we don’t have a good basis of diagnostics, we can’t do verification. We can’t do monitoring.

We can’t provide in, improved process insights, very effectively if we don’t have a good base unit. So that happens from that happens from the the design of our devices all the way down to the raw components that go into all of the devices as well. And then verification is kind of a what’s happening to my device right now, and can you give me a PDF printout of what that looks like. So that’s that’s part of the verification. And then again, monitoring how we look at certain values over time trended over time, so we can start understanding, predictively when certain process conditions or process upsets may happen or could happen, and how will they affect our measurements.

So all of that together is really bridged on the diagnostic coverage. It’s based around how we can detect our, any alarms, alerts, failures, things that happen inside the device that weren’t expected. All of that needs to be, really, really important. And so our IO modules, our sensor electronic modules, our sensor, inlet and outlet pickup coils, and our divi our ex the entire excitation system that’s happening inside of a of a Coriolis meter, all are really, really important to understand the health of the device. If we can understand the health of individual components of the device, we can try and better understand the health of the entire device as a whole.

Kind of the sum of, sum of equal parts or the sum of parts is is greater than the than the sum of the the system. So, that’s ultimately what we’re trying to do here. And what that means is that this value, the heartbeat sensor integrity parameter is always generated and can be used as a direct value for, understanding process related concerns as well as meter concerns. So in a similar way, we talked about, oscillation modes with our PROMAS Q, with our PROMAS I, and other flow meters as well. The frequency or the oscillation frequency that we’re actually doing for this HBSI value is a fixed diff distance from that frequency.

And so at any one time, we’re we’re oscillating these tubes at one, two, almost, three every, three different frequencies every time. And so the part of this this parameter is ultimately giving us a little bit more information related to the health of the sensors, related to, even the health of the process as well. And we’ll talk about a couple of use cases on on how that, and what that means, and and can ultimately mean for you. So as a general rule of thumb, when we calibrate and design a new sensor, our HBSI value, is 0% at reference conditions, and that may fluctuate depending on if you’re operating at reference conditions or not. But right around zero, it could be negative point one to positive point one, percent, but there’s no no cause kind of for concern there.

We do have kind of a stated bandwidth in which we expect the flow meter to operate well within its its factory calibration and well within its specification. But if that value shows very, very low, or values, like, right around zero as a reference condition, your HBSI value is related directly to sensor components that aren’t affected. So if our exciter current, if our pickup coils, if our, sensor tubes are not damaged, likely that HBSI value is going to remain at zero or right around zero. Now when we do have something like a wear mechanism, something like corrosion or erosion or abrasion inside the tubes, ultimately, there’s things that are going to be affected by that. Now how do we actually detect that?

Well, that’s where using this HBSI value, we can actually understand individual components of the the flow meter, individual, components like the sensor tubes. For example, if we were to have a corrosion instance, your wall thickness of the tubes would change. And so what what would happen there is as we start oscillating these tubes, you would start to see that value increase because your tubes are moving moving more and more and more because we’re oscillating at the same frequency or at the at the same frequency, but the tubes is not our tubes are not as heavy. Right? So, that’s where that that HBSI value can give us information related to, kind of the health of all of our devices or all of our our components within the device.

So there’s multiple ways to observe that HBSI value, and this is where trending comes into play, looking at something and trying to be predictive and preventative, in the long term. There’s no process interruption. This this entire thing happens. This entire, HBSI value is generated, automatically by the device itself. It remained the measurement remains completely available, continuously available, and it happens in situ behind the scenes, if you will, of a of your measurement.

And then you’re gonna improve efficiency, obviously, and and reduce risk if you understand what’s happening and what’s going on inside the flow meter without you actually visually seeing what’s happening to the device. So, all of that to say, there’s a lot of ways to observe it, but there is also important ways, that we can use it. So, yes, knowing that the HVSI value is zero is just that’s great. That’s awesome. But what does that ultimately mean?

And here’s a couple of examples. Here’s a couple of use cases. So we’ve had an application, in the past where, it was an abrasive fine slurry. And so anytime you have abrasive fine slurries, you have to be extra cautious of using bent tubes, and also the velocities in which you’re flowing those those those processes through there. So the initial one, they had was a dual bent tube that failed six months in the service, and they replaced it with a single straight tube.

So they expected to see some abrasion, but because of the design of the flow meter, that HBSI parameter was taken over time, and it’s been installed for for four years now and shows a relatively flat line behavior for the the HBSI value, meaning there’s no wear mechanism going on inside that device, be because of the process. So that’s a that’s a use case there. Another use case that that we talk about a lot is is the presence of abrasion in general. We know that in some applications, there is going to be abrasion. And that’s on us as the manufacturer, that’s also on, the customer to understand what their levels and limits are, and are capable of handling.

And if they don’t know, that’s that’s where we we should probably step back and say, hey, let’s let’s talk about this as a as a at a high level. What happens when something goes wrong? Do you just automatically remove the device? Is it are you down in terms of, not being able to produce properly? Things like that.

And that’s where in this case we used, kind of predictive maintenance every ten, twelve, fifteen, eighteen months. We know we have to replace this device because of the abrasion, or we have to decrease our velocity, through the meter. So either way, that’s ultimately this use case and showing showing that there is a wear mechanism happening, and we need to understand at what point do we need to start replacing these devices. And lastly, here’s one that was an unexpected wear mechanism. So customer used a Coriolis flow meter, and for five days, everything was great.

No worries. Everything was totally fine. Customer didn’t expect anything to be wrong, which is exactly what was shown. And then once they did a cleaning cycle with a new product a new cleaning product, they noticed that this value increased. And so over time, I mean, think about twenty five days, you’re increasing your HBSI value because you’re performing your regular scheduled cleaning.

Well, that wasn’t understood, and that wasn’t, that didn’t the the customer didn’t know that was going to affect things. We didn’t know that was going to affect things, but this ultimately shined light on, here’s what’s happening. Now can we change cleaners, or can we use a material that’s more compatible with that cleaner, or can we just live with the the, the risk that the the values will last long enough for us to get really, really good good data, and then we can, and look at replacing it, things like that. So this was another, application where we weren’t expecting to see any sort of drift, but we did because of, the the wear mechanism that that wasn’t, very well known or or present at at the time. So, ultimately, I think, you know, using, something like heartbeat technology as a, a confidence boots booster in your measurement is is really the the key there.

Because I think the more that we can increase confidence in our measurements, the more that our customers, will continue to want to to work with us and collaborate with us on on applications and and talk, about, different, industry applications and things like that. As as the working for a manufacturer is currently my my first my first job, I think I think, out of college, I think there’s a there’s a really cool benefit of of a privately owned company that continues to invest in research and development for the products that we have. And, I think that, you know, Anderson Hauser has has done a great job of, showing some innovations that we can within our Coriolis flow flow meter technologies. That’s all I got.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I thought that was very interesting, especially the HBSI, how you guys have in included that in your product so you can see that everything’s good, or if something is starting to go out of out of, you know, out of I don’t wanna say out of whack. You know, something’s starting to go out of alignment, you know, with Yeah. What you were expecting. And that example of cleaning, you know, nobody would have thought, you know, this, you know, this product is designed to run this fluid through it, but the cleaner, they’ll finding out that the cleaner was the problem. That’s priceless.

Right? That’s priceless. And you can you like you said, there’s different options you can take to address that issue, but now that you know what the problem is. If you didn’t know there was a problem, then your values would be off over time, and that wouldn’t be good at all. Right.

So Right. Just such an interesting topic to talk through. And I I appreciate you not only to take us through your products, but also taking us through some of the technologies that are built in the products and that make them work. And I you know, there’s a lot there between the, field bus, the PROFINET, and the Ethernet IP on your really high end, high accuracy, you know, type of installations versus maybe a smaller installation where you can use IO Link because it’s slower cost. We just had the IO Link folks on the podcast.

If you guys missed that, just, check back, a podcast or two ago. We had the IO link guys on talking about what they do and how they do it, and I think you summarized it very well in this presentation. And so I think that makes a lot of people happy because in many cases, that’s a lower cost. Yeah. I mean, you’re not gonna get the same performance as you’re gonna get over Ethernet, but you’re it’s a lower cost, and it’s, you know, maybe enough information for your application.

So it’s good to see that option there, especially for those skid manufacturers who can utilize those products. You know, with that, I I don’t have any other questions. Was there anything else you wanted to say before we close out the show?

Lauton Rushford (E+H): No. All I have to say is thank you. I appreciate the the time and the the the platform. I think this is, awesome, and thank you for asking all the questions you did. I think there was a lot of a lot of really good information that you mentioned, as well there too.

So, thank you. That’s all I have to say.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, Lon, thank you for coming on. I, I just like the first time we had Anderson Hauser on, it was just really just so intellectually interesting. So it’s our pleasure to have you on, and we really appreciate you guys.

Lauton Rushford (E+H): Thank you. Appreciate it.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode, and I wanna thank Lawton for for coming on the show, not only to bring us up to speed on Coriolis flow meters, but also answering my questions because I know I interrupted there, especially at the beginning with a lot of questions. So really appreciate him, taking my questions and also bringing us up to speed on the technology. Now Now I also wanna thank E and H for sponsoring this episode so I could bring it to you ad free on all platforms. I don’t like ads, but, you know, you gotta pay the bills. And when a vendor comes in and they sponsor the show, it really underwrites our cost to edit it and publish it.

So I’m super appreciative to them and to all our sponsors who do that. And please let them know if you see E and H anywhere out there, if you’re talking to one of their reps or you’re talking to, somebody from E and H, please let them know how much I appreciate and maybe you appreciate that they sponsored this episode. I also wanna mention that you may not know this, but I brought my other podcast back, the automation news podcast. I renamed the automation tech talk. And anytime I have an episode that is, one of my shorter episodes that I think will do good on audio, be a good listen.

Right? I am publishing it on that automation tech talk podcast. And on this podcast, you probably notice every once in a while, I’m releasing an episode of the automation show. Some episodes of the automation show, there’s so much hands on that I don’t think they’d make a good audio addition, but some of them are like presentations and discussions. And I think those would make a good episode of the automation podcast.

So I’m releasing them on this podcast channel, but I’m keeping the name, the automation show. So you know, hey. This is, originally was a video that was turned into a podcast. So give me feedback. If you don’t like those, I’ll stop doing it.

But I thought because, some weeks we can’t always bring you a new episode, we may have an episode of automation show that I think would make a good listen. So I wanted to bring those to you on this platform as well. And, again, I always love your feedback, and I wanna thank everybody who’s given a five stars or thumbs up. You guys are great. I you know, last time I checked on it, you had so many people, had given us five stars.

And that you know, that’s really how we find new vendors come out, like E and H and other vendors. Right? They specifically said you guys were such had such great feedback on the previous podcast that they wanted to come back on. So please take a moment. I know a lot of you listen while you’re driving.

But when you get home or get to some place where you can look at your phone, please give us a thumbs up or a five star rating because that really helps us grow the audience and find new vendors to come on the show. And with that, I’m gonna end the show right there. I wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace.

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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Shawn takes a look at the ET 200SP line of Distributed I/O from Siemens in Episode 19 of The Automation Show, Season 2.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Show from The Automation Blog:

Listen to The Automation Show on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Show, Season 2 Episode 19 Show Notes: The links mentioned in the video are listed below:* ET 200SP Website * ET 200SP Manual Collection * Shawn’s Siemens S7 Course

Programming Note: Due to scheduling conflicts, episodes 17 & 18 and releasing after episodes 19-2x :-O

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host):

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the show. My name is Shawn Tierney from Insights and Automation. And today, we’re talking e t 200 s p distributed IO from Siemens. Before we go any farther, I do wanna thank Siemens for sending in the samples and for sponsoring this episode so it will be ad free, and that’s as far as it goes.

Everything else is my own opinion and thoughts. And, although I do appreciate them making this ad free and sending in the samples because I wanna be able to show them to you if I didn’t have them. And, this is one of the reasons I’m doing this is I just put these hands on demos together for my students who come out to the automation school for hands on training. So I wanted to have something they could bring to their station and program with an s seven twelve hundred or 1,500. And, so I’m creating a bunch of these, and you’ll see more and more of these as the weeks go on.

But in any case, I we previously covered a couple on IFM, but now I’m doing the e t 200 s p. So we’ll take a closer look at the hardware in a little bit. But But before we get into the hardware, I did wanna run through some slides that do a great job of explaining what e t 200 s p I o is. And, again, I call it distributed IO, not remote IO because here in America, most of us know there is a remote IO product from Rockwell Automation that is trademarked, Rockwell. So we don’t wanna confuse people by using the term remote IO when possible.

So let’s go ahead and go to the slide deck now. And, the first slide is and, again, these this is a slightly of a couple three year old slide deck from Siemens that we’re gonna be going through. And, you know, the first thing is, hey. E t 200 s p and e t 200 m p I o or I p 20 in cabinet I o. They’re not on machine or machine mount IO.

And, of course, the e t 200 MP is the full size IO that’s about the same size as the 1,500, whereas the SP is the smaller. They’re like the slice IO you see from all the different vendors. A matter of fact, a couple of big vendors are coming out with new IO this fall or have already come out with it, and we’ll be covering those as well in the coming weeks. But today, we’re focusing on e t 200 s p. And so I wanted to, talk about, you know, this is a marketing slide that Siemens puts in their presentations, and it makes sense.

All the vendors wanna have IO for all the different applications, and Siemens is no different. And, actually, they got some stuff that other vendors don’t have. But I’m gonna go right beyond this one and jump right into, you know, the main selling points of this product line where it’s compact, it’s fast, it’s any of NG efficient, it’s easy to wire, and I can attest to that having done three, four hundred wires here. It was very easy to wire. I really liked it.

They say it has a great environmental coverage. There actually is, some extreme modules. We’ll talk about that towards the end. And then built in diagnostics. Again, depending if you buy the high function and standard or basic modules, right, will depend on what kinda diagnostics you get.

In any case, here is what it looks like now. The coloring of this slide, I think that the pictures colors the gray is a little lighter, almost it’s almost like a light green. It’s darker in person as we saw. Let me switch over here. As you can see here.

So, I don’t know what’s going on with that, but one of the things you do see on this slide is, one of the first things you’ll notice is a fail safe module, so safety modules. So, yes, you can mix standard and fail safe modules in the same rack or same lineup. The other thing you’ll notice is it’s compact like most of the Slice I o that’s out there. Energy efficient ruggedness, there is an extreme version of this available. Intelligent, you can get high functionality modules.

Right? Push in terminals, which I really liked, very easy to use, tool free connections. Of course, if you’d put a wire in the wrong place, which happened to me once or twice out of 400 wires, you can use a screwdriver and get it out really quick, and then, reduced parts of variance. So that’s their marketing on this product line, but I also wanna call attention all the different ways you can actually mark up the products. You can put labels in the front, right in the front of the module itself.

You can put labels on top and on the back as well. So a lot of different labeling options is also a color coding you can put over the terminals as well. We’ll see that a little bit later. In any case, this is the physically how it goes together. So first of all, it doesn’t you they don’t all just slide together like tongue and groove.

You do have to put them on the DIN rail and slide them into each other from right to left. So keep that in mind. Okay. And we always start the leftmost part is what we call an interface module. And so think of that if you’re a Rockwell guy, that’s your adapter.

Okay? Now the interface module, most of these take a bus adapter. In other words, you can choose copper or you can choose fiber, or you can choose copper and fiber. And I love this design because, well, I’m sure it adds a little cost to the product. Being able to swap out copper for fiber if you need to or do one copper one fiber if you need to, I think it’s a great idea.

That kind of flexibility is great. Now there is a low cost interface module that has that bus adapter built in, but in any case, most of them, as you’ll see, what was what I’ll show you here on the workbench, it’s module. You choose the one you want and this basic and advanced and we’ll take a look at all those. Then you have the bases and the IO modules and we’ll look at this in real time here on the workbench in a moment, but you can see here the basis of what the IO modules plug into. If you look there on the the fourth item there, it’s just a base module without the IO.

And, that’s what clips onto the DIN rail and slides together, and then we stick our IO modules in. Also, share the keying. A lot of people leave that out, but I think it’s pretty cool what they do there. And at the very end, they have something called a server module. The name for this, I’m thinking of servers like a computer server.

So I don’t know what happened with the translation there, but it’s like an end cap. If you’re a Rockwell person, it’s like an end cap. You gotta have that at the end. It doesn’t really serve up anything, but, in any case, you gotta have it. So in any case, then you can see kinda how it’s laid out there.

Let’s go ahead and go to the next slide here. And, these are all the different type of interface modules they have. So the very basic one, right, if you needed a low cost drop of IO, it only does up to 12 modules, but, you know, it’s an all in one unit with two Ethernet ports built in, and you can use all the modules with it except for safety modules. K. So that’s important to know.

Then we have the standard interface modules, which do up to 32 modules. Right? You can use safety with them. You can actually expand them to e t 200 a l if you needed to have some, on machine products or machine mount I o. I’ll show you the a l in a future video.

We’re gonna cover that separately. And you can hot swap any single module at a time, which is very cool. And then, of course, if we go to the high featured, we get up to 64 modules. You can multi hot swap, multiple modules. You can actually set it for asynchronous mode so you can get the speeds up to two hundred fifty microseconds.

So it’s, very cool there. And you can see the other options there including the CPU, which we will cover. That’ll probably be next week, though. Alright. So, one of the cool features they have is this was new at the time of this, you know, two, three years ago of this presentation is they added a, a unit that actually could use three Ethernet ports.

So why would you do that? Well, think of it. Right? You maybe you’re daisy chaining from one interface module to the next and you have a station where you either need a bulkhead connector so you can program from or you have an HMI. You need that third connection.

Right? And so this allows you to have three connections. Now the downside of this is you actually have four connections, but you can only use three and I’ll show you what I mean here. Let’s go back to the overhead, and I actually have that module right here. Thank you, Siemens, for sending him in.

And you can see I have my two bus adapters, but I can only use three of the four. Okay? So it’s it’s just a limitation. And, you know, I don’t really know why they’re limited to that. I’m sure there’s a reason.

I was thinking about that earlier. It’s like, maybe they wanted to prevent this or that or the other thing, but in any case, it’s still cool. It’s so much cheaper than buying a switch and putting it in that place. Well, in most cases, it would be. Right?

There’s also the optional, grooves here. Let me switch back. There’s also optional grooves here. I don’t know if you can see them very well. We’ll zoom in later.

But that is for, strain relief, if you need to have that as well. You can see those plastic pieces go in, and then you can, you know, zip tie your cables right to them. So very interesting new product there. And then these are all of the different, bus adapters. So you can see there’s, basic ones with two RJ 45 ports, two FastConnect ports.

There’s, units with, one RJ forty five one fiber optic and so on. So lots of different options there to choose from. And, again, not a lot of people do this. You have to replace the whole interface module with other companies’ products, like in Rockwood would be an adapter to get a difference. Right?

And here, you don’t have to. You just replace the, the, bus adapter. Okay. Now here’s just showing the different type of modules. So if you’re familiar with Siemens, you know, all their modules come well, most of their modules come in different flavors.

You have the standard, you have the basic, and you have the high feature. Right? And they’re also showing, a safety module there with the yellow, and then you can also get high speed. So lots of different options here. And we’ll take a look at that.

But, they all have different, article numbers or part numbers for us Americans. And so, you know, if you’re in OEM, you’re just doing a lot of clickety clack, maybe you get all the basics. If you’re in process, you’re probably gonna want the high features, advanced diagnostics, and so on. So in any case, and this is what the front of them looks like. Of course, they have digital in and digital out.

They have analog in and analog out. They also have what I call specialty. So they have technology modules and communication modules. I love, that they have, BACnet and IO Link and PROFIBUS, Aussie in this form factor as well as conning modules, position modules, energy management, weighing modules, all those different modules. And here’s some of the other things too.

So tool free, I did all three or 400 wires. It was all tool free. I just put my wire in. Boom. It clamped a really good across your pool test every single one.

Right? And so I’ve been one of the guys who’ve driven hours and hours to find out the problem wasn’t with the product. It was with the guy who wired it. He didn’t screw them down tight enough. So you pool test everyone, make sure they’re in there solidly, and, I didn’t have any problems at all.

Very easy to take out. I have a couple that I forgot to run them through the Panduit. I just looped over the Panduit and and over the top of the box. And I’m like, Shawn, if you put it in that way, you won’t be able to close the cover. So So when you’re doing so many, sometimes you get distracted.

So in any case, very easy to get them back out if you put them in the wrong and you need to rewire them somewhere else. They say they’re 50% narrower. I would say that versus the e t 200 m p. I think they’re about the same size as, everybody else’s slice IO, very close. And then you can see there the marking, at the bottom.

Those reference identification labels, that those are pretty cool, if you need the color code, the wire, terminals. Okay. So let’s go on from there and, this one is really cool too. Now this is a fairly new not everybody knows about this, but this is the multi field bus version of the interface module. I think this is so cool.

It does Ethernet p. It does Modbus TCP, and it does PROFINET all in one module. It does set up a little differently. When I was testing it out, I was like, wow. That does set up a little differently than the other interface modules.

But, I didn’t have to use the, the separate tool to get it working. So in any case, very cool, and it can talk all three at the same time. So if you had a couple of the of people who needed to listen to the traffic, but you need one station to control it, then, you could have all three running at the same time. I just think that’s so cool. And we do have one here.

We’re gonna do it use it first with the Siemens and then maybe use it with the Rockwells if time permits. But, definitely wanna do that, in another episode of the show. But, very cool. I’m I matter of fact, we just, did an episode. It’s not released yet, but, it will be out shortly with the METTLENOTO I n d three sixty, and that also supports multiple protocols.

So so cool. I love it when vendors do that all in the same part number. So cool. And so you can see more information about that here. I’m not gonna go into details.

We’ll talk about later, when we actually have the episode on that. And another thing I noticed with their high function modules, it says firmware 4.1 and up is that you can, so on the HF modules, you could do module to module communications. So you’re talking, like, screw to screw, like, two hundred fifty microseconds. I think that’s so cool. That’s something else if time permits.

In the coming days, we’ll, do a demo on that too if we can get, if we have the time to do it. I just think it’s a cool feature. I’d love to see it in action. There’s other things in here about, other types of modules. I’m not gonna go through all this.

This one I thought was pretty interesting. It’s 48 24 to 48 volts AC or 48 volt DC. So eight inputs either AC or DC in those ranges and it has a built in fuse which I think is so important. Right? So, an interesting new module that does both AC and DC.

Right? Looked like it was really designed for transportation and that kinda wraps up the PowerPoint slide. And, again, this is just one of many of their lines. Oh, I do wanna mention this. This should have been before that.

This is the extreme version of what they call their psi plus extreme, where you get the minus 40 to 70 degrees c. You can install it, up to 5,000 meters. You know, the air is thinner up there. It can, handle salt mist, chemical, active substances. You know, this is a lot of people would think of this as conformally coated.

So, you can see all of those different, regulations that the extreme version, makes. Okay? The Ciplas Extreme. So with that, let’s see. Last slide here.

So this is just one of many products. So we’ve covered this in the past. We covered the 1,200 to 1,500. This is the t 200 s p. We will be covering the a l and the Eco PN.

I think these are both Eco PN, in the future. But with that, I wanna actually give you a physical demo of how this stuff works. So in any case, let me move the modules around here a little bit, and we’ll be zooming in and out. So this is the unit I, I, you know, wired up this weekend, and we’ll zoom in on her. And this is the one that gives you the, up to threes that I put, so you have two bus adapters.

Okay? And it’s a little bit wider. If you look at one of the other ones, you can see it’s a lot narrower. Right? That’s actually the multi field bus model, which is about the same size as the standard model.

Well, long here, I might as well bring that one in too and show you that one. K. So in any case but, let’s focus on this guy, and, we’ll take a look at I wanted to show you this one because this one also has the analog in, even though I haven’t put the analog operators and make gauges on the panel. I do have them wired up. Right now, I just have them wired to each other.

But in any case, so let’s go ahead and zoom in on this a little bit. Okay. First thing you’re gonna notice is the first terminal block here, the first base is is a light style, and then they go to the darker style. And that’s because you can bring power into these light bases. Right?

Like an a zero. And, I go through all the part numbers in my course. You guys can find that in the literature. But and it passes power to these other bases. Okay.

So you’ll typically start with a light style. You’ll go through as many bases as you can power until you need another or you need isolation until you need another, light style base. And then here, you can see the modules themselves. I love the fact that everything has a QR code on it. So if you need the manual, you just you just, you know, get your phone out and and it’ll link right to it.

But I want the wire in here, so I was able to wire everything based on just, the little label here. And again, this is where you can slide in your own labels if you want. And then the indicators here, they all worked when we when we actually do in a next video, we actually do the integration. You’ll see these lights come on. They’re very easy to see.

You can also see here some version information. I did run into some of these modules being too new for version 16. So I usually default to version 16 because that’s what I started with. But, if you have 16.1, you can get the new GSD file and it supports most of the I think almost all the new modules. In any case, up here and I do have a mix of new and used because back when I was, getting ready to do this, we had the whole component sort shortage, so I had to pick up some modules myself.

But, in any case, you’ll see the type here. Digital in, and this is a basic. Okay? So eight by 24, eight inputs at 24 volts DC. And then you have the digital output, DQ.

This is a standard eight by 24. Eight u, I believe that means voltage, and, u for voltage. But in any case and then if we come over here, we have an a q. This is a standard, s t, and this is for UI, so voltage or current. And so you can see those there.

And down here is the article number, which we typically refer to as, like, a, catalog number here in The US. K. And so when I’m sending these up, I take a picture of the front of the unit, and that’s what I use to set them up in the software. But in any case, you can also see the versions here as well. I love that all that information is on the front of the module.

And then at the top, we already looked at that. And so we already looked at the top. And then over here, we have the server module, or what we may call an end cap here in The US. Alright. So one of the cool things about this, these modules is the keying.

So I’m going to take these out just by squeezing in. I’m gonna pull it out, pull this one out too. Okay. And in there, you can see I know the lighting’s a little tricky, but in there, you see those black little wheels, those circular black things? Those are the keys.

And you can see how they’re let’s see if I go up to the camera. If I put the overhead light on, it just gives too much glare. So hopefully, you guys can see that. Well, the cool thing about that is that those come pre installed on the modules. Like, they clipped in there really good, and they don’t come loose until you stick them in all the way, and then they stay in the base.

And I love that. So you don’t have to turn anything. You don’t have to memorize what position it’s in. You just put the module in and boom. Now I did have a couple modules put in the wrong position, so I was able to get out with a screwdriver, get in that little, notch there and get it out.

But you can see there’s two notches in each, but I it doesn’t feel like when I was doing that, it didn’t feel like it was designed for those to be reused. So I probably say that not, but let’s go ahead and try to put this module in the wrong place. Yeah. You can. So, I really like that design feature, automatic keying, and, yeah.

That’s great. And they really go in. You’re gonna make sure they’re all the way in, but once they’re in, they’re in. Now let me zoom out a little bit and show you how to take them apart and put them back together. So there are these, push in buttons here on the top.

Right? So these latches, these releases. And so what I’ll do is let me push in the first two, the the server module and the module, and I’m gonna slide them to the right. Okay? And I know it has all the, wiring on it.

But in any case, that’s how easy it is to assemble and disassemble. Quick or disassemble like this. Okay. And now to get them on and off the DIN rail, I’m gonna push in those two, tabs at the top there. I’m gonna lift the bottom up.

Okay. Now I can get it off the DIN rail. Alright. And so when you’re pushing in that top tab, it’s doing two things. Okay?

It’s gonna release the, DIN rail, but it’s also gonna release the connection to the module on the side of it. Alright? And so you’re gonna be cognizant of that. Alright? You can’t just release it release the module off the DIN rail.

You have to release it from the side as well. Okay. And, you can see that here. Well, let’s see if we can get him off. He’s a little sticky.

I don’t know why. He could be used. But in any case, get him off. Okay. And it’s the same for the sky too.

Let’s see here. So let’s go ahead and put it back together again. We’ll put the top on first and then we’ll click it on to the bottom. Okay. And then we’ll slide it in.

Nice. Then we’ll do the same thing for the server module and cap. Okay. It’s not called the end cap. That’s my race.

Okay. And this one, sometimes this might be a useful one. There we go. It’s all in together and working great. You gotta make sure you get those modules all the way in.

Okay. And there’s a lot of great, diagnostics when you get the system up and running. It’ll tell you if it’s missing a module. It’ll tell you if you chose the wrong base in the software. If let’s say you chose the light colored base versus the dark colored base.

I mean, the new power versus the power pass on. It’ll tell you if you get the wrong firmware or the wrong style. Maybe you chose a standard and it’s a basic. So you get all that kind of stuff that you would normally get when you’re, you know, to make sure you have the right IO modules. And so with that, that is a, look at e t 200 s p.

I hope it makes sense to you now. Now if you’ve been using this for a long time, longer than I have, and you have some more tips, please leave them in the comments. I do appreciate everybody who comments on the videos wherever the video is. Also, we do have more content coming out about this. We’re gonna go through each of these in a separate video and get each of these up and running from scratch.

And then after that, there’ll be new lessons at the Automation School for anybody who’s interested in maybe a longer version of this with more details and support. Right? So in any case and, of course, if you guys wanna call me and, have a group of your guys come in and do some hands on training, these are actually ready to be used in the training room with all the s seven twelve hundreds and 15 hundreds. So if you wanna do some hands on training. It’s, we’re very unique here because of having the automation show and podcast and blog and all the vendors we work with.

We have a lot of equipment that you will find almost in nobody else’s training, rooms. So with that, I wanna thank you all for tuning in. I wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace.

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Michael Bowne of PI to learn what IO-Link is, how it works, and when to use it in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 246 Show Notes:To learn about our online and in-person training courses please visit TheAutomationSchool.com.

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host): Thank you for tuning back in to the automation podcast. My name is Shawn Tierney from Insights in Automation. And this week on the show, we have a special guest, somebody who hasn’t been on in four years. We have Michael Bone from PI. They’re the folks who manage technologies like PROFINET and IO Link.

And Michael’s come on this week to talk specifically about IO Link. We’re gonna talk about what it is. We’re gonna talk about when you should use it, and we’re gonna talk about the technical details of IO Link, like, all the things, like, engineering minds like to know about. So I think you guys are gonna enjoy this. It took about two to three hours to edit this one, and I really enjoyed going back through it.

You know, we recorded it, I think, four weeks ago. So I hadn’t seen it in four weeks, but I really did enjoy it. I really think you guys will enjoy it too. And that brings up another point. Organizations like PI and ISA and other organizations, they’re not vendors.

They don’t sell stuff. Right? And so this episode is not sponsored by a vendor. And, you know, as I was going through it yesterday, I was like, you know, there’s a lot of great slides in here. I wanna share it with the public.

So I’ve decided to sponsor this episode myself, and I’ll use this as an opportunity to tell you a little bit about my company and the automation blog, the automation school, and the content I have planned to release this fall, including content on these products right here, all focused on IO Link. And I just actually did a live stream with these, products in front of me. I’ll be doing more tomorrow, and I’ll be adding lessons to my, courses as well on these products. So in any case, but before we get to that, let’s go ahead and jump right into the show and hear from Michael and learn all about IO Link. I wanna welcome back Michael to the show.

It has been four years. He was last on in podcast 76, back in September 2021. So just going on four years. Michael, thank you for coming back on the show. If you could, a lot of people may not remember four years ago.

Mhmm. So before we jump into your presentation, which which I am so excited about talking about IO Link again. But before we jump into that, could you please tell me a little bit about yourself and a little

Michael Bowne (PI): bit about PI? Yeah. Sure. First of all, my pleasure, to be back on on the podcast. It was a lot, a lot of fun.

I remember that back in in 2021, and, I’m glad to be be back doing it again. I started with PI North America in 2011 as the technical marketing director. And since 2016, I’ve been the executive director running the show and chairman of the board since last year. I, have the, let’s say, pleasure to serve as the deputy chairman of PI on a global scale since 2015, and I come from a prior to working for PI, I worked for a sensor manufacturer who had some interfaces on there that that brought me an introduct to to Profibus and Profinet. And before that, I studied, physics and and math at at Penn State University.

Just, really quick for those. I’m I’m sure many of you are familiar with with PI, but, it was started in the late eighties. Half a dozen companies and universities got together, and they wrote the PROFIBUS spec, and that evolved into the into into PROFIBUS DP and PROFIBUS PA for process automation in the early two thousands. PROFINET came under the umbrella. And the reason I bring all this up is because there are some newer technologies under our umbrella that I I think the audience might wanna know about.

Of course, EyeLink is is the one that we’ll talk about today, and that was in 02/2009. But there are some others like Umlocks, which is a location tracking standard. There’s one called MTP, module type package, NOAA, NAMR open architecture, also under our umbrella. And, basically, what we do is promote, maintain, write the specs, turn them into standards, and the work on those specs is done in working groups, which are staffed by volunteers, engineers from member companies. They donate their time to to develop the specs, for these technologies we have under our umbrella.

And we’re a little bit unique in that we’re decentralized. So we have competence centers and test labs and training centers located throughout the world. It’s not all just in one headquarter kind of place, and they’re all independent. But they have a contract or quality of services agreement with PI that says, hey. If you have a question about the technologies, go to a competent center.

If you want further training, go to a training center. If you want to to test the device, go to a test lab. And then they are all working with regional PI associations of which we PI North America is one of them. We were founded in 1994 by a guy by the name of Mike Bryant. At that time, we were called Probibus Trade Organization.

And we are the and now I didn’t come up with this this name. We are the North American Rio League. This is a an IO Link designation, a regional IO Link interest group, which means that we have a a separate contract and and quality of services agreement with the IO Link community to to promote and and work with members, specifically for IO Link here in in North America. And we’re nonprofit, member supported. I got nothing.

So you’re talking about products and and and stuff at the beginning. I got nothing to sell today. We’re we’re working solely on on technology.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, I do wanna throw out there, though, you have a great update every month about all the new products that fall in the buckets of IO Link, PROFINET, PROFIBUS, and a lot of those new products across our IO Link. So while they may not have products of their own, they do keep the, industry up to date on who’s joining up and signing up, for these new these you know, the jump on board and release new products that, that, you know, meet these specifications. And you know what? Maybe you’re not using PROFINET because you’re using brand x or y. You still probably use an IO Link.

So Oh, that’s for sure. Very interesting very interesting updates that you publish every month and, as a blog. And, I know when I was doing the news for a couple years, I would always, go to your site to look for new updates.

Michael Bowne (PI): Cool. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, I got a slide on that at the end, but the the you’re referring to the, the PROFINews.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yes. The PROFINews. Yeah.

Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. That’s a that’s that’s been a baby and a labor of love, for a while now. And and, oh, man, it’s it’s it’s incredible because every month, the most when we track this kind of stuff, obviously, the most popular article is the new products. Well, because that’s what, right, that’s what people want is the stuff they can buy, the stuff they can use. Yeah.

Yeah. That’s and we got another one coming out next week, and every month, we we push that out, and it’s always half a dozen or a dozen new products, half of which are are IO Link. I mean, it’s just growing like crazy.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And you guys have had some good articles. I think you had a great series, and I’m now I’m stretching it. So stretching the old memory here. I thought you had a great series on on, MTP, which I really enjoyed.

Did did I remember that correctly?

Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. We we try and, you know, we try and get some editorial content in there. It’s it calls it falls into, like, three main buckets. What’s new products? What are new trainings and events that are coming up?

And then and then some editorial content. I think I think what we’re driving at is I think we need to do maybe an MTP podcast here at some point in the down the road.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Probably. Yeah. Down the road. Definitely. Definitely.

I I’m still you know, I still have a very casual understanding of it. But, let me throw it back to you because I kinda jumped in and interrupted your your your, update.

Michael Bowne (PI): No. It’s good. It saves it saves us at the end when when that slide, we can just just jump over it. Now we’ve we’ve got it covered, and it’s and it’s an and it’s an important one. But you kinda you kinda gave me a nice lead into the to the next one, which talks about, the Ireland community.

And I’ll start from the bottom, work my way up as being fieldbus independent.

Shawn Tierney (Host): I just wanna break in here for a moment and thank you folks in the audience who’ve signed up for my membership program. Really, really appreciate you all. Eighteen months ago, after reviewing ten plus years of being on YouTube, you know, it was pretty obvious that there’s no real revenue on YouTube. I mean, it comes in at maybe 1% of my monthly expenses. And so that ad revenue there is just not something to rely on going forward because it’s not something that’s been reliable in the past.

And so I set up the membership program both on YouTube and at the automationblog.com. And I wanna thank all of you who signed up. I, we have a $5 tier, which I know most people sign up at, and then we have a couple other higher tiers. And so I just wanted to thank you all for doing that. You are actually the membership program’s probably 3% of my monthly, revenue.

And so that’s, you know, one or two times more, than, what the YouTube revenue was. So thank you all for that. And I hope that, some of you who are not part of the membership program will consider becoming a member, supporting my work so I can do videos that are not always sponsored videos. Now I love sponsored videos. I love it when a vendor sends me a piece of hardware and then sits down with me and teach me how to use it so I can create a video ad free and share with you on how to use that product, or maybe they just come on the podcast and sponsor it to make it ad free so we can tell their story about their product or service.

And I I will continue to do that going forward, but I would really also like to do more audience generated type of, content. So content where you generate the idea and say, Shawn, why don’t you try this? Or, Shawn, why don’t you do this? And a lot of those topics that the audience wants to see, they’re not necessarily topics that the vendor wants to promote with advertising dollars. Okay?

And so that’s the whole purpose of the, membership program. Like I said, right now, it’s around 3% of my monthly income comes from and I’m talking about the business income, not my personal income, the business income. 3% of what the business needs to, to move forward and pay its bills every month. But, still, I that that, you know, so many of you have decided to jump in and support me. I just wanted to stop and say thank you very much from the bottom of my heart.

And if you’re not part of the membership program and you’re doing financially well, please consider if you enjoy. This is episode two forty six of the automation podcast. Every episode has been free. The audio has been free for all 246 of them. And most of those episodes I funded myself just by well, you can understand how you fund something when you don’t have the income coming in.

But in any case, if you enjoy it, please consider becoming a member, and we can branch out and do other things together. And with that, let’s go ahead and jump back into this week’s episode and learn more about IO Link.

Michael Bowne (PI): So like you said, yeah. I mean, organizationally, the IO Link community came to PI in 2009 and organizationally under PI because we have the infrastructure for working groups and and IP policies and contracts and things like that. But the IO Link community has their own steering committee, and from the from the outset and from every IO Link event that we do and everything that we do is is independent of, of any Profibus or Profinet stuff. And we try really, really hard to maintain that independence, no matter what vendor you’re using. And there, at this point, we’ve got 500 companies in the IO Link community, and it’s really just growing by by leaps and bounds.

So we kinda track this stuff by nodes and all the IO Link companies. They send their node count to an independent auditor, collects the counts, and gives us back an an an anonymous total. So we don’t know where or who is selling them, but we get the total. And you can just see this this hockey stick exponential growth. Particularly in 2023, there was some supply chain over purchasing that that went on.

I mean, that’s like we’re looking at a a growth rate of 89% there, which is obviously unsustainable. But still, last year, 9,700,000 nodes were added. Again, because it’s field bus independent, it really has no competitor. And that’s what’s kinda cool about IO Link. I mean, you wanna do and and you don’t need to choose a field bus and therefore get IO Link.

You can use any field bus or industrial container protocol, and IO Link works with it.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, I wanna just, mention for the audio listeners. If we go back to 2012, it looks like we’re probably at the 1,000,000 mark or below it. And as you go to, you know, 2022, you look like you’re 35,700,000. Is that 2022 or 2023?

Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. That’s the 2022. Exactly. 35,700,000.0. Yeah.

Shawn Tierney (Host): And then at, the end of twenty twenty three, we’re at 51.6. So you talked about that, you know, overbuying. And then at the end of 2024, we’re at 61,300,000.0. So you can just see from, you know, 2022 to, 2024, you went from 35 to 61. So the adoption, like you said, it’s a hockey stick.

The adoption has really picked up. And I think you you hit the nail on the head because it is fieldbus independent. It’s a way to just get more information out of our devices, like sensors and photo eyes, you know, and it’s just you know? I mean, though, these chipsets that come in these, devices now are just amazing.

Michael Bowne (PI): And that’s what, I mean, that’s what the whole point of this is. You’re you’re not gonna put a $5 ethernet chip, like, enter $5 ethernet interface on a $15 proximity sensor. But computing and memory has gotten really, really small and really, really cheap that it’s on just about everything. And so this proximity sensor not only can tell you if, like, for example, let’s say it’s on a conveyor belt. It cannot only tell you if the box is there or not, but it can tell you how many blue boxes would buy or how many red boxes would buy or if the box that’s going by is off kilter or or misaligned or something like that.

But how do you get that data out in in inexpensively, and here we are. IO Link is is the way to do it.

Shawn Tierney (Host): I’m sad to see a lot of these sensors too come with humidity, temperature, and all these other things should be like, really? I can get that out of my

Michael Bowne (PI): photo eye. But yeah. Multivariable. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, traditionally, with an analog interface, how did you get that? You couldn’t get it. Mhmm. But now with a digital interface, which is what we’re talking about, digitalization in the last meter, now you can get that informate that data, that information, and do some pretty cool stuff with it.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yes. You can. Yeah. I’ll talk

Michael Bowne (PI): a little bit about the architecture a little bit here to kind of get a little bit into the technical side of things about how IO Link works, but it they’re kind of some main devices, and that’s the IO Link masters and the IO Link devices. And these IO Link masters are available for we have here 16 different industrial Ethernet or field bus systems. 21 manufacturers offer central PLC, like an IO Link master built into the backplane of the PLC if you so desired. And the number of devices that so that hockey stick we showed before is just exploding. I mean, we’ve got 60 something million sold, and we have tens of thousands of unique IO Link devices from hundreds of different device manufacturers that have implemented this interface.

And for those that if there’s anybody on the podcast that wants to do this and add this to their sensors, there are a number of different companies that help with, product design, either with the chips, the transceivers, the software stacks, and then a number of companies that help provide technical support in order to do that. So an IO Link system kind of is made up of four parts. Like I said, you have the IO Link master. That’s the gateway between the IO Link devices, the IO Link interface, and the higher level communication system, such as the fieldbus or the in industrial Ethernet protocol or backplane. You have the devices.

This is the exciting part. Your sensors, your switch gears, your valves, your signal lamps, maybe some simple actuators, whatever the case may be. You’ve got a IO Link cable, just a three wire unshielded, super simple connection between the master and the devices. And then every device has an IODD or IO Link device description file, and I’ll explain how that gets used to engineer and parameterize the IO Link system and the and the devices. And what this kind of enables you know, traditionally, communication only reached the IO level.

You had connection between the PLCs and the and the the the IO, and then it kinda stopped there because all those sensors and actuators were not accessible. They were analog, and you got your one process data. You brought process signal, and that’s where it ended. But with IO Link, what we do is we enable that communication bidirectional, cyclic and acyclic, and that’s the cool part, all the way from higher level systems, not only to the PLC or especially from the PLC, but down all the way down to the simple sensors and actuators, which are now accessible. And you kinda touched on this before where these chipsets have gotten really, really smart and really, really powerful.

And it’s not that the it’s not that any of these use cases that are that are being solved with IO Link that none of them are new. What’s new is the ease with which they can be solved. So because you can get all this extra data out, things like OEE, showing things like downtime tracking, track and trace, predictive maintenance, for example, remote monitoring, recipe management, SPC, all these things. It’s not that these use cases are now being solved. The you know, we’ve we’ve been doing this for a long, long time.

It’s just the ease with which because because it’s a standard and because all this stuff is standardized in how it gets from the the the device to the master and upwards to the controller, it just makes it easier. If you spend all your effort trying to gather and collect and sanitize the data because every device is different and, you know, that’s just that’s just a mess, and the ROI disappears really fast on any kind of project to do that. But if we have a standard on how to do that, then we make it very, very easy to do, and everything can come in, quite nicely. And and and it just and it just works a whole lot easier. You start getting access to that data.

And so what we’re starting to see is connections being made. You know, you talk about the the flattening of the traditional automation hierarchy where now not only is that IO block or that sensor connected to a to a PLC, but it’s got some extra data. Like you said, like, this little photo I might have a a a temperature or a a moisture, you know, sensor also in there, just because it’s part of the the chipset. But the PLC don’t care about that. He just wants to know about the, you know, the information from the photo eye.

So what do you do with all this extra beautiful information that isn’t necessarily processed data? Well, maybe the MES wants to know about that. So how do you get that? And in a running factory, in a brownfield environment, rule number one is don’t touch the running PLC.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah.

Michael Bowne (PI): And rule number two is see rule number one. That thing is running, and any minute of downtime costs more than any one thing on the on the factory floor.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Before we go on, I did wanna break in here and tell you a little bit about my website, theautomationschool.com, where I do my online training. I also do in person training. And you probably don’t know that that all started back in 2014 with a Kickstarter I ran for my first PLC basics course. At the time, it was called microprogrammable controller basics, and I ended up changing it just the PLC basics. But in any case, since then, I’ve had added a dozen courses on a various number of topics, and you’ll find them all at the automationschool.com.

But what I really wanted to talk to you about is why. Why did I do that? Well, I had spent twenty five years as a certified authorized Rockwell Automation distributor specialist covering PLCs, HMIs, SCADA, MES, and other stuff too. Right? And I knew from visiting, customers in the plant every single workday, almost every workday, that there was a real need for affordable training.

So the first thing is, you know, large companies have large expensive, large paychecks, and lots of overhead, so they gotta charge a lot. Right? And so that was a problem because a lot of the people I was working with, you know, the controls engineers, automation engineers, high end electricians and technicians, they had to fund their training themselves. Their company was sort of like, no. We trained this guy back in the nineties, and then he will have to get a better job.

So we’re not spending money on training. And so all these people were having to train themselves, and it was unaffordable to either, you know, buy the the, vendors courses. Or even if the the company did have training dollars, it was unaffordable to send them away for a week to a $3,000 course somewhere halfway across the country, probably $3,000 worth of travel and hotels too. Right? And then they go where without one of their smartest guys, right, one of their best people, because you you that’s usually who you’re gonna train and and uplift through the through the organization.

Either people are doing good on the lower level, you wanna bring them up and train them on automation. And so that’s why I started the the, automationschool.com because of the the try to provide I knew the the courses would never be Hollywood quality. I mean, this isn’t Hollywood quality. Right? But I knew it could be helpful and and, you know, be affordable by just filming them in my garage.

Right? And, you know, picking up some used equipment and putting together the episodes. And the site has grown so much. We have thousands of, students from over a 150 countries. We have hundreds of, vendors we work with.

But the other thing I did is, is made up by one’s own forever. Right? So more like an ebook or an audiobook or an m p three album. Right? And the reason I did that and I understand why the vendors don’t do that because they’re like, well, they’ll sign up one guy in the I and e shop, and he’ll share his password for everybody.

You know, that could happen. Right? People could rob a bank too. But I’m like, you know, most people, when they buy a course and I saw this. I was on an independent platform for a while, and on that platform, they showed you how the progress of every student.

Most people buy the course well before they’re ready to take it. And I’m like, I’m not gonna charge people a monthly fee or only give them access to to a short window if, you know, they have good intentions now, but it takes them a while to actually free up their schedule to get into the course and take it. So that’s why my courses are buy one’s own forever. And it can you know, as they grow, the price goes up because I’m adding more and more content, and I do split them out and make cheaper versions over time. But, those people who buy in early, they get the like, my s seven course.

Like, I think it originally came out at 40 or $50, and now it’s $200 because I’ve added so much to it over the years. But in any case, same with ControlLogix and CompactLogix. And then the other thing too is I want them to be able to take it more than once. Right? So if you take a let’s say you take a ControlLogix course.

Right? You don’t use it for a couple years, you probably gonna have to take it again. And I don’t want you to feel like you have to pay a monthly fee to do that. It’s like an ebook or an m p three album. You bought it.

You bought access to it, I guess I should say, and now it’s yours. Right? And the other thing too is I support my students personally. Okay? So I check the website every day for questions, every work day.

I should say, you know, I do take Sundays off. So in any case, if you’re if it’s a work day, though, and I’m working, I’m not on vacation or traveling for business, I’m up there. I’m answering questions. And I should say, even when I’m traveling on business, I’m I’m on there answering questions. So although if I don’t have any hardware, there’s some questions you can’t ask.

Right? I guess I should have said some questions you can’t answer. But in any case, I just wanted to share that with you. Theautomationschool.com, a high quality online courses, five star rated, buy once, own forever, and guess what? I’m updating all the PLC courses, and if you already own or buy one of the existing PLC courses, you not only get the updated lessons that get added to that course, you get the new course completely free.

So I’m not gonna charge you for just an updated version of a class on the same core on the same product. Right? That would be kinda silly in my opinion. So, I hope you guys appreciate that. Again, if you didn’t know any of this, if you have any questions, if you go over to the automationschool.com, at the very top of the site, you’ll see links to contact me, set up a meeting, leave me a voice mail, fill out a form.

You know, I have many ways you can get in touch with me. And if you have multiple people you wanna sign up, I do have multiple seat discounts starting at three seats. And, I do actually work with a number of Fortune 500 companies who, you know, enroll maybe 10 people at a time to get that discount. And you know what? Unlike the big vendors, if somebody you sign somebody up and they all take the courses, I’ll let you replace that person for free of charge.

You don’t have to pay anything extra. If you sign up Joe and he decides to quit or leave or not to learn, you can put Bob in his place. That’s not a problem. Now I have said some situations where the same spot kept getting replaced or replaced or replaced. At some point, I do charge a maintenance fee to to switch the names out.

And then, hey. Look. If Joe leaves and he took, you know, two out of three courses, I’ll prorate refilling that seat with the new person. Right? So whatever percentage of the lessons he took versus the total number of lessons, I’ll prorate it.

So, you know, we’ve had number of cases where somebody goes through half of the content then leaves, so we can reset that seat for half price. And I that’s something you won’t find, any major vendors doing as well. So if you have any questions about that, reach out to me over at the automation school dot com. And with that said, let’s jump right back into this week’s episode of the automation podcast.

Michael Bowne (PI): In a brownfield installation, what we’re seeing these these cool little edge gateways, And what they’ll do is they’ll grab the bus, they’ll collect some data, and pump it out the other side via, you know, maybe an IT protocol that that the IT guys wanna know about or, you know, like an MQTT or an OPC UA. Of course, in a in a greenfield, in a new installation where you’ve got a brand new PLC, yeah, get the data there. That guy has all the brains, has all the all the information in one ply in all in one place, so get it from the PLC. But in Brownfield, I the edge gateways, even some IO Link masters are being put on the market that have not only an industrial Ethernet interface, you know, just on one port, on the same port, industrial Ethernet interface for control, but that interface will also speak like a higher level IT protocol like an MQTT or an OPC UA, so you can get it even from the IO Link master that data is is accessible. So the different ways to get it, and, and that’s kind of the whole point is is getting that data from the sensors to the to the master and then further upwards.

Shawn Tierney (Host): We actually covered a product on the show that had two ports. It had one for your fieldbus

Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. And then it

Shawn Tierney (Host): had a separate one for your IT or your IOT or your MQTT, which I thought was so inventive too because now the control system gets its data, and it’s under control. But reporting wise, you know, that’s kind of the best of both both worlds. You don’t have to have two sensors. You can send it to data both ways. And, yeah, just it’s the way you can do with these things and, you know, a lot of the sensors you probably have out there, I’ve noticed that some vendors, every sensor they sell is IO Link.

So Yeah. You may already have it installed and not know it because the price difference to add it to some products. Once you get up to the fanciest sensors, of course, not the simplest sensors, but once you get up to the fanciest sensors, it’s it’s, you know, there’s a lot of horsepower in that chipset. So, you know, they can add IO Link for for pennies on the dollar. So very interesting stuff, though.

Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. That’s that’s a good point. And and, you know, of course, we could spend all day talking about IT, OT, and the segmentation of networks and all who’s who owns the IP addresses. And we I mean, that’s a whole separate topic. But in cases like that, yeah, it’s cool.

You got a separate port. IT can do what they want on their one port. And if but, hey, don’t touch me in the control realm because Mhmm. This is my this is my realm. And and you bring up another good point, and that’s kind of there’s a I don’t I don’t wanna say that, you know, there’s there isn’t, like, a thick black line between, okay, this sensor is simple, therefore, should have IO link, or this sensor is complex, therefore, should have its own industrial Ethernet, interface.

There’s almost a little bit of a gray area, but you’re right. I mean Mhmm. We kinda leave it up to the vendors to decide. Hey. My thing needs the horsepower that and it’s so complex that I need something like, like, an industrial Ethernet protocol.

But, oh, you know what? This other central line is tailored for low cost, and so, therefore, I’m gonna put IO Link on it. But that’s, you know, that’s up to them to to decide. So when we talk about IO Link in terms of benefits, we kinda like to make the analogy with USB because everybody knows USB. You got your USB cable.

You plug it into your computer on one end. On the other end, you plug it into your you know, you plug your mouse in or you plug your keyboard in, and you plug your key your printer in. Automatically, it it uses the same cable. It’s always the same. Everything everybody’s using that interface, and we kinda see the same thing with IO Link where it’s just a unified, unshielded three wire sensor cable, and it can use be used with all IO Link devices.

Up until now, you know, if you had smart devices, right, memory and computing power is smaller and cheaper. Up until now, to get that extra information out, you would need multiple cables. The wiring is time consuming. It’s expensive. They’re large, costly to to install and maintain.

But But with iolink, you just you just plug it in. It’s a simple m 12 plug, and then you don’t have all these spare parts of different cable types. It’s just one cable and, easy to maintain, thin, flexible. I’ve got a I’ve got an example here I’d like to highlight, and I’ll try and talk through it for those that are that are listening instead of instead of viewing. This is an example of 256 IOs via 16 fieldbus modules.

So, like, fieldbus like remote IOs or whatever the case may be. So we’re connecting them to a PLC out in the field. And to do that, we would need 16 fieldbus modules in order to do that. These are just let’s let’s call them simple DI, you know, digital input proximity sensors. Mhmm.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm.

Michael Bowne (PI): With IO Link, we can do that via just one fieldbus module. So that’s just one IP address or one IO Link master. So already you’re cutting out 15 of those more expensive devices. And then we use what are called so called IO Link hubs, which bring those DI signals, put it all on one IO Link connection, put it into IO Link master, and send it out the other side. And with that, we can connect if you imagine these 272 IOs as shown here via just one fieldbus module.

So it’s showing just huge, huge, huge savings simply on cost alone, due to the wiring. And, that that one cable, it fits all sensor types. So simple sensors, like a proximity sensor all the way up to complex devices like pressure, temperature, signal lamps, and even simple actuators all use the same IO Link cable.

Shawn Tierney (Host): So where an IO Link device would be giving you not just on or off, but a lot of other information and some of that analog information. If all you had was a dumb device, well, now I can put 16 of them or so, you know, some number of them together Mhmm. Bring them into a hub. And each since each device only has an on or off, where a regular IO Link device would have lots of other information, you can now just join them all together and say, okay. Here we go.

Here’s inputs one through x.

Michael Bowne (PI): It’s, almost like multiplexing, put it all together on one and then Mhmm. Pump it out the other side. Yeah.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Perfect.

Michael Bowne (PI): The other way we relate IO Link to USB is kind of in the the identification and parameterization. So if we look at how you plug your printer into your computer, you plug it in, and automatically, your computer says, oh, okay. I know that that’s a HP something something desk check printer and and okay. How do you wanna do you wanna do color or black and white? Do you wanna do full duplex?

Do you wanna do back and white, back and front on on the printing? And the same is true for for IO Link. So you plug in that IO Link sensor into your IO Link master. It reads it. It says, hey.

The dialing says, hey. This is who I am. This is my type. This is my serial number. Every device has a vendor ID and a device ID.

And then the IO Link master goes up and gets the IODD file, and I’ll show that here in a little bit, and then you can start that parametrization. And it’s just like it’s just like a USB. It’s it’s, no special knowledge is required. You can format changes very, very easily. You can even do them on the fly, for example, with an HMI on the on the machine.

And, the identification methods make sure that you don’t plug in a wrong device into an IO Nialink port, which could stop the machine. It’ll it’ll it’ll recognize that and prevent, incorrect connections. It allows you to exchange devices very easily of the same type or the the same same manufacturer, same same device. So just like USB, it it it kinda works in that way. And then the other way, it’s kind of like USBs in the diagnostics, and this is a really, really powerful part of IO Link.

So when your printer says, I’m out of paper or I’m out of toner or there’s a paper jam, it sends that signal, standardized signal to the to the computer, to your computer, your PC, and you know exactly what what to do, how to fix your your printer, why your printer isn’t working the same as true for IO Link. We’ve standardized these diagnostics. So this is a, a photo eye saying, hey, under voltage or over temperature or the the window on the photo eye has gotten dirty, so signal quality is deteriorating. So we standardized all this, so that these diagnostics all come in the same way, and, you can, you know, fix any any problem as fast as possible to to to, minimize downtime. And in the case of things like signal quality, hey.

The the the window’s getting dirty. This enables things like preventative maintenance. Oh, I know I’m going into a planned shutdown next week. Now’s the time to go out and clean those sensors kind of thing, because I know that they’re I know that the signal’s going is deteriorating. So some cool things like that, that wouldn’t be possible with a traditional analog signal, which we’re showing here.

And it also makes really no sense. I mean, in this example, what we’re showing here is a generic this is a pre pressure sensor. You know, it does its measurement. It then does some amplification, and then to stabilize the signal, it does an a to d, puts it into a micro, which does some temperature compensation linearization. But then, traditionally, prior to IO Link, what you do is then do another data a to send it out via zero to 10 volts or four to 20 milliamps, whatever, into the into a, an a to d card on the backplane of the PLC, I mean, this is just this is just crazy.

It’s it’s time consuming. It’s, the the signal is still susceptible to interference. The the analog inputs on the cards on the PLC are expensive. There’s manual calibration of the signal. But with IO Link, it just makes sense.

You take that signal right from the micro, pump it out digitally via an IO Link inexpensive interface to your, to your IO. And, we use that unshielded three wire inexpensive cable,

Shawn Tierney (Host): and

Michael Bowne (PI): then you get all those parameters and diagnostics. And, really, that’s the point of using IO Link is all that extra data, all that extra information that that comes along with the the process data.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And so those of you who are listening, I mean, what we saw there was to to shoot out a four to 20 milliamp signal or zero to 10 volt signal, it had to convert it from the digital value that was inside the device to analog, then I have to pump it out. And, you know, we always have to worry about noise and, you know, shielding and all that, you know, depending on the length of the run. And then in the PLC analog card, it’s converting it from analog back to digital, so you have that zero to 32,000 value or zero to 64,000, whatever your PLC does. And so IO Link does eliminate that.

It eliminates the noise of your traditional analog. And I know I’ve met so many customers say we have no noise issues on our analog, and that’s great. But not everybody’s in that same boat. So you’re eliminating that d to a and then a to d, and that’s that’s you’re keeping everything digital. So you’re not only getting a cleaner, more accurate value from your device, you’re also getting all those additional pieces of information and the ability to be maybe configured to products.

Some of these products need to be changed based on the type of product they’re sensing, you know, the type of fluid going through, the recipe that’s being drawn, the lighting, the colors. So all those different things, you you know, with a typical analog signal, you’re not gonna be able to send back and do a configuration to it. So, go ahead. Back to you, Michael.

Michael Bowne (PI): No. You’re right. Exactly. We we have I I took this line out of this deck for the for, you know, for for brevity, but we show examples of of particularly food and bev, right, where you have batches, different I’m running a different batch. I’m running a different product.

I need a different label on the on the bottle or whatever I’m running through the the the machine. You reconfigure that via the HMI. It sends all that stuff down to the sensors. Okay. Now I know I’m looking for I should be sensing this instead of this.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. It could be a clear bottle sensor, the clear bottle detector that the bottles change colors. So it’s has a different setting, or it could be background suppression depending on the color of the product. You need a different setting or a color sensor. Maybe you’re making different products and the different colors, and so, you know, all this is now configurable through your PLC, through your control system, through your HMI, which I just think is so cool.

Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. It’s it’s it’s super cool. Alright. Let’s get a little bit technical here. I think for some of the engineers, that might be nice.

The IO Link signal and 24 volt power supply, like like we talked about before, it’s it’s an m 12 connector. So you’ve got five pins. Your pin one is your high, pin three is your low, and then pin four is your CQ line. That’s that’s where the IO Link digital signal lives. It’s serial.

It’s bidirectional. It’s point to point. And then we also have on that same pin four, if you so desired, you could also parameterize your device via IO Link, set it all up, and then put it in what’s known as a CO mode or simple IO mode. And I’ll show that on the next slide too if maybe you’ve just got a digital IO, that you want a fast switching interface. So pins one and three are our power.

Pins two and five are freely assignable. So for example, if you wanted to use that pin four for your IO Link signal and then separately have your own DI or DQ line, you could do that using a three wire, four wire, five wire cable. And then what’s cool also in IO Link and we’re starting to see this more and more is we call this port class b, same m 12 connector, same five pins, but pins two and five provide a separate power supply for additional power because and this is cool. We’re starting to see more and more IO link just, like, simple actuators Mhmm. On the market.

And that’s really neat. So let’s say you’ve got some simple linear actuator, not not a complex, you know, driver, you know, or motor or something like that, but a a simple linear actuator. You can drive that via IO Link if you just gotta move something really, you know, maybe maybe even within connected to the same ports, on the master as some other sensors, and so you can do that logic in the master itself, you know, simple simple stuff like that. But that’s also possible with IO Link where you can drive it, not just sense it, but also actuate it with with IO Link. So that’s that’s some cool stuff that’s coming down the line.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, and I found that all the IO Link devices I had here, they came with the SIO mode already set up. So I was able to use the photo eyes and the proxies and all the other devices just as simple IO devices and without even touching the IO Link side of it, which I think is cool because, you know, in in many cases, you just need a photo eye to get up and running. Right?

Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. And that’s and that’s how they come out of the box. So out of the box, it’s in that CO mode. And I think you you kinda touched on this before. Maybe many customers have IO Link devices Yeah.

On their machine. They don’t even know it Mhmm.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Because they

Michael Bowne (PI): took it out of the box. They needed that photo. They plugged it in and away they went. But there’s also that all all that extra stuff. If they wanted to, they could get down into the IO Link part of it.

Mhmm. Maybe to reparameterize it, or what if you got to change, you still wanna use the CO mode. You just want that digital input. What if you wanna change the switching distance, for example, something like that? I don’t want it to switch at one meter.

I want it to switch at two meters or whatever. So all that all that can be configured via IO Link. So on the if we if we talk about the the IO Link communication itself, there are three transmission speeds, comms one, two, and three. Comm one is 4.8 kilobits per second. COM two is 38.4 kilobits per second, and COM three is 230.4 kilobits per second.

IO Link masters support all three comm modes, but devices are free to choose based on what they’re sending. If it’s temperature, maybe you don’t need COM three because that’s changing more slowly than something like like like we’re talking about a proximity sensor, which may want to send that a little bit more quickly and uses that that COM three mode. Many, many devices use COM three mode because still two hundred two hundred thirty kilobits per second, that’s, you know, that’s not gonna that’s not gonna kill you. And then a typical cycle time, because this is the question we get all the time, is what kind of cycle time can be achieved? It’s about a millisecond at at com three.

So if you’re, you know, trying to go submillisecond, you know, maybe IO Link is not is not the solution at that point. But for many, many applications, that one millisecond cycle time can can, can accomplish whatever they need to. And then what’s cool is that from the EyeLink master’s perspective, it’ll have eight or 16 sensors connected to it. Each device can be set independently. So on this port this device, I’m talking at this comm rate and this cycle time.

This other port number two, I’m speaking at a different transmission speed and a different cycle time and so on and so forth, you know, so that you’re not sending data unnecessarily that is simply just being sent for the purposes of being sent. And that’s and that’s pretty cool.

Shawn Tierney (Host): And a lot of times, you don’t because you’re not reading a digital on off, you don’t the speed, you’re you’re actually getting a value, and that value a lot of times your PLC is not gonna be running faster than a millisecond scan time. So if you’re getting your value updated, you know, faster than the PLC, then that’s a then then that’s really what you need. Do you know how fast is your PLC running? How fast can your program controller use that value? And, you know, I’d be hard pressed to see a lot of applications where they’re breaking that one millisecond update rate.

The other thing too is just because we’re talking at the speed doesn’t mean the actual calculation is even possible in a millisecond. So, you know, temperature changes, things that that sensors there’s limit limitations to the physical world. You know? And, you know, I I don’t know if anybody’s ever said this to you before, Michael, but when I first saw the whole comm thing, I thought that was confusing because having grown up with PCs, I always thought of comp one, comp two, comp one group. Right?

And these are really just bought what I would call from the old days, sewer rates. Right?

Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. Exactly.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Exactly. Insight why why they is it just maybe because it was the standard started overseas or any idea why they went with CALM?

Michael Bowne (PI): I’m not gonna lie to you. That’s the first time I’ve gotten that question.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Really? Okay.

Michael Bowne (PI): Why they’re called that yeah. Let’s just let’s just rewrite this. They call it BOD one, BOD two, BOD three.

Shawn Tierney (Host): I know. It’s just so weird. But, anyways, sorry sorry, audience. I just have

Michael Bowne (PI): That’s a good one. That’s a good one. Nope. I’ll take that one back. Alright.

So IO Link data comes in a couple different flavors. You have your process data. That’s your bread and butter, what you’re using to run the run the factory. Transmitted cyclically in a Telegram, the the data size is defined by the device, and it can be up to 32 bytes for each device, both input and output. Along with that comes a value bit indicating whether the process data is valid or invalid, and this can be transmitted is transmitted cyclically with the the process data.

And then you have things that happen acyclically. These would be device data like parameters, identification data, diagnostic information, and these happen on request of the IO Link master. Obviously, a lot of that happens during startup, but also can happen during runtime if, as shown here on the slide with the with the last case, events can be error messages. So the the, the device will set a flag. Hey.

There’s a short circuit or so, and then the the master can pull that device for more information, more diagnostic information, based on that event flag that’s that’s set by the set by the device. And so, the the question we always get at this point is, how do I make this all work? How do I integrate this stuff into my into my plant?

Shawn Tierney (Host): Before we go any further, I did wanna jump back and tell you about a service I’m doing that I don’t think I’ve talked about very much, and it’s comes in two different flavors. First of all, I’ve actually had some vendors and companies reach out to me and say, Shawn, I know you don’t wanna travel all around the country with all your equipment. Right? That’s not what you do, but we want you to come out and teach us something. Would you come out and do a lecture?

We’ll set up our own equipment. And, can you come out and just run us through some of the products and teach us some of your knowledge, and you don’t have to worry about bringing all the equipment with you. And so that’s something I really don’t talk about much, but I do wanna tell you that if you’re looking for training and you need it on-site, of course, you do have to pay for my travel time. But if you do want me to come out for a day or two days or for a week and do training on any of the products I train online now. Now if you want me to come out and do training on a product I don’t already have a curriculum on, I can’t do it.

The building the curriculum is where all of my costs is on the training. Right? I shouldn’t say that. The web service in in in the back end does cost something every month as well, but most of the time it goes into and that’s really what being self employed is it’s time. Right?

Most of the time goes into build building the curriculum. So if you have a need for somebody like Shawn, we can’t do a webinar. We can’t do a Teams meeting. We we can’t do online training. We want you to come out.

And, again, I just got a call on this yesterday. Yes. I can do that. As long as the curriculum I’m gonna teach you is something I already have existing. And, I’m not gonna hand out lab books.

We can buy you lab books if you want. People sell great lab books for $80.90 dollars a pop. If you want lab books, I’d be more than happy to include that in the quote. But in any case, I that’s one thing I do. The other thing I’ve been doing with vendors is they’ve hired me to come out and interview them at their trade show.

So, usually, what happens is somebody will sponsor a podcast for $5.99. They’ll come on. We’ll do the interview. I’ll edit it all up. I’ll put their links in.

We’ll talk about the thumbnail, and then we’ll release it ad free. Right? And so that covers my cost of producing that episode roughly. Right? We just raised it from $4.99 to $5.99 because most of the shows were were actually upside down on, so we need to raise it a little bit to make sure we’re covering our cost.

But in any case, sometimes vendors have, you know, they have their own trade show, and they may have all of their product specialists there. And they’re like, hey, Shawn. We would like to do six or seven interviews at the trade show. Would you come out and actually record them there? We’ll pay your flight.

We’ll pay your hotel and your expenses to get there and back. And so that’s another thing I haven’t talked about much that I’m doing. I’m working with some, you know, top five vendors to do that, and I’ve done it in the past. And so I did wanna explain it to you if you’re a vendor listening or if you are, talking to your vendor, like, you should have Shawn come out and interview all your people. You have them all in one place.

Let them know that they can contact me about doing that. Again, you can contact me at theautomationblog.com, LinkedIn, YouTube, theautomationschool.com, pretty much any way you want. You can write me snail mail if you want. But in any case, I do wanna share that, and we also have in person training. I think I’ve talked to you guys about this quite a bit.

We do custom in person training for as little as two people, $900 a day up to four people. And so if you wanna get some people in here, we can actually do Allen Bradley and Siemens in two days back to back. One day Allen Bradley, one day Siemens. So if you wanna learn two PLCs in two days back to back now I do have somebody ask me, hey, Shawn. Where’s your schedule of upcoming courses?

And back in my previous life of twenty five years, we were always trying to sign people up and then canceling, you know, events and classes because, we wouldn’t get enough people to meet the vendors minimum. So I don’t wanna do that. So I don’t have actually any dates now. I have been talking with doing a intensive POC boot camp, but, you know, I just got so much things going on in my life right now that I don’t think I could pull that together this fall. But in any case, if you need some training, you wanna send your people here, we can even start at, like, noontime and then end the final day at noontime so you can get your flights and travel and all that.

We’re one hour away from Albany, New York, and that’s a great little airport to fly in and out of. Actually, I’m flying out of it in November. They’ll go to a trade show, to interview vendors, vendors, product people. But in any case, I just wanna break in. There’s something about my company.

I don’t think I ever talked to you guys about much, and so I just wanted to insert it here since I’m sponsoring this episode and eating the cost to produce it. I wanted to share that with you. And now, I won’t be back until the end of the show, so please enjoy the rest of this episode. Send any feedback you have to me, and, we’ll talk to you at the end of the show.

Michael Bowne (PI): And it kinda works like this. So you have your IO Link device, which has an IODD file, which we mentioned earlier, that gets ingested by a parameterization tool. The parameterization tool comes with the IO Link master. Could be a separate piece of software. In some cases, could be a web page built into the IO Link master itself.

Depends on depends on the vendor. But then what happens after that, how that data goes from the IO Link master to the controller, the PLC, is fieldbus specific. So you have your own, fieldbus file, you know, GSD or EDS or ESI, whatever the case may be, which is ingested by the engineering tool of the of the PLC and kind of outside way outside the scope of of of IO Link. And so the EDS file, the GSD file, and and that is the that data then gets sent via fieldbus, and that’s the sum of all the IO Link device data from all the ports on the IO Link master, where that IO Link communication as as defined by the IODD file, configures the port for the master and for the devices. And so an IODD file is provided by the devices, and every device manufacturer must provide an IODD for their device.

It can be downloaded from the IODD finder, which is a website, and, it it describes what the entire device does. It describes the process data length, the process data structure, the parameter the name of the parameters, what range to expect, the data types, the addresses of the parameters in the in the in the indexes and subindexes. It can talk about GUI information, pages on which a parameter shall be displayed, names of parameter pages, all this kind of stuff is in an IODD file. It’s a it’s a zip file where you have that IODD as an XML. So that’s how we format the file.

So it’s it’s both and this is the key part, both machine readable and and human readable. It’s got a little picture of the device, picture of the manufacturer logo. And with your permission, maybe I can show the IODD finder. It’s, ioddfinder.io-link.com. Mhmm.

Looks simple enough. Let’s say we wanna look at a I’m gonna type in something here. Max ref. Let’s pick this. So this is just a this is a reference design, not an actual product that that, an end user would employ in their in their factory, but a reference design of something that maybe a device manufacturer would use.

And it’s shows the manufacturer name, the article name number, the product name, the device ID. All that stuff is ingested by the parameterization tool, which then uses that information to go up to this IODD finder and grab the IODD file shown here, which can be downloaded if you wanted to look at it yourself. But in the past few years, we implemented what’s called an IODD viewer, which is pretty cool, which takes that nice XML file and parses it. So in human readable form, if you wanted to compare quickly, hey. I’m an end user.

I wanna compare the IODD file from device vendor a to device vendor b to kinda see what kind of features they have. You could do that all very easily, and that’s shown here in the IODD viewer. What’s really what’s really neat about this IODD finder is that it has two ways it it it gets accessed. That’s this website that I just showed here. So as in humans are are accessing it, but it’s also accessible via API.

And we we track the the traffic to the Audi divider, and the vast, vast majority of the traffic comes via API. So these are IO Link masters that just had a device connected to them. Parameter is I’m sorry. Parameterization tool that has a you know, or connected to the IO Link master that had device connected them. They go up to the AudiD finder, and they pull down that IODD file for the device that was just connected so that now they they can be, configured.

And that’s really, really cool stuff. So all these IODD files are in one spot, in one database up there for for viewing or via the IODD viewer or for access from any number of IO Link tools out there.

Shawn Tierney (Host): So when we’re talking about API access, we’re talking about the tool we’re using to configure the master. So it could be a web page built into the master, or it could be a separate software program. Do I have that correct?

Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. Right. So the parameterization tool, yeah, is usually is usually a software package that’ll run on your computer connecting to your, IO Link master that parameterizes the IO Link master. Yeah.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Excellent. Or

Michael Bowne (PI): through the network somehow. Maybe through the network. Yeah. Goes out and grabs that IODD file from the IODD finder to, you know, to parameterize that port in that device.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Which is excellent because in previous iterations of smart networks and smart devices, you always have to go searching a vendor’s website, and then people would get the wrong file, and then I would be in the field saying this is never gonna work because you get the wrong device file. If they can’t give you the right device file, you’ll never get it to work. You know? And so this is much better having the organization have everybody require everybody who has IO Link to put their IODD files in the one place so everybody can always find it. And so the software tools can find it automatically for you, which is just a huge a huge change versus what we went through in the nineties.

Michael Bowne (PI): Exactly. We came on a CD or something or what I mean, God only knows. I’m gonna switch gears a little bit here, talk about two topics subtopics within the IO Link domain, and one of them is IO Link wireless. This is, what we call is bridging the gap. So it’s an IEC standard, six eleven thirty nine as of November 2023,

Shawn Tierney (Host): and

Michael Bowne (PI): it’s enabling connections that simply weren’t possible before for IO Link. And in an example here, we’re showing a a smart machine tool where the IO Link sensor is integrated into the chuck of the lathe. Now that guy is spinning at 6,000 RPMs. That connection simply couldn’t be possible couldn’t be done any other way than with IO Link wireless or, let’s say, independent movers. So you’ve seen these moving systems where you’ve got the either floating or on a on a rail the other track systems exactly.

If you integrate the smarts of IO Link onto the movers themselves instead of using, SCARA or Delta robots to do the to I mean, that’s you’re saving huge amounts of cost Mhmm. That way if the if those guys can move on their own, and they use IO Link wireless to do that. Slip rings where certainly sending power, is is well known, but sometimes communication can be tricky via slip ring. Mhmm. Yeah.

End of arm tooling, like robot robot end of arms where you have a you’re gonna change the tool at the end of the arm. It’s more lightweight, saving on on robot cost that way. Less fewer lighter robots can be used, but it’s it’s, it’s cool. It the architecture looks pretty much the same, where you have your field level, your IO, and instead of wired connections, it’s it’s simply a wireless connection. Is that wired?

It’s it’s wireless. And and what’s different about IO Link Wireless is that it was built for industry. So I think in the past, people have been burned by wireless technologies that made some promises that didn’t maybe you know, they they couldn’t meet the the the the the rigorous environment and and requirements of of industry, but that was different. It was built for industry from the start. So it uses the two point two point four gig license free ISM band.

And what we do is a is this frequency hopping so that we use the same IO link, you know, data structure. We do this frequency hopping, and it’s it’s a cycle of five milliseconds. So you’re not going to get that one millisecond time that you get via wired IO link. We do a five millisecond cycle time, and then it’s using this frequency hopping method. It’s basically cable grade, connection, 10 to the minus nine error probability.

You can have hundreds of wireless devices in a machine, and it’s deterministic. It’s designed it is designed from the outside for both for control, of course, but, of course, also for for monitoring and maybe, like, a brownfield. You wanna you can’t get IO Link to a sensor or something that you can maybe use IO Link wireless to get access to some some hard to reach sensor.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, you know, I thought that I think this is so interesting. We actually had a company on, I think, a year or two ago, who does IO Link wireless, and that was the first time I had heard of it. And he said, yeah. Hundreds of devices. Right?

It’s pretty amazing, especially if you have a lot of a lot of things, the smart devices that need to be, you know, free from the network, need to be wireless. Maybe, you know, the slip ring communications has been a problem for years and years. This because this is frequency hopping, it eliminates a lot of the, problems with, you know, interference. Right?

Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. Right.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Exactly. And and, you know, it’s just and I I highly recommend people look into this if you’re if you’re challenged. You can’t run a wire to every sent every sensor or every device. This is definitely some very interesting technology.

Michael Bowne (PI): And just like with, so we we I I didn’t mention it explicitly, but when we’re talking about IO Link wiring, there’s a 20 meter limit Mhmm. For wired IO Link. And we, you know, we talk about the same thing for IO Link wireless that you’re not gonna be going hundreds of meters wireless, via via via IO Link wireless. So we we stick to that 20 meter limit for IO Link wireless as well.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Great for a cell. Great for a robot. Great for a robot tools. Right? But, yeah, this is not gonna replace your Wi Fi or your LTE or anything like that.

Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. If you’re or if you’re in a, you know, a tank farm or something, you’re not going long distances Mhmm. Across across a a plant like that. Alright. In the last couple minutes, one more thing I wanna talk about.

This is pretty new. That’s you’re not gonna find devices out or at least many devices out on the network like this, but this is functional safety for IO Link. So IO Link safety is really clever name. IO Link safety because today, you’ve got if you wanna do functional safety, you’ve got your FSCPs or your functional safety communication protocols like FSOE or SIP safety or PROFIsafe, whatever the case may

Shawn Tierney (Host): be. Mhmm.

Michael Bowne (PI): You connect it out to your remote IO, but every single device needs a different interface. If it’s a relay, it needs a maybe a DO. If it’s a estop, it needs a DI. If it’s a analog signal, it needs its own functional safe, analog input. With IO Link safety, we can get rid of all those separate interfaces.

Just use IO Link for that, for any kind of safety measure functional safety measuring sensor, functional safety switching device. Maybe if the drive has a safe input on it that it that it that it could use, all that can be done with a functionally safe IO Link master and IO Link safety. And, it’s it’s the same concept as as IO Link where we’re transmitting this data via IO Link, but we transmit both safety and standard data from a device. You can migrate, IO Link safety and OSSD, so output switching signal devices can be done in the same product. The masters also offer generic IO Link standard operation.

They also they offer the OSSD mode. And it’s cool because you don’t need any switches for safety addressing. The the watch log time is set automatically. You can exchange devices without a specific tool just like with regular IO Link, and then it’s just that regular IO Link connection of 20 meters, flexible, no shielding, inexpensive. And this is this is pretty new stuff.

We just just and I’m talking, like, this month, got the the TUV, the TUV certification for IO Link safety. So we’re we’re expecting this to ramp up quickly over the next couple of years again for the same reason that IO Link, grew so so fast, and that’s the no comp no competitor, and, you know, you’re saving on a lot a lot of costs by by using it.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Does it simplify the wiring? Because in your photo on the screen, you show the safety sensor with the two, let’s say, two, relays. Right? Mhmm. And, you have to acquire both of those up to the to the input, the safety input.

Right? Functional safety digital in. With IO Link safety, are we running just one cable?

Michael Bowne (PI): Just one cable. Yeah. It’s the same same IO Link cable. Exactly. Yeah.

Shawn Tierney (Host): So just like with, let’s say, SIP safety or a PROFIsafe, where you’re still just running one Ethernet cable. Mhmm. Here, we’re just running one IO link cable. So you’re you are simplifying installation, I think.

Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. And it’s and and it uses some of the similar concepts, mainly that that whole, black channel principle, that we know from all that all the that all the functionally safe, protocols use that, what you care about is making sure that that signal gets from one end to the other. Now it’s a whole heck of a lot easier with IO Link because IO Link is point to point, not going over a network. So, that that becomes a whole heck of a lot easier, but it’s yeah. That’s great.

I mean, it’s just one one wire. You you don’t have to okay. Did I plug it in? You know? Is it normally open, normally closed?

Do you have both? Do you have three of them? It’s just that one IO Link connection. Alright. I think I’ll wrap it up quickly here.

So a lot of this focused on end users, people installing IO Link in their machines or in their in their factories. But for the if any listeners are sensor manufacturers, device manufacturers, there are really two main ways to get an IO Link device certificate. There’s, the membership route, and then there’s a license model for those that may, for whatever reason, choose not to become a member. And, with the license model, you I’ll start on the right hand side to work backwards. You implement IO Link, request the test in an IO Link test center, then you get your IO Link vendor ID from PI, and then you get your product tested at the test center.

And then every device has a manufacturer declaration. And when I mentioned the IODD finder before, when when a device manufacturer uploads that IODD file to the IODD finder, they also at least in the last couple of years, we’ve we’ve we’ve asked and required them to do that. They also upload the manufacturer declaration. So end users can see, hey. The manufacturer has tested this device, certified, and, and they can rest assured that it’s it’s gonna work as specified per per the IO Link specs and standards.

And then in the in the license model, you gotta purchase a license per device and acquire patent rights. Just about nobody goes this route, but it was initiated for political reasons. Some companies or company, didn’t wanna join PI, but just about nobody, does that. And most go the membership model route where you join, get your IO Link vendor ID, implement IO Link, and then we allow members to self test using any number of testers that are out on the market. And then you can sign the manufacturer declaration yourself, which is basically self certification.

If you wanna learn more, these slides were taken from a slide deck that’s presented couple times throughout the year at an IO Link one day workshop. And this is a this is a a very special Shawn Tierney, resource. We don’t, you know, display this everywhere. But if anybody wants to get access to this stuff, they can go to, io-link.us/2020five. It’ll ask for a little password.

The password is twenty twenty five, and you can download the the training class manual, the so, the full slide deck that is that is performed and and really demonstrated at these IO Link workshops. So like I said, we do four of these throughout the year. We did two already, one in Seattle, one in Philly, Philadelphia, and then we’ve got two coming up in October, one in Vancouver, British Columbia, and one in Richmond, Virginia. So if anybody’s listening and and in those areas, it’s a free class. You get lunch.

You get a day of learning all about IO Link. We do a lot a lot of demonstrations. We get down into the the bits and bytes a little bit. And then what’s cool is at these events, a bunch of vendors, maybe a dozen or so show up with products. So if you wanna walk the room, it’s kinda like a little bit of a micro fair, and they support the event, which is how end users are able to come and get a free class and get a free lunch.

So go to iolink.us/events. And if you’re in in those areas, we welcome you to to join us at at one of these classes. And that’s my that’s my plug. Yeah.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And I I just wanna focus in on this for those who are driving. So Vancouver, British Columbia, October 1.

Michael Bowne (PI): Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Richmond, Virginia. Right? East Coast people. October 28 in i0-link.us/events. So just wanted to say that again because sometimes they’re driving, they’re like, well, I didn’t hear it or you know?

So, hey. Look. If you’re on the East Coast with me and you’re near Richmond, October 28, sign up early. Don’t sign up often. Just sign up once.

But but, you know, if you have friends you wanna meet there, you don’t have them do that. And, it’s great that the vendors come and make the events possible. Yeah. And it’s it’s nice just to get that one out. So many so many of us are so busy.

It’s nice to get that one on one with the vendors. I’ve actually been with the vendors at these shows, and it’s the the audience that it’s attendees usually have some awesome questions. And a lot of times, they ask you about things not even related to it, but, you know, they just see you, so they wanna talk to you. So definitely wanna shout out to all the vendors who are gonna be there as well.

Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. It’s it’s it’s it’s a great I mean, it’s learning. It’s it’s product if you want it to be, but the content like this, is it’s not salesy at all. I mean, it is a it’s an it is an educational event.

Shawn Tierney (Host): But if

Michael Bowne (PI): you do wanna talk to the vendors, then that’s that’s great. They’re there to help you out. Because at the end of the day, you can’t you can’t buy an IO link. Right? I mean, it it’s just a standard.

It’s just a what you can buy are the products that use it. And so that’s why, we work together with the vendors to to do to put these events on. Yeah. It’s awesome. Yeah.

And they’re and they’re I mean, it’s it’s really impressive that they’re willing to get in a room with, really, their competitors and and do this and put this together. The last one I wanna mention is profuse news, but we talked about that at the beginning. This is that monthly newsletter that we that we send out to 130,000 of our closest friends, and maybe you’re receiving PROFINews. If not, you can go to the website. It’s simply profinews.com and, subscribe to PROFINews, where those new products, particularly IO Link products are mentioned and and, and highlighted.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. One thing I like about this is, you know, if you get too much email like me from sources you don’t want it from, You know, it’s nice that you can go to the website and pull it down when you wanna see it. Right? So so maybe it’s you’ve been a couple months. You wanna see what’s new on IO Link.

You can go up there. Their website is excellent. You can go and look at all the articles, all the different, new products that have come out. And you don’t have to if you you know, I know a lot of people like the newsletter subscriptions. I’m one of those, Gen x’s who don’t, and and it’ll at least you know, I want, like like, I wanna hear from Michael.

I wanna hear from Tom. I wanna hear from students like Daniel I was emailing yesterday. You know, I’d I’d every vendor, there’s, you know, hundreds we follow. If I had a newsletter from each of those, it would my inbox would be full. So but in any case, it’s excellent, guys.

It’s it’s no fluff. It’s really. And and I’ve discovered new vendors from just following that list. You know? These people I didn’t didn’t know from my past.

And, in any case, highly recommend you guys all check it out at least once or twice a year if you don’t want the email.

Michael Bowne (PI): I appreciate that. Yeah. And, like and and like I said and and right there at the top, there’s a button that says product news. Click that, and then there’ll be every month’s worth of new products section article that we published

Shawn Tierney (Host): for our newsletter. There’s some great articles up there too. So, thank you very much for publishing them, and keep up the great work on those. I know we enjoyed them during the couple years I was doing the news. We would, go up there on a regular basis.

Michael Bowne (PI): We’re gonna send out issue number 251, next week.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Oh, wow.

Michael Bowne (PI): So every month, that’s, you know, do the math. Twenty years worth of crazy. Crazy.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Job. Good job. Keep it up.

Michael Bowne (PI): That’s all I got. Once again, thanks thanks for having me, Shawn.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Michael, I really appreciate you coming on, and that was a great update. And thank you for including some real technical details in there. We will be, using the opportunity of having this episode to go ahead and, cover more IO Link products. So, we have had a number of vendors send us products, but with non sponsored products. So it’s it’s hard to find time to use things when when, know, everybody says, well, play with it in your free time.

I think we’ve all heard that. And, but in any case so we have new lessons coming. We have new videos coming. We have new demos coming. So stay tuned, folks.

But, again, Michael, thank you so much for coming back on the automation podcast. Let’s not wait four years. Let’s say you’re back on in a few months to talk about MTP and, because I think that’d be cool and then maybe Noah later on. Yeah. But thanks again for coming on the show.

Really appreciate it.

Michael Bowne (PI): Oh, my pleasure. My pleasure.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I hope you enjoy this episode, and I wanna thank Michael for coming on the show and bringing us up to speed on IO Link. We hope to get Michael back on in the coming months to talk about MTP and Noah, and some of the other things that they’ve added to their portfolio since we had them on four years ago. But with that said, I also wanna thank all the members out there who’ve joined my membership program. I look forward to today where we can grow that above the two to 3% mark and actually start doing content dedicated for, what the members are asking for. Right?

So you guys can ask, hey. Cover this, cover that, and we can actually afford to do that. So thank you all the members out there. I know you just love to support the channel, and, you know, you really are very busy like most of us are. So, in any case, I just wanted to take a minute to thank you.

And I also wanna thank all my students over at the Automation School. Did you know I’ve added a bunch of new, lessons lately? So especially to the POC classes. So in any case and I got a bunch more planned this fall and a lot planned on IO Link. So you’re gonna see a lot of content from me at IO Link, both on the lunchtime show that I’ve been doing, as well as in some upcoming episodes of the automation show and the automation minute.

So, it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and the stars are just aligned. So, we’ll be covering IO Link a lot both on the blog, on the channel, and over at the automation school as well. And with that, that’s all I got to say. Thank you very much for making it to the end of the show. I wanna wish you all good health and happiness.

And until next time, my friends, peace.

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Ashley Weckwerth of ISA to learn all about the OT Cybersecurity Summit in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 245 Show Notes:To learn about our online and in-person training courses please visit TheAutomationSchool.com.

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host): Welcome back. My name is Shawn Tierney from Insights and Automation, and I wanna thank you for tuning back in to this episode of the automation podcast. This week on the show, I have Ashley Weckworth from ISA to talk about the OT cybersecurity summit they just held over in Europe in Brussels, and, very interesting conversation about OT cybersecurity. In addition to that, I had a couple announcements. First off, I wanted to let you know that I have rebooted the automation news podcast, and I renamed it Automation Tech Talk.

And I’m trying to do a show at least three or four times a week at lunchtime. So if you’re not already subscribed to the old automation news podcast, you should be able to find it now as Automation Tech Talk. And, I’m just trying to spend ten to twenty minutes every lunch trying to share some knowledge that I have with the community. I also wanna mention that if you are a listener, I’m running a special 20% off, sale on my courses over at the automationschool.com. You will not see that there.

It’s only for those listening. And I know most of you are already automation experts, so you don’t need to take these courses. So, really, this would be something you would pass on to the people who work for you or people you know who need to get up to speed on whether they need an introductory PLC course, so they need to get up to speed on ControlLogix, CompactLogix, s seven twelve hundred and fifteen hundred, PanelView plus, USC, and so on. So in any case, to get that discount, that 20% off any course or bundle of courses at $99 or more, All you have to do is send me the email address of the person who wants the discount. And, of course, we do do, group enrollment with, we’ve done it with a lot of Fortune 500 companies.

Actually, I got a new order that just came in I gotta process. But, when we do a group enrollment, you you enroll, like, several people at your shop, and then I enroll them all at once, and you get a discount a quantity discount and all that. So in any case, if you have any questions about that, just go to the automationschool.com. All my contact info is at the very top, my voice mail, my email. You can even fill in a form there or book a meeting with me.

But, please let me know if you know anybody who needs training. Even if you just want me to reach out to them to see if I can help them with their training needs, please let me know over there. And with that, let’s go ahead and jump into this week’s episode of the automation podcast. And, Ashley, I know this is your first time on the show. So before we jump into the summary of what what what this OT cybersecurity summit is and what it was all about and the highlights and all that good stuff, before we even get into that, could you tell the audience a little bit about yourself?

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): Yeah. Thank you, Shawn. I appreciate being here. My name is Ashley Weckworth. I am located in Orlando, Florida.

I’ve been a volunteer for ISA for twelve years now. I actually have a day job, though. I’m a volunteer with ISA, which is the International Society of Automation. But in my day job, I’m actually a project manager for automation projects, so specifically SCADA systems projects for the electric grid right now. But our company also supports many other industries, so I actually started my career out.

I was a chemical engineer. So I like to tell people, you never know how you’re gonna find your way to automation professions. There’s so many different varying degrees and everything that kinda lead us to this place. But I graduated in chemical engineering, went into instrumentation and controls, for the oil and gas industry. So doing a lot of, you know, it was PLCs or DCS systems that we used.

But essentially, as I actually got my pro professional engineer license in control systems. So as a chemical engineer, you don’t know a lot about instrumentation controls and automation, at least I didn’t. And so I was actually recommended to join ISA right out of school. So I joined ISA in June 2012 and became a volunteer leader at the local section in 2013 and then just grew, in my volunteer roles, and I am now the ISA president-elect secretary. So what that means is in 2026, I will be the, ISA president for that calendar year.

So I’m excited to be here today, to talk to you all about the ISA OT Cyber Summit. I actually was able to attend this event this year. It’s the third year that ISA has done this event. The first year was Aberdeen, Scotland. The second year was in London.

And then this year, the first year I was able to attend was actually in Brussels, Belgium. So we’ve been all over Europe in different capacities, and I was really excited to attend this event. And I wanted to come on here today, and I’m so thankful you allowed us to come on here today to just tell your audience and community that are all very, enthusiastic about automation about this summit. So, hopefully, maybe they wanna attend in the future or maybe just can see what ISA is all about, and look into it more. So I’m really excited.

Shawn Tierney (Host): No. And thank you for coming on. You know, it’s we we all get so wrapped up in our day to day that it’s great to have people on, like, from ISA to tell us what’s going on. And, you know, maybe, you know, you’re you get in a position later in your career where you can actually spend some time after work, you know, meeting with, your colleagues from all kinds of different industries. ISA is a great place to check into and and get involved with.

But let me go ahead and turn it back to you.

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): Yeah. No. And, Shawn, you’re so right in the sense of I tell people is even though right now I’m not really in the day to day cybersecurity or OT cyber space, this conference was actually still really beneficial because of all the diverse connections that I gained there. It was actually the first time I had been more of the minority coming from The United States in the sense that you had people from Spain. You had people from, you know, Belgium, of course.

You had France, you had Ireland, you had London in The UK. Right? You had different perspectives that everybody’s trying to come together. And ISA had this vision statement that’s create a better world through automation. Is and that’s truly what this group’s trying to do is we’re trying to protect all of our automation systems in the OT space against those vulnerabilities or those threats and how it will impact us from an operational standpoint, but also a business standpoint.

So I thought even though I’m not in it day to day, like you mentioned, is sometimes I just have my blinders on, do my job, know what I’m doing, is it was very unique to talk to these folks at the socials and in the the meetings and listen to them to really expand my knowledge of what automation can be and also what we can do to protect it, but also just, like, building those connections because you never know where your career might lead. And I really did value that. So, with that, I did wanna mention that ISA OT Cyber Summit did have two unique tracks this year. I do feel like we try to change up the tracks based on what’s happening in today’s world, what people are talking about, the trends in this area. And so this year, we had a chain a track called threat intelligence.

So really just identifying threats, knowing the vulnerabilities, knowing how to respond and react to those, how to prepare for those threats. So that was one track that we had, and the other track was securing the supply chain.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Just wanted to jump in there for a minute and pay the bills and talk to you about some of the changes coming to the courses at theautomationschool.com. If you’re watching this video, then you will see me standing in front of a bunch of equipment, and that’s because I am updating actively updating all of my PLC courses as well as filming new additions. So I just wanna make it very clear. If you buy the existing course today, you will get the updated edition as well.

And, there are some add on courses I’m doing that will be optional. You can buy them or not buy them. But in any case, I just wanted to let everybody know that I wanna protect your investment. I know I’ve been doing this for twelve plus years, you know, on my own as the automation school and the automation blog. And twenty five years before, I was, you know, working as a, a specialist.

But I just wanted to let you know that, you know, if you make an investment today, you’re not gonna miss out on what I previously did, but you’re also gonna get what I continue to do. And that that’s very important to me. And all my courses are buy once own forever. So if you, make the investment if you made the investment, let’s say, going back to 2013, 2014, you’re still gonna get the updated, courses. So I know a lot of people get confused when you start looking at the new versions of Studio 5,000.

It looks different, you know, than even version 30. Right? And so, you know, I figured it was you know, a lot of people too move to a Windows 11, and, there’s some new cool stuff I wanna include. You know, over the time, I’ve looked for different hardware sales and, you know, I bought a lot of different equipment, you know, just out of my own pocket that I wanna show you guys as well. So with that said, that’s an update on the automation school.

Now let’s get right back into this week’s podcast.

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): So making sure that when we have disruptions to those supply chain areas or what those disruptions might look like, how are we gonna adapt to those? What does that mean to do to make sure that we’re being dependable and reliable in what we’re trying to accomplish in the supply chain and making sure we understand those impacts as well. So two different tracks. Of course, we had speakers, that sometimes overlapped both because they do kinda intertwine together. We had 40 speakers, two thirty attendees, and over 20 sponsors this year.

So the event just continues to grow and grow. But the, the real thing that I loved about the conference and the content was it it actually shocked me how transparent and open the conversation was, because I feel like at some conferences, you go and you feel like you’re just sitting and being, like, preached at. And you’re like, I don’t know if I agree with that. At this conference, I felt like was different. It had more panel discussions.

And one that really stood out to me is it was a panel discussion about ITOT convergence. And now this has been a theme word for years now. Right? IT, OT convergence, that’s the way to go. It actually took a shift in the the discussion in the panel discussion where people were actually like, why?

Why why are we trying to do that? It seems like IT just wants to do that, and OT is being told you must do that. And so I thought it was and and you would think that we were about to go, like, in a boxing ring, but we weren’t. Right? It was actually, like, people wanted to hear and be inclusive of counterarguments, which, again, I think was very unique for this kind of conference in the sense of you might think that we were trying to push OT, IT convergent, but it was no.

Like, let’s discuss the pain points and the challenges and where we like, what’s holding us back from converging? What are the benefits of that convergence? And I thought what was unique is we had IT backgrounded people on the panel as well as OT backgrounded people. So you kinda see both sides where they actually had people raise their hand what their background was in. And it was kinda unique to see the audience members being like, yeah.

I came from the IT background, and I’m being told I need to watch over this IT space or the IT people raising their hand or OT people. I’m sorry. OT people saying, yeah. I came from the OT side, and I want the IT side to to watch what they’re asking and be careful and stuff like that. And so I, again, wanna go back to it was very cool to see the diverse connections in this group, but also the inclusiveness that we weren’t trying to push ideas.

We were trying to get people talking about the options and what’s available and why. And I so I thought it was interesting that I feel like I’ve always heard, like, we wanna push towards convergence, with, you know, just having better data, knowing what’s happening through the whole system, and and from a cyber aspect. But I thought it was unique to hear how we could work together and keep them still separate in some certain situations and and why. And so that was that was unique to me. I I thought I was like, wow.

This took a it took a turn, but in a positive way. And I think we all left there really challenged with where do we want this to head, why, and how do we get rid of those pain points. So Yeah. You know, I

Shawn Tierney (Host): think a lot of controls engineers, right, they they know their they know their IT guys. So let’s say you’re an NGS er, and they know but they know the the cost of downtime. Mhmm. And and in many cases, there’s there’s no convergence because Right. There’s there’s no tolerance for downtime.

If you’re making computer chips or you’re making, well, I guess, even potato chips, you you really downtime is such a profit killer. Right? And Yeah. In in some cases, it can it can take years to recover from a day or a week of downtime. And so that mission critical aspect of what we do in industrial automation is not always that mentality is not always present in IT.

In many companies, and I’m not saying all IT people, but in many companies, IT is a firefighter. They’re a tech who’s been thrown into the, you know, thrown to the wolves, and they’re fixing everything from smartphones to, you know, trying to get the UPS, replaced to, you know, somebody needs a better monitor to the to the CEO, maybe needs a little hand holding to get the PowerPoint to work. So, yeah, different worlds and and and it’s so you every every and I’m sure you see this in your business, but every site, every customer seems to be unique well, because they have unique people. Right? But every site you go to is even different sites in the same company.

They have different cultures and just I guess they all have unique people, unique teams, so they’re gonna that’s gonna happen. But, yeah, I can definitely see where you’re coming from, with with that. That sounds like it was a very interesting discussion.

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): Right. And you bring up a great point in the sense of I I remember specifically this, CISO or CISO, you know, chief information security officer from Johns Mansville came in and was talking about how he came from an IT background and was told you’re kinda leading this. And he noticed that he had the gap from the OT lens and that downtime, like you’re talking about, or the individual plant to where he did a strategic hire, essentially, or move to bring in an OT lens into his, you know, umbrella, essentially, to make sure he wasn’t, like, missing something or speaking and not realizing that impact of downturn. And that’s that’s actually Scott Reynolds who talked here, I believe, last year about this summit, is that’s who he brought under him to bring in that, you know, OT thought process, and they actually do travel to their different locations. Like you said, every plant’s different, every manufacturing facility is different, to make sure they’re hearing the unique circumstances and what they can do to support, but also not just, like, pushing them to do it a certain way knowing that there are the variances.

So I think that you’re exactly right. So perfect. So the other side, right, is that that’s really trending right now and especially in Europe, which I learned, fun fact, I was like, why is this conference in Belgium and in Brussels? And I did not realize that Brussels is, like, the de facto capital of the EU, the European Union. And so there’s a lot of regulation that is happening in Brussels and and things that, like, come down from a compliance standpoint.

And so a lot of the other, you know, discussions that happened was regarding the regulatory landscape across, all the all the world essentially and, like, NIST two, which I had to write this down because I am I’m not as familiar with NIST two, is network and information security directive. There’s been NIST one for a while or just NIST, and now they’ve come up with an update that actually spans across multiple sectors. And we can see from NIST two and from RED, which is radio equipment directive, and just other cyber initiatives and regulation coming down, cybersecurity initiatives, that more and more government or state officials are seeing the vulnerabilities that could happen or the risk that could happen if they don’t say you shall follow this or do something to protect your OT systems from, you know, disruption, from downtime, all of that, especially the those, again, like you mentioned, mission critical things. And and and there and I’m gonna talk about one specifically, one session that stood out with this. But I do want us to all be aware is, like, with these regulatory and governmental mandates or guidance or directives, is there are products out there and standards out there that a lot of people are leaning on to make sure they are protected and, you know, ready for an incident and how they respond, how they react if it happened.

And I I think last time this was also talked about is six two four four three. I think you all had Eric Cosman on

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yes. Yeah.

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): On an episode as well. So I would advise anybody that isn’t familiar with 62443, go back, look for that episode to really dive into the meat of what that is. But ISA developed the the IEC ISA six two four four three standard that has different different layers to it that you kinda can pick it which layer you need to do based on where you stand in this process. But, essentially, is because ISA has this as the foundation is this is what a lot of regulators are looking at to be like, you need to make sure you’re doing this. You need to make sure you’re being as compliant as you can be with six two four four three.

So that’s why ISA continues to host this event and talk about it because we can see from a regulatory, you know, perspective that it is coming. And and and it has been coming for a while now, but I think it’s now being more enforced than ever before in certain regions. So just keep that in mind.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, I think, and and I may get this wrong, but from a previous coverage of NIST and NIST two, you know, it’s it’s, you know, from memory, just going by memory. You know, NIST was really about core providers. So those people who, if they got hacked, could really affect society in a big way. And with NIST two, right, it broadens that.

So some industries that you may think, well, you know, if that plant goes down, it’s really not gonna well, it could affect your your community, your city in a big way. You just may not be have been aware of that previously. And so, you know, in America, I think you’re absolutely right. You know, not that we’re gonna get those same regulations, probably not word for word, but, you know, a lot of OEMs here are shipped there. Right?

A lot of integrators work on machines here ship there. But beyond that, understanding what the threats they’re trying to protect from, the six two four four three layered you know, the different layers of standards, You know? So you understand what when you see a product, right, like a remote access product, and it has all these different numbers on it, you understand what are they protecting? What kind of what kind of security was built in, baked into this product? Like, this this product has this number on it.

That means they went through all kinds of testing and and, you know, and to to make sure that their, you know, processes and the product itself and the supply chain and all that. So I think it’s very helpful. Not that we’re going to necessarily have to meet this and this too. We may have similar regulations, but the fact that you’re staying up to date with what’s going on in the world as far as cybersecurity is concerned. And we’ve had so many vendors on talking about zones and conduits and Yeah.

Just all kinds of all kinds of different things, you know, secure remote access, VPNs. And all of this plays a role in in you know, there’s just so many great products out there, but, you know, that that’s my pitch for why staying abreast of these is important. In worst case scenario hey, everybody. Just wanted to break in here and pay some bills. Did you know that the automation school is a factory IO reseller?

That’s right. Not only that, I have questions on using factory IO with ControlLogix and CompactLogix, with the MicroLogix and Slic 500, and with the micro 800. Now factory IO is a three d, factory simulator that allows you to really practice your programming skills, not on an actual machine, but on a three d simulation of a machine. And I’ll tell you what, some of these, are really challenging. Right?

The early editions are not the early levels aren’t really that hard, but as you get them to lesson three, four, five, six, and more, they start getting much harder. And a lot of times, we utilize, like, a state machine to solve them because, like, if we have, merging two different conveyors or if we’re checking for the height of packages and things like that, or we’re filling a tank, whatever we’re doing, a lot of times you wanna take a very sequential approach to those type of applications, whereas other applications, you know, you take more of a batch approach. But in any case, if you don’t know anything about Factory IO, go check out lesson one zero two in any of my PLC courses, and I put a little demo in there along with the free utility I give away with my courses as well as for the compact and control logics. There’s another package we sell called, PLC Logics that is similar to Factory IO, but it doesn’t require a PLC. It doesn’t require that you have your own license of Studio 5,000.

It’s actually it’s all self contained training, software. So check those out over at theautomationschool.com. And with that, let’s jump right back into this week’s episode. Don’t connect the plant flow to the Internet. You know?

I know you I know you wanna be able to VPN in and check on your PLCs, but, you know, just make sure that connection is ultra secure. If you’re not if you’re not sure if it’s secure, unplug it and and do the research because, you know, we’ve heard about the pipeline where there was, you know, a cyber attack and there was, you know, ransomware, and we’ve heard about hospital hospitals and, you know, just, you can pretty much think any place in our society, there’s been a ransomware attack. And so we’re just gonna be cognizant. We heard a major news talking about don’t even charge your phone at the airport because Right. Cult I don’t know how to get in, but culprits have been going in and hacking the physical hardware so they can steal your information when you’re using The US.

So we all have to help each other stay up to date on this. We gotta share these stories. That’s what people do best is share stories about things that are important that we need to know about. And, you know, that’s that’s kind of my pitch for staying. Let me turn it back.

Let me turn it back to you.

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): Well no. And you bring up it honestly makes me think about a session that happened about Wi Fi. Is it it’s talking about Wi Fi security, and I know that I’m just as, like, guilty of this where we’ll just sign on to what we believe is the local safe Wi Fi, whether it’s the airport. Yep. Or the use case that he gave me even here, like, how many of us signed into the hotel’s Wi Fi?

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah.

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): Right? And he talked about how and he kept saying, hypothetically, to make sure because he knew it was against the law, but, like, hypothetically, I could spoof it right now. Right? Is essentially and he went through how he could do it. Right?

How he could use a device, hypothetically, in his laptop to essentially make the Wi Fi go out for a second, create a new Wi Fi with a very similar name that makes you believe that that’s now the new connection that you have to, you know, say that you’re joining and, you know oh, there it is. My my current hotel Wi Fi went off. There’s the other name that looks very similar

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah.

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): And joining and not realizing you’re joining, that unsecure network. They can get in different ways now. So you’re you’re very right. As I tell people, is is really that threat intelligence track at OT, cyber made me, in a good way, again, expand my knowledge for what is possible out there, but also, like, what what I should be thinking about taking into consideration in my day to day home personal, you know, career and life and what I’m doing. But also, what am I doing in the job that I should be second guessing or making sure I’ve thought through?

Are there any loopholes or gaps that someone could get in or is already in? Right?

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, that’s the thing because you bring most people are bringing their devices to work. So if you get hacked at the airport or get hacked at the hotel, that’s a vector into your company. And a lot of companies, that’s where that’s where the intrusion comes from a personal device. I mean, today, it used to be people are a little on and don’t bring your devices. And today, everybody brings their phone with them everywhere.

Yeah. And so that is a vector into the plant. And that’s another reason why maybe your POC and HMI and SCADA system and VFDs and everything that you have in your network should only talk to a list of approved IP addresses and proved you know? You know? Maybe there should be some digital signatures there.

I’m not saying for for certain networks, but for other networks that are more wide open, like, maybe you plant for a Wi Fi, maybe you should be locked down a little bit more. Maybe it shouldn’t be a great place to to stream you to. But, anyways, let me turn it back to you.

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): Well and and you, doctor, her name was doctor Marina Krotafil, And I’m gonna say it wrong. She actually shared a case study. Now I won’t give all the details of the case study, but, essentially, is it talked through how even at, like, state sponsored cyber operations. So when we’re talking, you know, we’re talking maybe, like, everybody thinks, like, hackers are, like, you know, the the people that just have too much time. They wanna do ransomware, get money.

They wanna get through it’s like, you know, you think about especially with all the things happening in the world today is Mhmm. Countries against countries or states against states, essentially, that want to get in and disrupt the economy or disrupt and show their power can do so through cyber attacks. And she actually talked through how attackers, especially at a state level, that get recruited by a state, maybe like a Russia, you know, at first, like, essentially, she went through different scenarios where is if a if a government official or government wanted to get in and learn the vulnerabilities and all that for another, entity or another country, they know how to do that. Right? They know how to essentially make it to where they they’re testing their limits.

Right? How long does it take them to get caught? How long does it take them to to make you notice that they’re in your system? How what do you do about it? Like, they’re essentially, she gave examples in this case study where everything certain state sponsored cyber operations do is strategic.

Right? They’re testing their limits. They’re testing their capabilities. They’re testing and training up folks for when they actually want to do something. And I think you mentioned this in other, podcasts too that I listen to is, like, we gotta be cautious that people could be lurking.

They could be in. They could be just not making themselves known in our critical infrastructure. And and, again, she she spun it in such a way that I’m not here to scare anybody on this podcast, but, essentially, just being aware that people are very smart, and we need to be smart and ahead of that as well. And that’s what I think this conference allows us to do is it shares best practices. It shares that knowledge.

It builds those connections. So now, like, you kinda mentioned, there’s so much equipment that you can buy and vendors selling different things that have different security settings. Like, all those sponsors make great products. And and understanding what they can do, what they can’t do helps us be able to protect ourselves, get ahead of these risks, get ahead of these potentials, and not be afraid. Right?

It’s kinda like you put a lock on your door to make sure you’re not just welcoming anybody in, not that you’re gonna plan for someone just to walk in your house that’s not welcome. Right? Is we wanna make sure we’re doing what we can, and I think that’s what this conference really allowed is to know the risk out there, to be aware of the situations, the cyberattacks that have happened in in recent history, but also, like, what can I do as an end user, as a consultant, as an integrator, as a product, you know, manufacturer? What can I do to make a difference to help safeguard our OT systems and make a difference and and protect them?

Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, I I I restore to the people. They’re like, well, why would they hack us? And it’s like, you know, take a step back. You know, the first of all, these people who are working for their governments, whether it’s The US, whether it’s EU, any country in the world, you name it. Right.

They all they all think that they’re doing a patriotic thing working for their com their country. In every country, every almost virtually every country in the world, virtually every one of them have been hacked by almost every other one of them. Yeah. And we don’t know who hacked for us. Right?

This is the eye for the eye thing. Like, it’s been going on for so long. You know, did the French start it? Did the Americans start it? Did the Russians start it?

Did no. Every country in the world’s been hacking every other country. There there’s no tracing back to who started this this roller coaster of hacking, but everybody’s perceived like the other people are hacking me, so I have to hack back. So you just have to be cognizant of that and and and understand that it may not be you. It may not be your company.

It may not even be what you make that’s the target. You may just be the punch back for the punches they received last month, and you’re just the only target they can hit. And so we we, you know, let’s stop all the punching. Let’s secure our facilities. So so we frustrate all of these, including our own, all these people who are trying to illegally hack into different companies and and cause problems like the ransomware.

And, you know, I and and it’s real. And, you know, it came years ago, it came to me. I put a SCADA server as a demo for my customers. I put it on the Internet. I was just like, hey, boss.

Give me a cable modem. I’m gonna put my server on. I’m gonna demo, you know, web based SCADA to all my, to all my great customers in the area. And the thing was hacked within a day. I mean and I’m going back twenty years now.

This is twenty years. It was hacked in a day. And every week, I would spend a couple hours trying to make it hack proof. You know? And, you know, this was before I even you know, firewalls were even, like, consideration for a small business.

Right? And so, yes, the people are being hacked all the time. Yep. We we you know? And and we have to be vigilant against those hacks.

And we gotta people are tired of me saying this. Also, please back up your PLC HMI SCADA systems and all those VFPs.

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): Just in

Shawn Tierney (Host): case. Stuff up just in case. It’ll there there’s so much room on your hard drive now. You could back it all up a thousand times, and you would still have room left over. So I like to

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): Can you imagine how much money you would save having that backup ready to go instead of like you mentioned, downtime earlier, right, is Yeah. Essentially, if if something were to happen, right, say, ransom ransomware hap whatever. Right? Is is you you end up saying, no. We’re not paying it, and you lose everything.

Is now if you had to rebuild all of that code and all of your systems and get everything back talking to each other is I mean, I don’t even wanna do the math. I mean, you’re talking you’re you’re not you’re losing revenue, just whatever you’re producing or making with that system, but you’re also now spending money to get it back to whereas if you had the backups already ready. Yes. You’re still gonna have downtime. You’re still gonna have to get everything back up, but you’re saving all that developmental time to, like, redo it all, essentially.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Sometimes you can’t. There are some machines that are so complicated. Right. And they, you know, they may have had changeover. Nobody may have that file anymore.

So take your take your own future in your own hands, back up everything, back it up more at once. Right. You know, and take it like Microsoft will tell you if you go to any type of server type of training or certifications, you’re gonna have a copy of that off-site. They all cannot be on your site because if there’s a fire where you store all that stuff, you don’t have any backups anymore. So very interesting stuff and, you know, I hate to preach.

I know the the I know the audience is used to me saying this stuff, but, but it’s so important. I I I’ve had multiple customers well, former customers, colleagues, audience members tell me about their horror stories where they had ransomware, and it’s just it truly is devastating to the companies. Right. And it really, like, I mean, it hurts people’s paychecks because, you know, there’s no raises that year, no bonuses that year, sometimes layoffs. So

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): Oh, yes. It kills the culture. I mean, truly. And and that’s where I and I I think sometimes we take for granted, kinda like you mentioned at the beginning. We put our blinders on.

We just do our job. We think we’re doing our job, and you don’t think about all these things. And I think that’s the the benefit of groups like this. Right? Your podcast, bringing a community together to talk about things like this, lessons learned, things that I’ve learned in my career, my product.

Like, you’re getting knowledge out there, and that’s exactly what ISA is trying to do as well. It’s like, why do we all have to learn by the the hard way or learn by things happening when you have all these resources? That’s what I think frustrates me the most sometimes is people will be like, well, I didn’t know that.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, buddy. I just wanted to jump in here and pay some bills and tell you about my training at the Automation School, my in person training that I do right here in my offices in the beautiful Berkshires. So many great things to do out here in Western Massachusetts. We’re about an hour away from Albany, New York. And one of the things you’re gonna find with my training that you’re not gonna find with, the big vendors is, you know, I can kinda customize it for you.

Right? So, you know, if you wanna do, like, a day of, Allen Bradley PLCs and a day of Siemens PLCs, I can do that for you. Also, you know, we teach not just using the the trainer trainer boxes, but we also teach using factory IO so that even the most advanced students should have a full day’s worth of work or two or three full days depending on what you wanna do. And you’re gonna see over the coming weeks, I’m adding even more hardware to the training room. I’m, creating all of these one by one demo boards that I’ll be showing you guys in on the, the lunchtime show that I’m doing, where, I’m bringing in things like Flex IO, Point IO, you know, seventeen sixty nine distributed IO, fifty sixty nine distributed IO.

All these things that, you know, if you go to some of the place where they just bought, you know, APLCs and APCs and say, here’s a manual, you’re not gonna get the same experience. So in any case, if you have any needs for in person training, maybe you don’t wanna send your folks off to the factory for $5,000 a pop and have them gone for a week, get in touch with me, and you can see all these details about what I’m doing over at the automationschool.com forward slash live. That is where I have not only information about my in person training, I have pictures of the training room, I got pictures of the building. I also have all the local hotels. Within three miles, we have all of the big hotels as well as all of the kind of fun stuff you can do in the Berkshires when you come out here, like visit the Norman Rockwell Museum, climb Mount Greylock, and there’s so many other things to do as well out here.

And a lot of historical places too, like Susan b Anthony’s home or Herman Melville’s home and so on. So with that, I just wanted to tell you about my in person training that I’m offering here in my office. And now let’s jump right back into this week’s show.

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): And I’m like, but you gotta, like, you gotta go find that out. Right? You gotta ingrain yourself in a community that knows more than you do and admit you’re not the smartest person in the room. Right? And and learn from the group.

Right? Learn from the greater good that is really trying to help make make the world a better place. I know it’s a a tagline, but, essentially, that’s true. Right? Like, you’re trying to get the automation community more knowledge, more information, and that’s what ISA is trying to do.

And I think it’s nice to know that you don’t have to do it alone in the sense of whether you’re starting out in automation and you have no clue what you just signed up for, or you’re in it. You’re now charged with making sure the OT system’s safe is knowing that there’s conferences out there that specialize in OT cybersecurity as well as, like, standards that tell you how to make sure that you’re protecting your OT cyber, you know, security assets and all that stuff, but also training courses. So I think Scott mentioned this last year, but we did the same thing this year where we hosted two training courses with this conference that you could sign up for. One of them even sold out, and that was using the IEC ISA six two four four three standard, like how to use it to secure your control systems. Literally a two day course sold out.

Full house packed room. Marco Aiola? I can’t ever say his last name. Sorry, Marco, if you’re listening. He is great if you’ve never met him, but he has tons of knowledge.

He he trained that or taught that course this during this conference in Belgium. So if you’re not sure where to start and you’re just like, I just need to, like, wrap my head around what this standard is, maybe reading, you know, a standard is not what you love to do, maybe you want someone to teach you what’s in there and how to use it, that’s the place to start, as well as, Steve Mustard taught, assessing the cybersecurity of new and existing systems. So industrial con industrial automation control systems. So Steve Mustard’s also been on an episode. He taught a a class as well at Brussels.

And so I just wanted to encourage everyone that is listening, is you don’t have to be an automation professional alone. You don’t have to do figure out how to just make sure you’re safe and secure alone. Get involved in communities like this podcast, like ISA. Find those people that have walked it, have learned from mistakes, have done things because there’s resources out there that you can find and get involved in, whether that’s discussion boards, conferences, standards, training, all of the above, podcasts. I just I think that’s where I truly people are like, why are you involved in ICA?

I’m like, why wouldn’t I be? Like, it’s like you just it’s so much knowledge. It’s so take it take it with what I I say as I just ask people to get involved. That that’s what I’m saying in in any automation community.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And if you’re an engineering manager out there, consider, you know, be in the first take the first step. Get yourself involved with your local chapter. Right? And maybe it is an ISA.

Right? If you don’t have an ISA local, there’s probably another another similar organization, and get involved. And if you find it valuable, right, that whatever it is, an hour or a week, an hour a month, then, you know, encourage the people who work for you to also get involved. It’s it’s yes. Some of them may find may network a little bit and find a new job, but then again, you may find people to fill positions you’re open.

So but it did just, you know, this this this industrial automation, industry is so tiny. Right? To tip to, like, health and fitness, right, or or all those type of things that that, you know, we’re we’re at a disadvantage as far as, you know, just be able to have, you know, everybody on the corner. Had there’s a gym on every corner or there’s Yes. You know, a a maker shop on every corner.

Well, with industrial automation, you know, a lot of times, we can’t visit each other’s facilities just because of intellectual property. So so consider that, and there’s some great places online, plcs.net, misterplc.com, and other forms online. We get the ISA and other organizations. So, yeah, I definitely, confirm that too. We wanna we wanna encourage people to get involved.

And I know a lot of folks are like me. You got family, you got kids, grandkids. You’re just busy all the time. But if you’re able to, and and I live in the boonies, but if you’re able to, get involved. So I I definitely encourage that.

Yeah.

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): Exactly. And I have I have two boys on my own, two and six. And the the joke around ISA is that they’re the youngest members because they are going to be I literally have bought merch with ISA on it for them because it’s just one of those things that the it it it does take a village to be part of something like this and and try to really make a difference. So I do wanna go back a step. You mentioned this too, and I think it’s so valuable.

I joined ISA because my manager found the value and said, you should join ISA because it will skyrocket your career. You’ll learn from other professionals. You’ll network. You’ll get up to speed faster in this type of industry with if you didn’t. Right?

And I can tell you as as working for the same company now for thirteen years, that that hasn’t been a true statement. Is is it truly enabled me to, one, get involved in this industry, grow from an I and c engineer, you know, putting in big EPC projects, engineer procurement construction projects, you know, midstream refineries to now managing automation projects for my clients. And it I I I truly credit getting involved in the automation community because, again, it’s a small world. I’ve literally met people across The United States that are like, I feel like I’ve gotten an I like, an email from you. Like, are you part of ISA?

Like, it’s truly, like, you don’t realize how that, like, comes full circle. You’re like, yes, I am. And, like, what how do you and how are you involved? So I’ll just say, I totally agree. And I do want to say, if you go to events, is you might start you might be the first to hear something that’s in the works or that’s starting.

So I did wanna mention in here, because I think it’s it’s a really cool, initiative that’s rolling out, is our group ISA Secure, which, again, focuses on six two four four three, is they’re rolling out the industrial automation control system security assurance program this fall. So there was a session on it at the conference to announce it, and there’s a whole, flyer on it. You can find it at isasecure.org. What it’s doing is it’s kinda coming full circle. Right?

Is ISA developed a standard. They then made training for the standard. They then, you know, essentially said, okay. What else can we do? Okay.

Let’s do ISA secure and really, like, certify devices and and things that that fall as ISA secure. They’re doing what they should be doing. And now it’s saying, now let’s offer a site assessment program to where we will validate or essentially not prove, but essentially, they’re gonna say, yes. You are following what you can do for six 2443. And so it’s gonna roll out this fall, so more details to come.

Like I said, there’s a two page flyer on it. It goes through different stakeholder benefits depending on, are you an asset owner? Are you an insurance underwriter? Are you, you know, an end you you know, I said end user, but you know what I mean. It essentially is it kinda lays out that they’re going to come in and say, yes.

You are being compliant with 62443 as the person that, you know, wrote 62443 is essentially kind of validating that through this new, it’s called ACSSA. We love acronyms in ISA, and control systems love acronyms. So we had to fit the the part there. So all to say, I think it’s good to join events because they’re the first ones to know. I learned that at the conference.

So it’s essentially it’s like you’re always finding out what’s coming ahead that you can be on the lookout for, what can help you instead of going down a rabbit hole that you didn’t even realize this was coming into play. So

Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Was there anything else you wanted to share with us about the event? I know we covered a lot of ground already.

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): Yeah.

Shawn Tierney (Host): But were there other things that you wanted to talk about?

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): The only thing I wanted to say was, I know I mentioned this before, but I would say get involved at a conference that maybe is overseas if you ever get the opportunity. Next year, it’s going to be in Prague, Czech Republic, also in the month of June. You’ll find all the details coming out, on our website, o t c s, for OT cybersecurity, summit, .isa.org. And I I want to just reiterate that you really do build that diverse connections. You build confidence if you’re doing it the right way.

You get the knowledge if you essentially, you know, needed more knowledge on what to do to secure your OT assets. So I I just think going to a conference like this really builds that community, that network, and that confidence. And so I encourage you all to join, but, essentially, I think you should look at our pictures on our website. It makes it look like you missed out. I will say it was a lot of fun.

I was so glad to join. But I do thank you, Shawn, for letting me be here today.

Shawn Tierney (Host): No. And it’s great to hear what, ISA is doing. You guys do so much. And I know this, this security summit, OT security summit, or cyber summit is a big part and and and touches on a very important aspect of what, the audience the people in the audience do on a regular basis. And, we love getting updates from you guys.

Maybe we can get you back in a few months to talk about, some maybe something else you guys are working on. But, in any case, we

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): should that.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. I really appreciate you coming on today and, bringing us up to speed on the the summit.

Ashley Weckwerth (ISA): Well, thank you, Shawn. I really appreciate you and your community.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode, and I wanna thank Ashley for coming on the show and talking OT cybersecurity with us. It sounds like a great opportunity to go to this, event if you especially if your company has, offices in Europe. It’s not something that I think I could do as a self employed person here in The US, but, definitely, any of you folks out there who are, you know, working with your European counterparts, maybe going to SPS over there, this may be a trip you may wanna consider. And, of course, please check out the ISA. They’re a great organization, and we love having them on the show.

I also wanna thank our sponsor, the automationschool.com. If you know anybody looking for PLC, HMI, or SCADA training, whether it be in person right here in this office or it’d be online, please, contact me directly at theautomationschool.com. You’ll see all my contact links up at the top of the site. And with that, I wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace.

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week Shawn Tierney hosts Michael Warren from Wieland Electric in studio to demonstrate the SAMOS PRO Safety Controller in episode 15 of The Automation Show Season 2:#Automation #IndustrialAutomation #InsightsInAutomation

Watch The Automation Show: Samos Pro Safety Controller

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Show Notes:Thanks to Michael for coming out to our office, and to Wieland for sponsoring this episode! For more information about the SAMOS Pro Safety Controller, see the below links:* Wieland Electric Safety Products * Free Download of Samos Plan6 * SAMOS PRO SAFETY CONTROLLER * Safety Training * Wieland Electric North America Contact info

Note: The video edition was originally released on 07-22-25, and re-released with Audio Podcast Edition on 08-21-25.

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host): Everybody, welcome back to the show. Sean Tierney here from Insights and Automation, and we have a special show for you today. I have Michael here from Wheelan, and we’re gonna talk safety PLCs and all kinds of great stuff. But before we jump into that, you know, I haven’t had Wheeling on the show before. So, Michael, I’m hoping you can give us a well, not only introduce yourself.

I got to meet him this morning before we started recording. But, if you could introduce yourself and then maybe tell us a little bit about your company, and then we can jump into why we’re here to talk about these good looking products. So let me turn it over to you.

Michael Warren (Wieland): Okay. Great. Well, thank you, Sean. Thank you for having me. I appreciate that.

And, yeah, my name is Mike Warren. I’m a business development manager for, Whelan Electric, North America. I’ve been, with Whelan a couple years now, but, I got over twenty years of experience in the industry. I have a couple of TUV certifications under my belt. I have a TUV functional safety engineer and also TUV certified functional safety expert.

In addition to that, I do consulting for safety applications. I teach safety classes. I also teach the CFSE class. And, I do things like, review machine safeguarding, standards, CE marking, risk assessments, remediations, lockout tagout, basically everything that, is involved in in the safety world. These are some of the classes that I cover.

So, what we’re doing today, Sean, is to talk about, our product. Okay? The the Samuels Pro Compact. And the Samuels Pro Compact is a safety PLC. It’s known, by various names, safety controller, brick PLC, whatnot.

But it is a compact, as the name implies, safety controller. And in a safety chain, it really is, the keystone to a safety, system. There’s always, an input device. Okay. We follow the ILO system.

Okay. I for input devices. L for logic, in this case, the Samuels Pro Compact. And an output devices could be contactors, which I have here, in the demo itself. Okay.

It could be a, OSSD, inputs from a VFD or robots. Okay? So those qualify as output devices. But the input device is for detection. The large device makes a decision, and the output device executes.

And the primary purpose of an output device is to remove energy in an emergency or a, an intrusion, situation. So let’s take a look at the product itself. Okay? The Samuels Pro Compact, again, is occupying this spot right here, in the demo itself. It’s 45 millimeters.

Okay? Very compact. The base system is set up with 20 inputs. Okay? 20 devices.

Okay. 20 inputs, it would be, 10 safety devices. Safety device is always redundant. There’s two points per safety device. So that device is already set up for 10.

There’s four safety outputs on it. And the version that I have here in the demo is actually an upgraded version including motion. So not only will it, set up and accept the inputs from some of these safety devices that I have here, for example, like light curtains, I have door switches, I have an e stop, I also have an analog position switch right there that’ll detect the input. Other than those devices, I also have a safety encoder attached to one of the axes, in the demo to do motion detection. Not only are we detecting people, but we’re also detecting shaft movements, okay, with the encoder itself.

Shawn Tierney (Host): And that’s optional. So there’s two models, one with motion and one without.

Michael Warren (Wieland): That’s absolutely right. Alright. And I wanna point out that the software is free. It can be downloaded easily. It can throw it on your laptop.

And the nice thing about it, and we’ll get to the software. We’re gonna show a little bit about it, that you can use the software without any hardware attached to it yet. Okay? You could literally can build your safety system in the virtual sense, test it out, check to see if it’s, working properly. And, again, when we dive into the software, you’ll see a little bit, the nice, additional features you get.

Things like a schematic and a report, and also show you the modules that are actually part of the system itself. Okay? Now, we talked about, the communications on this too. Okay? We have three onboard communication, protocols.

Okay? Onboard, we can, work with PROFINET, Ethernet IP, and Modbus TCP.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Oh, nice.

Michael Warren (Wieland): There are additional gateways that you can get to add additional, cons. Okay? That includes CAN open, PROFIBUS, and EtherCAT. So, again, we have a nice way of communicating with other protocols, and let’s face it, other manufacturers. And in the safety world, the manufacturer’s controllers, the actual, automation controllers are not to dictate to the safety system when to remove energy or not.

It’s the other way around. The safety always has a a precedence and a priority over the controls. Its purpose with these communication gateways is to inform the control systems of what’s going on in the safety.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. I mean, most of the time, your your master PLC is gonna already have an HMI or SCADA system. Correct. So they’re gonna wanna display that information. So if you have those especially the the three you have built in, I’ll be able to probably the biggest three Yep.

You know, according to all the surveys and industry reports and whatnot. Having those built in means I mean, you cover most PLCs standard PLCs. You’re gonna be able to give the data to them. They’re gonna be able to know in their program. They’re They’re gonna be able to let their operators know using the existing equipment.

So very cool.

Michael Warren (Wieland): Yep. And in this world, we, fully understand that, it’s a it’s a mix and match. Okay? Okay. Rare do we find customers that are using a single brand for everything.

You and it’s necessary that, you know, one brand of light curtains works with the controller and another brand of door switch and whatnot. They’re all kinda compatible. And the communications, though, is very, very important, because, again, they’re not, operating, independently and in a silo.

Shawn Tierney (Host): So if I understand that correctly, so we’re seeing your products, Ian. I really don’t know much about your company and what products they make, but I can see you make a lot of products here. So you’re saying that you don’t just work with the Whelan products, you work with other people’s safety products as well. Absolutely. Third party light curtain or third party contactor or safety contactor or third parties, safety push button.

Michael Warren (Wieland): Absolutely. Okay. Whelan, itself is a, it’s a German company. Okay? Okay?

They’re famous for their terminal blocks. Okay? So really we put them on the map, you know, many, many years ago. But, there’s two pillars for the company right now. One is safety products, and the other is distributed power.

And, again, this is an important product for it. This is really our keystone and our leading product, as a logic device in a safety system. So a lot of time and energy and development has been put into this, to make it, a world class and, leading with all the features, like you said, including communications.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I think too the fact that the audience can go out there and grab a copy of the software and actually simulate their system, that gives them a you know, because maybe they maybe they’re like me. Maybe they haven’t used your system before. So they can actually build a system, put it together, test it in the simulator without spending a dime. They’ll be like and, hey. They go to the boss and say, hey.

I got a proof of concept here. Let’s let’s call Mike and say, we can’t come to call out and and show us more.

Michael Warren (Wieland): Yep. No. No. As a please call. By the way, I appreciate that.

No. Like I say, it is a, a wonderful benefit. It helps people try to determine because, let’s face it. Not everybody knows and understands safety unless you do this, day in and day out. Yeah.

You’re not up with the latest standards. You don’t understand simple things like an e stop here requires a, a contrasting yellow background to it. Something as simple as that. And, again, the, the the software itself is smart enough where you put these devices together, and if you configure it wrong, it bounces you out. And the reason that it bounces you out or says that you can’t, you’re not permitted to do that particular because it’s always traceable back to standards.

Okay? So the standards are embedded in the configuration, and the algorithms that allow you to drag and drop and put particular devices together are based on, on the standards themselves. Okay. So the controller itself, in a safety system, is of the highest rating. Okay?

In the PL system, it’s PLE. Okay? That’s, that’s that is the highest, that you can, arrive to in in the PL system. It’s PLE, SIL three, or CAT four. Okay?

They’re all being used in in today’s industry. People, communicate, about safety either in cats or seals or PLs. But the latest and greatest, in, going forward really is the, the the performance level, PLE. That’s the highest level. But, again, it follows basic, safety fundamentals that if you attach, devices, in a chain, a safety chain, and you have PLE, PLE, PLE, and you have one device, that’s PLD or PLC, for example, a little lower than the whole system always reverts down to the lowest in the chain.

It’s the weakest link basically. The weakest link. Yeah. Okay. So, again, you’re starting out with a a PLE safety controller, and now the weakest link is not the controller.

It tends to be something else. Good. Okay? I mentioned also that, the motion control. Okay?

And it has a a safe motion, embedded in the software, and we’re gonna take a peek at these a little bit. Six different TUV function blocks. Okay? Certified function blocks. Okay?

They are, a safe standstill motion. Okay? Or or basically a zero RPM, determination. Okay? And all of these function blocks in the motion world are designed to detect shaft motion, shaft speed, shaft position, okay, and shaft direction.

All the rest of the safety devices we have on here are for human detection. Okay? Hands, like light curtains, hands going in, door switches, gates opening, things like that. To your point, Sean, that, yeah, you say, you know, we have compatibility with lots of other brands and lots of other products. We don’t have all the safety products that are available here in front of us.

For example, safety mats. Okay? Okay. Safety mats can be fed into this. Okay?

It’s just another input device. Mhmm. Okay? Safety scanners can be fed into this. Okay?

The form factor of a safety scanner is a little different than light curtains. Okay? But it’s basic same principle. Okay? Rope pulley stops.

Okay? Two hand controls. All of these different devices are available in the library. Okay? And, again, we’re gonna show the software here in a little bit, and you can configure it, as you please with whatever brand, you’d like to use.

And, again, some people are are stuck on certain technologies. For example, safety mats are kinda older technology. Mhmm. But they’re still viable and a viable solution in a lot of applications, and we see them all the time. So, obviously, the safety controller, will take those, as a, a viable input.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. A lot of times I’ve seen that the choice there is really I mean, I think most people wanna do the light curtains, but I think the mats, the rope pulls, the the scanners, I mean, they all address applications where the light curtain just doesn’t isn’t the best fit. So it really comes back, and you tell me if I’m wrong, but it seems the the choice there, a lot of times, comes back to, not always. I mean, there’s preferences. They want they all work.

Right? Yep. But the scanners usually being the most expensive in my experience. But, yeah, a lot of

Michael Warren (Wieland): it there’s there’s some applications you just have to have the rope pull. You something else won’t work. Yep. No. You’re absolutely right.

The application typically drives the choice of devices. And, one of the things that, I go through when I do safety, machine safeguarding classes is this should always be be based on risk assessments. Yeah. Really looking at it, holistically, the whole system, the usage, the severity of the potential injuries, the frequency, the chances of these injuries type of happen. And, again, we put the best recommendations going forward, based on when we see applications.

But it is by application by application. Rarely do we see, two that are exactly the same.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And the risk assessment, I mean, if you’re an expert, you have the training he has, you you maybe you can do your own. But a a lot of us don’t have that training. And so to pick the right products, you gotta know what the risks are. And you don’t wanna spend thousands and thousands of dollars on something and then find out, oh, like, the biggest risk you didn’t address because it just didn’t come to mind.

So the risk assessment by an expert is so huge in these type of applications. Again, some of the people, maybe they went to your training, maybe they got certified, and they can do their own. But, that’s usually a big part of a part of a project.

Michael Warren (Wieland): It is. It is. And, it’s important, again, to have at least, you know, some background. Okay? It isn’t really an arbitrary, choice of devices.

It’s usually a thoughtful process thinking of the input devices and the risks to people and, considering the the, the collaboration of people and machinery together. This is where we have to try to protect, humans near the equipment.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Absolutely. And it’s gone on the days from a 100 years ago where, you can take those risks. I know a lot of people still do, but, you know, every time somebody gets hurt and there’s a new light current going up or a new god going on something, the go on are the days where a sign says, don’t touch or you may die. That’s not sufficient these days.

And a lot of that’s driven by the insurance companies because they don’t wanna have to pay out for people getting all these injuries. Right? And I think we all know people who are missing hands and thumbs and and and body parts because they got they got stuck in a machine. So, I think this is a good trend. And these products, I I I think when you guys see the software, they’re super easy to use as well, so it makes a lot of sense.

Michael Warren (Wieland): Yep. And let’s not forget, you mentioned insurance companies, but let’s not forget government oversight. Okay? OTA Yeah. True.

Is, here in The United States is, really the watchdog for safety. And, not only are there, costs involved with machine downtime and injuries and insurance payouts, but let’s not forget, fines, levied by, OSHA. Okay? And, once you, unfortunately, once you get into, OSHA’s radar, they keep they can’t they tend to keep an eye on you. And, you don’t again, it’s it’s this kind of scrutiny you really don’t want.

Poor publicity, downtime, and, again, that’s reputation. I mean, at some point, it boils down to company reputation. Okay? But, speaking of software, why don’t we take a peek at the software here, and let me show you a couple of details about it. Okay?

This is the basic work screen right here. I have the software, called up. Again, it was a free download. I downloaded it online. And, again, I wanna create a basic system.

Okay? I’m not gonna replicate this whole system here. There’s a lot of devices here and there could be conditions where I have multiple safety zones, which is something that you could put in the software. But I’m just gonna do a very basic configuration. I I call it the five minutes to safety setup.

And what’s the simplest safety device to wire up and set up here? It’s the lonely estop. Okay? What we’re going to do is we’re gonna take an estop, put it into our, our our workspace here, and wire it up, run it, make sure it operates properly. I have the proper, wiring, I have proper configuration, and then we’ll see how the software guides us to, that completion.

Okay? So, Sean, we’re gonna grab a device here. Okay? I’m gonna go ahead and grab an e stop. And you’ll notice here, I have a choice either a single channel or a dual channel.

We always wanna pick dual channel. Safety is always redundant to contacts per. Okay? So I grab that. Okay?

Now as part of a safety system, once I, initiate an emergency stop, I have to be able to reset it. Okay? That’s an important part of the actuation of the, of the estop. So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna grab a reset button. Okay?

Right out of the library. Now pop it right over here. Now the next thing I wanna do is I have to have the actual contact, the initial initiation of a switch itself. Okay? So I’m going to come over here to the switch, and I’m going to grab a dual channel switch.

Just drag it over here. Okay? So I have my emergency stop. I have my reset, and then I have the actual switch, the initiation switch of the system. And what’s missing?

My output device. Right? So I’m gonna come over here, and I’m gonna just grab some contactors. Okay? Quite similar to what I have in the demo itself.

And again, dual channel. I’m gonna grab that guy right there. Okay? So input device, logic device is the Samuels, controller here, and also the software called Samuels plan is right in front of us. Now we connect.

I’m connecting here to there. I connect here to here, and then I connect the output to the contactors. Okay? Boom. I’m all set up.

That’s it. Now why don’t we run and initiate, a safety function here? Let’s test it out. That’s how you’re gonna really know now. Right?

I turn the simulation on. The background goes green. So I’m in a simulated mode. I’m in a virtual system right now. And as you can see, I have no hardware set up.

I’m just using the software and the tools in the software itself. Okay? I’m gonna start the safety. Okay? Start the simulation.

You can see the counter go up. This is the the time, okay, that I’m run actually running the, the simulation, and I have to turn things on. Right? I have to initiate them. Okay?

I turn that on. You’ll notice here I have this flashing display, display reset request. I turn that one on, and then I actually do a reset. It’s as though I just set up an estop, and I say, okay. Let’s initiate it.

Let’s get it started. Okay? Now I want you to notice the lines. Right? From my estop to the reset to the contactors are all green.

That means I’m up and live, and I have a living, breathing safety system right now. So how do I know if it’s working properly? Well, let’s just trip the estop. It would be as simple as hitting the mushroom here and depressing it down. Since we’re virtual here, I’m gonna hit the estop right here.

My green lines disappear. Okay? I’ve effectively executed a safety function. I, pushed the estop here, and I lost my connection to my contactor. I now have removed energy from that contactor.

Okay? But and now if I wanna go through a a reset, sequence, go back on, you’ll see the flashing light. I turn that on, turn that on, and now I have my system back up again. Okay? Very easy.

And, again, I I tell people that, this isn’t really a a programming system. This is really a configuration, and you’re just dragging and dropping. Now let’s take a look at some of the other tools that we have here. I’m just gonna pause the simulation for a second here. Okay.

Once I actually do this and I know I have a living, breathing, simulation system. Okay? I shut off the simulation for a second and let’s see what the software has shown us or what done for us. Okay? Number one, the module.

It actually shows us the module that it’s selected to accomplish the function that we wanted to do. Okay? This particular model, okay, the non motion one, you you mentioned that before. This is a non motion because all we’re doing is an e stop detection here. And if you take a look, you’ll see some very interesting points.

Okay? Notice you’re gonna see an e stop symbol right here on I one and I two. It automatically selected, I one and I two to do that connection. The switch, the reset switch itself, I three and I four, and on the output side, I have q 1 and q two. They’re my contactors.

It actually shows up right on here. Okay? And, as you can see on the demo itself, we have flash we have lights that are on. We have a communication light on the Ethernet IP port that’s flashing. These would be, your indicators on here telling you the condition whether you have good communications, you have good connections, or in in the event that you have a safety trip.

Okay? Some of these indicators will go red. And that’s how your your first visual when you approach a, controller like this and you see that you have a safety trip, you would have the red indication on here. Okay? So that’s the module that that came up automatically in the software.

Next is the report. Okay? It’s gonna generate a report on our configuration. Okay? And it’s nice because there’s a lot in the report itself.

If we scroll down, we end up with a CRC control number. This is actually a time date stamp that identifies the unique configuration of the, project that we just created here based on the time date, and it’s unique. Okay? And when you go ahead and build a big system and you get a machine commissioned, okay, the CRC number is important to identify the material condition and the safety, the report that is generated, the safety level, and it’ll be identified here in the report itself. Okay?

Okay. List of materials. Okay. We have, not only a bill of materials. Okay.

Scroll down. There’s our controller again. That is in the report. Again, it’s a replication of what we saw in the software. There’s a bill of materials, the actual devices that are part of the safety system here.

Okay. And we scroll down a little bit more. If we ran some diagnostics and more elaborate systems, we can run diagnostics and collect that information and actually have it show up here in the report. Okay? General information, things like CPU cycle time, for example, CPU usage.

Okay? Isn’t identified here. Now we go down a little bit further and this is a really really cool part of the system that I like is actually the wiring diagram. We get calls all the time. Hey, how do you wire this?

They say, you know, what do I connect? And I said, well, you know, it’s a input device, log device, output device. Yeah. But how do you connect it? When you set it up in the software here and you do the drag and drop like you see and run the report, you get an automatic wiring diagram.

That’s all. So you don’t have to, you know, break out a pen and paper and draw up your wiring diagram. It’s already in here. And you can export this and put it into your master, wiring diagram. Okay?

So those are on the inputs. Right? Okay? It’s my test policies. Okay?

It shows my mercy stop and then also my reset switch. And on the output, I show my contactors. Okay? So, again, as you go through the whole report, it shows all the details or anything we configured. Again, we did something very simple.

Just wired up an e stop to, actuate, a safety function, and we had the contactors to actually do something. The logic device makes a decision, and the contactors actually remove the energy. Okay? Now if we had additional things like, IO. Okay?

This does have the ability to, have expanded IO. Again, we mentioned there were 20 IO points, resident, on the, controller itself. But if you needed more than 20, okay, we have additional safety inputs. We have additional safety outputs. We you also can attach through the backplane on the DIN rail itself, non safety IO.

Okay? Things like the lights that are on here. Okay? Those aren’t really safety functions, but we do need IO points to actually run those.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Is that what the gray module is?

Michael Warren (Wieland): That’s exactly what that is. Safety. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Good call. And again, it’s, there’s not a really a standard that says that that they shall be yellow, but it’s kind of an industry convention. Yeah. Okay? There’s a difference between a standard convention and, yellow kinda calls out as a safety device and non yellow, for example, would be a, non safety, and that is a non safety function.

So again, we have, additional, IO not only for, the safety but non safety. And, again, people tend to think that, the safety itself, can’t do a standard, operations and standard logic. But, I might point out here in the function blocks themselves. Okay? We actually have capabilities like that.

Okay? In the software itself, okay, you take a peek here. These are just standard logic symbols. Right? Okay.

I have a not, and, or. I mean, I can do a lot of features on here and really create elaborate safety systems. Mhmm. And again, a safety controller can do some non safety functions. It’s you just can’t go the other way around.

A a non safety controller cannot be, utilized, for safety. Okay? But that’s all built into the software right there. And again, if we had additional if we wanted EtherCAT, for example. Okay?

EtherCAT was not resident on here. We would add a separate, comm gateway, to that system right there, and it would show up in our report here. Additional gateways, extension modules, and any sort of logic that we had associated with the system itself. But, again, this report just gets printed up automatically. It shows, basically what we saw in the software that’s resident in here too.

If you have to go back and make modifications, you’re obviously going to change the CRC number because every time you change configuration, you get a new configuration code. But, you do get a chance to basically see, and it’s a copy of, whatever that you had configured there in the report. So you have the report, you have the modules, and then you have your workspace. And, again, all of this was done virtually. All we had was, the free software downloaded, and we ran it, to run, the system for us.

Shawn Tierney (Host): I should’ve asked you before you close the report. Do you get a bill of materials, like, the actual part numbers you need to order?

Michael Warren (Wieland): Yes. Yes. Absolutely. I’m glad you asked that. Okay.

Run the report. Open it up again. And our bill of material,

Shawn Tierney (Host): let’s It’s usually a pretty big one too because, you know, you you’re not gonna be an expert like they are on their products or use any data tool to help you select which products you need, especially since you just went through and configured it all. And so there it is. There’s your bill of material.

Michael Warren (Wieland): That’s the bill of material there. Okay? We have the controller itself. The card is, an SD card. Okay.

Good point. We should mention this now. Yep. The, the SD card itself, okay, is, specially configured to work with the, this it’s not entirely big. It’s only a 512, megabyte, but it is required and this is where all of the, safety programs are actually resident.

The nice thing about that is if you’ve had if you have multiple safety controllers in your facility and you have your recipes, resident on the card here, you literally can take this out and pollinate, literally go to each controller, install it, and then load up and have have safety programs. So you go from one controller to the other to the other, but the recipes are resident on the card itself.

Shawn Tierney (Host): So what how about duplicating the program? If I if I’m an OEM and I have a bunch of machines. Right? And I just wanna duplicate the program. Can I use the card to do that as well from machine to machine to machine?

Michael Warren (Wieland): Absolutely. You could do it card to card or if you did, you know, use your laptop. Okay? And you have the program on there.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Okay. You save right to the card? You save it to the card. Yep. Okay.

Without having the controller here, you can save right to the card.

Michael Warren (Wieland): Save right to the card.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Oh, that’s a nice feature. Yep. Some people can’t do that. Yep. I won’t mention any names.

Michael Warren (Wieland): So yeah. Like I say, the good news is, it does save to the card. The bad news is you have to have the card, as part of it.

Shawn Tierney (Host): It needs to be the company. It needs to be a wheeling card that’s matched for that device. Exactly. The special call it out.

Michael Warren (Wieland): Yep. To close it out. And then again, the the rest of, the the bill materials is we have the e stop, the dual channel closer. That’s that’s just the software’s name for the reset switch and a set of contactors inside. But that is, to answer your question, that is the, the bill material there.

Did you have any questions? Well, you know, he gave me some

Shawn Tierney (Host): of the most popular good. I have not well, I purposely as you guys know, I purposely don’t look at the companies the first time I see them because I wanna try to have a natural reaction like you will the first time you’re watching this episode. Yeah. So, in any case, Mike was kind enough to give me some of the questions that come in. So how about number one?

Alright. So I’m gonna read number one here. What makes the Samos I’m sorry. What makes the Samos Pro Compact ideal for space constraint applications?

Michael Warren (Wieland): That’s a great question. And, we touched upon this and it has to do with the actual size of it. Okay? As I mentioned, it only occupies, 45 millimeters, on a DIN rail. Okay?

Great. And, itself is set up with 20 input points, meaning it’s 10 safety devices. And let’s say I had discrete relays. Discrete relays typically take up 22 and a half millimeters a piece on the DIN rail space. 22 and a half millimeters times 10 devices, okay, would be occupy the whole DIN rail here.

Okay? For 10 devices using discrete relays. The beauty and the benefit of having a say a compact like this, it only occupies 45 millimeters. Okay? So you have all this additional space for either expansion modules or other products.

For example, the controls themselves. Yeah. K. No one says you have to run the controls, okay, or for safety in a separate cabin. They oftentimes share the same space in in the cabin.

Cabinet space is valuable. Very real estate is very valuable. So again, it only occupies 45 millimeters. It saves an awful lot of space, holds a lot of devices just by itself. So, there’s an advantage right there.

It makes a quick and easy configuration.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Now you talked about something. I always thought this was a little odd. So you have an existing PLC, and then the the word comes in that whatever equipment you’re adding to the line or maybe it’s been reconfigured and you need to add a safety PLC. A lot of times, companies will not they’re like, we’re not gonna mess with the part that works. We’re gonna add in a separate safety PLC.

And I think that’s unintuitive for people who you know, if you’re designing a brand new system, you’re gonna wanna design and get to buy a POC that’s a standard POC and a safety POC all in one. But I don’t think that’s that’s the opera. Do can you just share some of your thoughts on applications that you’ve seen over the years where they had an existing control system, but they needed to add a safety POC? And and that’s why they chose your product because it had to be totally separate from the existing system.

Michael Warren (Wieland): Exactly. Exactly. You know, it’s it’s often nice to work on projects where you’re in the design, the front end. Okay? And you can have it all integrated and it all works quite nice.

Yeah. Whatever you want. But, the the reality is that, you know, we’re called upon to add safety to a lot of older legacy systems. And, the concept that we always adhere to is really it’s a safety layer. Okay?

And I really try in my classes, I try to separate control circuits from safety circuits. I call the control circuit the black circuits, and I call the safety circuits the red circuits. And the red circuits always have priority. Okay? And they have overreach, let’s say, of the black circuits to remove energy in an emergency situation.

I mean, that’s what we’re that’s what we’re here to do. Right? We’re here the logic device is here to make a decision on an input. It could be either a detection of a hand or door opening or whatnot, or in the case of motion, an encoder signal. Okay?

Identifying, over speed, going the wrong direction, has not reached a zero RPM state. Okay? That’s a a dangerous situation and it won’t open a door. It won’t unlock something until it achieves that state. So, to your question, we do a lot of applications where we have to put safety on as an afterthought.

Yeah. Okay? And we work again with the controls, but we never integrate the safety directly. It always has a priority over it. And the idea is that the safety system will remove energy Yeah.

From, whatever source. And when I say energy, it doesn’t have to be just electricity. Right? There could be kinetic energy. Mhmm.

Okay? There could be Okay? There could be hydraulic energy. Okay? Their fluid power safety is just as important as electrical power safety.

Okay? Quite honestly. Yeah. So those have a priority. It removes that energy, from the source, and then it turns around and it forms the control circuits.

Okay? And this again, it’s it’s a little more painful and a little more complicated sometimes to add it onto a legacy equipment, but, it does get added, all the time.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And, you know, I know a lot of the vendors these days are only supporting the last, maybe, the six or seven years of software. If you have a multimillion dollar system that’s full of racks and racks of standard controls, you know, upgrading that, just even upgrading the CPU to get a safety CPU could be that could be more than than this entire project. Yeah. And I think that’s what I’ve seen is, you know, they don’t wanna update the software.

They don’t wanna have to buy new laptops. They don’t wanna have to stock new spares. That control system is standalone and works great. And so they’ll whether they go with the same company or a different company or a wheel in, they they’ll add in the safety, the PLC as as a secondary PLC that controls the safety that’s integrated with the safety because that big expensive system, they can’t touch it, and they can’t afford to upgrade it. Just as a standalone, trying to upgrade that would be would be, really overkill.

So and that’s what I’ve seen. And you guys tell let us know in the comments what you’ve seen. Now am I way off? You know, let let us know in the comments, and I’d love to hear what your thoughts are. But let me pitch it back to you, Mike, and, after that interruption.

Sorry. No problem. Any other questions by chance? Hey. I have another, often asked question.

How does Samos Pro Compact reduce programming and commissioning time? Ah.

Michael Warren (Wieland): How does it do that? Well, let’s start off with everybody’s favorite word. It’s free. The software is free. Okay?

Truly. Easy to download and, as we just, showed us, easy to configure. And, quite honestly, the complaints for a a lot of system, setups and a lot of software packages is the complexity of using it. And, slowly but surely, software is evolving to the point where it’s very graphical and it’s all drag and drop. Okay?

Yeah. And as you saw on the library, all the ingredients are there. Okay? And even if you select the wrong thing and you try to you drag and drop, you know, the output of one thing into the input of another thing, and if it bounces and it won’t accept it, you know you’re violating or you’re not setting it up properly. So slowly but surely, it’ll explain to you.

And what you can do in the software too, if you ever have any questions, I should have mentioned this when we were looking at the software, was you can right click on any of the modules themselves, and it automatically goes to a help screen and you get all the details on that device. And if there are variables, if there are variables available to change the features on that. For example, like a a an or device. Okay? Or an and gate.

Okay? You can pull it up, drag it into the screen and say, well, it’ll default to, to two. And it said, well, I need, I need three. I have three. Okay?

I need this and this and this. Okay? You right click and you have a variable and a drop down and you can add another input to that.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Oh, that’s cool. Okay. I love how you’ve combined the configurator with the programmer. Yeah. So now it’s all in one.

So you get your bill of materials. You also get to test the program. You get the simulator built in. Very cool.

Michael Warren (Wieland): That’s right. And to, cut down on commissioning time, again, a lot of this work can be done prior to actually receiving. So you have a concept, a safety concept. You do a risk assessment. You say, okay.

I need the following input devices. I need this logic device. I’m gonna attach to these output devices. And there’s time for that to come in. Okay?

And you don’t have to wait for those to come in. Okay? You can actually get the software, start putting all those pieces together and setting up the system prior to the, hardware actually arriving. So, your commissioning time, you don’t start your commissioning time when the hardware shows up. You’re literally done before the hardware is done.

It it comes in. That’s awesome. Yep. Yep. Any other questions, Sean?

Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey. I got another one right here. How easy is it to connect Samos Pro Compact to existing control systems? I think we know the answer to this one. Go ahead.

Michael Warren (Wieland): Gateways. And again, what we don’t have resident, on board, the the Samos Pro Compact itself, we have additional, gateways. Okay? CANopen. We have EtherCAT.

That’s quite a popular, gateway protocol these days. We’re able to add just add an additional card to that and have that compatibility. And as you saw on the software, it showed up. Okay? Mhmm.

When you add the cards, the card shows up and that protocol shows up. So it’s ready as a, an EtherCAT module, in an EtherCAT based system.

Shawn Tierney (Host): So You said that it has PROFINET, ETHANIP, and Modbus TCP built in, which I think is so cool. Yes. I’m such a fan of companies that are doing that. But do you have to do something in the software to tell it which one you’re gonna use?

Michael Warren (Wieland): No. You do not. In the software itself, it does especially when you’re using the virtual system, it does a detection, a health detection. Yes. Actually, that’s how it works.

And then, again, you can go in and make a a a slight or small adjustments. You can actually get, addresses, through the software itself. So Oh, nice. It’s it’s not again, it’s you’re not, programming, you’re configuring.

Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s awesome.

Michael Warren (Wieland): It’s it’s a huge time savings, quite honestly.

Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s awesome. You want me to go to number four?

Michael Warren (Wieland): Sure, please.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Let me ask you this. Is it sustainable? I’m sorry. Is it suitable for safety critical applications in demanding environments? Yeah.

We haven’t talked about that yet.

Michael Warren (Wieland): Yes. The the the device itself, typically has, most electrical devices in the industry typically have, an IP 20, rating themselves. Yeah. So IP 20, it doesn’t keep out, a lot of moisture itself. And quite honestly, these are typically, put in, cabinets, themselves to protect them.

Okay? But but, the, the cabinets themselves, can, experience, a lot of temperature variations. Okay? So, these are rated between a minus 25 c to, plus 65 c. Okay?

So, again, they are, designed for, harsh, cabinet temperatures, let’s say. Vibration, there are some, values of, it’s, it’s shock resistance. Okay? I had a customer the other day saying that, he was concerned about, the vibration that the cabinet was going to receive in a punch press. Every time the punch press, there was just this huge vibration.

And we talked about the, the the shock resistance of the, controller itself and, mounting techniques. I mean, in my job as a safety consultant, as I mentioned, I look at things holistically. I talk about things that again, things like a shock mounting. Okay? We have the safety light curtains mounted here.

At the moment, I have some standard, t fittings, okay, on the brackets, your standard ones. But if I was in a shock environment, I would, you know, talk with the customer and I would say, you know what? Based on what I’m seeing here, these obviously will handle a certain amount of shock by themselves. There’s no moving parts. Okay?

So it does withstand a certain amount of shock, but, light curtains are notorious for being going out of alignment. And over a long distance, if one, the the transmitter, is, poorly aligned with the receiver, okay, and there’s some shock, then they’re gonna lose alignment with those vibrations and you’re gonna have nuisance stress. Nuisance tripping it. In that situation, I would tell people, I says, look, we have isolation dampeners. Okay?

And a little rubber, grommets that you can actually put between the hardware and give a little bit of, a shock resistance to the light curtain themselves to help maintain. These are the kind of, little, advice, nuggets that we, deliver when we talk about a system, a holistically system, because we understand. Like you said, you know, some of these environments are pretty harsh and demanding. And the controller, as we mentioned earlier too, is a PLE. So the controller itself will never be, you know, the, the weak link in a safety system.

There are some other devices. For example, in the motion, world, when we use a, a Samus motion and we use, the TUV function blocks for motion themselves. In addition to those is a vibration toolbox in the software itself. Okay? And that helps fine tune and take out nuisance vibrations that you’re trying to detect pulses from an encoder.

You’re not trying to detect, other vibrations. Okay? Now the good news is that you can invoke these things in harsh harsh environments. Okay? You will knock down okay?

According to the standards, you do knock down your PLE to PLD. Okay. But PLD is quite, is still is quite impressive and and robust. And again, the controller tends not to be the weakest link in a safety system. But great question.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. I’m just seeing something else here too. What is the four amps for? Is that each output’s four amps or

Michael Warren (Wieland): No. It’s the high switching power. That way you don’t have to use actuators. Okay? You’re able to have that.

So, again, they they tend to be, kind of a high power on the output side of things, and it reduces the need for additional relays or any any sort of additional devices, for that.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. How about question number five? You ready for that one? Sure thing. Encoder types.

Does it have to be a Wheatland encoder?

Michael Warren (Wieland): I get that all the time. Actually, no. Okay? It’s just looking for a standard HTL incremental encoder, and, it and in in fact, the people are using, non safety encoders too. Okay?

There are safety rated encoders and non safety rated encoders and they can use it. The good news is you can use a non safety encoder with it. The bad news is it does degrade the PL level. Okay? You can get a PL level, e by using, safety rated encoders.

Again, redundant. You can do two tracks. You do four tracks. However you need. And again, I I gave the example about, shaft, shearing and trying to detect whether or not you have a broken shaft.

We mount an encoder on both ends and match and, tune up those two signals together. Because soon as you have a deviation, you know you have a shaft breakage. I think we were pretty successful in showing not only, the fact that it’s it saves a lot of space on the DIN rail for the number of devices it’s able to manage. Okay? It, the input devices, again, can be varied.

Some of them are here, some of them are not here. But, a lot of typical devices, that get applied. And again, it’s not brand specific. Okay? It’s quite agnostic.

Okay? Most of the safety devices in the industry work with our controller. As I mentioned, the the Wieland Safety Controller is our own product. Okay? So it’s our own design hardware and both software.

So when we have upgrades and development, again, the upgrades are free. Okay? We we send out, and anytime the software gets over, there’s a point release, whatnot. Those are free. Okay?

And, we know a lot of people in the industry, charge, for software. There’s licensing fees and whatnot, and, that never happens, with, the wheel and controller products.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, could you wake up the HMI? It it looked like the screen was very well designed. Would you mind tapping the HMI? Yeah.

So the HMI is good. So let’s talk a little bit about, like, aside from this, what are the products do you make? I mean, you make a safety POC. It looks like you also make an HMI.

Michael Warren (Wieland): Yes. Yes. I’m glad you asked that. By the way, some of the, non safety type products, are actually on here. As you mentioned, the HMI itself.

Okay? It’s a touchscreen, and, we have various sizes on it. And what you’re seeing here on this demo is a representation of a CNC machine. Okay. K?

It gives a little bit of a story behind the devices that go into this. So for example, I turn it on. I’m running it. Okay. Okay.

You hear my CNC running? Yeah. Oh, yeah. There we go. Very robust CNC.

Now I go to open one of the doors. Okay? Okay. Not only will it stop the motion, but it’ll also show me on the HMI which particular door I opened up. Okay.

Did you see that? Yeah. Yeah. That moved. Okay.

And back with that.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You see HMI updating as well?

Michael Warren (Wieland): That’s right. So the up, the HMI updates itself and again, it continues to tell the situation. And that’s what’s nice about sending the output of this, over this, Ethernet, port here, to the HMI itself that when you have a trip. Okay? Look, I have several safety devices here.

I have light curtains. I have three door switches here. I have, a an analog, position switch, a distance switch here. I also have an e stop here. Various devices.

If I have a trip, okay, and if this was a real machine in a facility, I’d have a light stack and I’d have a light flashing. You would come up to the machine saying, which device tripped? I don’t know. You can look at the HMI and either have a graphical display of the machine itself or a table. Okay?

It would show all the devices and it would have an indicator of which one it is. So you’d come to the machine, you say, oh, I see what it was. It was that door switch. I close the door and then I have to reset it. Okay?

A safety system requires a manual reset. You just don’t close the door, the machine starts up automatically like that. Okay? And then I did a reset, and then I also did a machine start. And now And my CNC is back up and running.

Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s excellent. That is excellent. So you’re more than just safety PLCs.

Michael Warren (Wieland): That’s right. No. We do the safety PLCs. We do the light curtains. We do all these door switches.

We have three grades of door switches here. The simplest technology is standard key, door interlock. Okay? Yep. And a standard, fork, key interlock.

The switch goes on the frame. The key goes on the door. Open the door, key comes out and it indicates to the system that there’s an intrusion. Now in addition to that, those are contact switches. Okay?

We have this version here. We have a secondary version that’s a little bit bigger that has a solver in it, and there’s a locking, guard locking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

K? Therefore, if I have an application where I want to go into the cell, but the cell presents a hazard and the hazard has to either cool off or there has to be a a coast down period, say 60 or whatnot, A timer is used inside the controller and once sixty seconds elapse, it sends a signal of the solenoid to release the door lock and allow you to go into the cell. Okay? Keep it. And then there’s other applications where non contact is preferred.

And we have two versions of non contact here. Okay? One is a coated magnetic. Okay? There are several codes available, and so you can’t take another, magnet and fake it out.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Big thing. Right? It has to be coded. Yeah.

Michael Warren (Wieland): Bypassing. Yeah. Bad bad word in the safety world. I get calls. People say, hey.

I have door interlocks. I keep finding the keys in there, but they’re not attached to the, to the door anymore. And I said, okay. And we can improve the robustness of the safety system by switching out keyed interlocks to a coated magnetic switch. And these coated magnetic switches do not work with refrigerator magnets.

Okay? It takes a coated actuator to actually close this. But, people that have a lot of these can find another matching actuator and fake these out. And we’ll get a call. Mike, I’m getting my magnetic switches being bypassed.

What can we do? The next level of technology up is RFID. Oh. Okay? RFID is high coded.

Okay? High coded. And and if you high coded means that you have a thousand or more codes. And if you have a thousand more codes, nobody is gonna find another matching actuator to fake out the switch and try to bypass it.

Shawn Tierney (Host): When you buy it, do you get it just random from the shelf or

Michael Warren (Wieland): You get it initially random and then there’s a sequence where you, cycle the power to do and change the codes. Oh, okay. So you can actually get multiple codes. Okay? Okay.

That and again, so we start out with the basic technology. The next step up is magnetic, and the highest level technology is RFID for door switches. Okay? So, and let me see. Now in addition to all of this, okay, you’re gonna notice that, I have

Shawn Tierney (Host): Turn the speed down. So

Michael Warren (Wieland): Oh. Oh. I went I went back. Sorry. Reverse the direction.

That’s okay. Or we coulda we coulda just, put our hand in the light curtain or whatnot. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. But, in addition to the products, the safety products and the HMIs, we sell power supplies. Okay. Okay. So, yeah, we have our own power supplies.

As a matter of fact, I always advocate people that when they have a safety system is to have a dedicated power supply. Yes. They’re not really expensive and for the peace of mind. Okay? And for the robustness and integrity of the safety system is to have a separate power supply running the safety system alone as opposed to sharing it from some other things.

Okay? Yeah. You don’t have to worry about spikes in the system. You don’t have to worry about, in rush currents or whatnot. And, again, it’s dedicated and it won’t interfere with the functions of the safety because let’s face it, you’re trying to maintain, say PLD or PLE safety system.

And, the the best thing that you could do is, it make the power supply independent. Okay? It makes the safety system robust and safer. Okay? You always have an eye towards making, the application as safe as possible.

Now, in addition to, the HMIs, the power supplies in here, just within the system here, some of the other products that Whelan offers are distributed power systems. Okay? And as I mentioned in the beginning, Whelan is famous for their terminal blocks. Yes. Okay?

And again, our catalog is full of, industrial automation, pieces. We really try to a bridge, from device to device in the automation world, all these filler, and detail type products, gateway switches. We have managed and unmanaged switches too, by the way. Okay? Oh,

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yes. You have switches as well.

Michael Warren (Wieland): We do. We do. I invite you to, take a look at our website, wheelen,uh,-electric,uh,.com. And, it has a lot of good information, and you’ll see the full catalog of information. Today, really, we were just kinda covering, safety, but it’s really the tip of the iceberg of the, Wheeling portfolio.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And we will conclude not only an end of show slide here so you can see all the important stuff. We’ll also include all these links in the description. So wherever you’re watching, you’ll have links to everything we’re talking about so you don’t have to go and hunt it down and, like, you know, how do I spell wheel end? And all the links are there.

We’ll put the slide up on the screen as well so you guys can see all that good information. And, Mike, with that, was there anything else we wanted to cover today?

Michael Warren (Wieland): I think we covered it, pretty thoroughly. I wanted to make sure that, I showed you the software because, you know, a lot of manufacturers, create the box and a little the little safety PLC. And, quite honestly, the the magic of the PLC itself isn’t the hardware, isn’t the 45 millimeters resin case itself. It’s the actual software. How easy to use, how comprehensive it is, what information it’ll do for you.

Okay? And again, we showed that we have a, workspace, drag and drop, library, pull the devices in. We have motion, we have presses, we have combustion technology, muting. We have a lot of different libraries, function blocks, certified function blocks to drag into the workspace. It creates the report.

And, basically, again, it just shows you, the creation of your system short of hardware. Of course, when you hook up your hardware, you do a synchronization. Okay? And now you can make your tweaks. You may find that your virtual system was better than the hardware list that you created, and you may want to upgrade that at some point.

Okay? The nice thing about a controller is it’s infinitely repurposable. Okay? You program it one way, one day, and if you add another device, that’s not a problem. That’s easy to go in the software, add another device.

Okay? I subtract a device, change out devices, whatnot. It’s easy enough to use. So, yes. Again, the Samos controller, is a leading product for us in the safety, product portfolio for Wieland.

And, again, we lead off with, our our software, the Samos plan software.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And I appreciate it. Just that short demo you did really helps. Like, I feel like I could get in there and start doing stuff. You know, when you open something up for the first time, if you’ve never seen a demo of it, it can be like deer in the headlights type of and I’ve been there many times myself.

So thank you for not only talking to us about the hardware, talking to us about your company, but also giving us that software demo as well. And I wanna thank you for coming out and driving all the way out here, three hours to get out here to do an in live. He doesn’t Mike doesn’t know this. He’s the first one to come and do a live. I had to clean up all last night.

The place was so messy, but he was actually the first vendor to come out and do a live, and I really enjoyed having him here, medium, and the preshow and, and whatnot. But I also wanna thank Wheelan for sponsoring this episode so there’ll be no ads on it. Didn’t you guys enjoy having no ads during the episode? We don’t make a lot of money from those ads. It’s pennies.

So thank you to please tell your, people to thank you very much for sponsoring this episode so we can bring all this information to the audience without any nasty ads. And with that, any final words?

Michael Warren (Wieland): No. No. Thank you, Sean, for having me. Appreciate your hospitality, and, you did a great cleanup job here. It looks wonderful here.

And it’s a it’s a great, for, format here for us to, show off our product here.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, thank you, Michael. I hope you come back sometime.

Michael Warren (Wieland): I’m looking forward to it. Thank you.

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Shawn M Tierney
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Shawn Tierney meets up with Tom Weingartner of PI (Profibus Profinet International) to learn about PROFINET and System Redundancy in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 244 Show Notes:Special thanks to Tom Weingartner for coming on the show, and to Siemens for sponsoring this episode so we could release it ad free on all platforms! To learn more PROFINET, see the below links:* PROFINET One-Day Training Slide Deck * PROFINET One-Day Training Class Dates * IO-Link Workshop Dates * PROFINET University * Certified Network Engineer Course

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host): Welcome back to the automation podcast. My name is Shawn Tierney from Insights and Automation, and I wanna thank you for tuning back in this week. Now on this show, I actually had the opportunity to sit down with Thomas Weingoner from PI to learn all about PROFINET. I actually reached out to him because I had some product vendors who wanted me to cover their s two features in their products, and I thought it would be first it’d be better to actually sit down and get a refresh on what s two is. It’s been five years since we’ve had a PROFINET expert on, so I figured now would be a good time before we start getting into how those features are used in different products.

So with that said, I also wanna mention that Siemens has sponsored the episode, so it will be completely ad free. I love it when vendor sponsor the shows. Not only do we get the breakeven on the show itself, we also get to release it ad free and make the video free as well. So thank you, Siemens. If you see anybody from Siemens, thank them for sponsoring the Automation Podcast.

As a matter of fact, thank any vendor who’s ever sponsored any of our shows. We really appreciate them. One final PSA that I wanna throw out there is that, speaking like I talked about this yesterday on my show, Automation Tech Talk, As we’ve seen with the Ethernet POCs we’re talking about, a lot of micro POCs that were $250 ten years ago are now $400. Right? That’s a lot of inflation, right, for various reasons.

Right? And so one of the things I did this summer is I took a look at my P and L, my pros profit and loss statements, and I just can’t hold my prices where they are and be profitable. Right? So if I’m not breaking even, the company goes out of business, and we’ll have no more episodes of the show. So how does this affect you?

If you are a student over at the automation school, you have until mid September to do any upgrades or purchase any, courses at the 2020 prices. Alright? So I I don’t wanna raise the prices. I’ve tried as long as I can, but at some point, you have to give in to what the prices are that your vendors are charging you, and you have to raise the prices. So, all my courses are buy one, sell them forever, so this does not affect anybody who’s enrolled in a course.

Actually, all of you folks rolled in my PLC courses, I see it updates every week now. So and those who get the ultimate bundles, you’re seeing new lessons added to the new courses because you get that preorder access plus some additional stuff. So in any case but, again, I wanna reiterate, if you’re a vendor who has an old balance or if you are a student who wants to buy a new course, please, make your plans in the next couple of weeks because in mid September, I do have to raise the prices. So I just wanna throw that PSA out there. I know a lot of people don’t get to the end of the show.

That’s what I wanted to do at the beginning. So with that said, let’s jump right into this week’s podcast and learn all about Profinet. I wanna welcome to the show, Tom from Profibus, Profinet North America. Tom, I really wanna just thank you for coming on the show. I reached out to you to ask about ask you to come on to to talk to us about this topic.

But before we jump in, could you, first tell the audience a little bit about yourself?

Tom Weingartner (PI): Yeah. Sure. Absolutely, Shawn. I’m gonna jump to the next slide then and and let everyone know. As Shawn said, my name is Tom, Tom Weingartner, and I am the technical marketing director at PI North America.

I have a fairly broad set of experiences ranging from ASIC hardware and software design, and and then I’ve moved into things like, avionic systems design. But it seemed like no no matter what I was working on, it it always centered around communication and control. That’s actually how I got into industrial Ethernet, and I branched out into, you know, from protocols like MIL standard fifteen fifty three and and airing four twenty nine to other serial based protocols like PROFIBUS and MODBUS. And, of course, that naturally led to PROFINET and the other Ethernet based protocols. I I also spent quite a few years developing time sensitive networking solutions.

But now I focus specifically on PROFINET and its related technologies. And so with that, I will jump into the the presentation here. And and, now that you know a little bit about me, let let me tell you a little bit about our organization. We are PROFIBUS and PROFINET International or PI for short. We are the global organization that created PROFIBUS and PROFINET, and we continue to maintain and promote these open communication standards.

The organization started back in 1989 with PROFIBUS, followed by PROFINET in the early two thousands. Next came IO Link, a communication technology for the last meter, and that was followed by OmLux, a communication technology for wireless location tracking. And now, most recently, MTP or module type package. And this is a communication technology for easier, more flexible integration of process automation equipment. Now we have grown worldwide to 24 regional PI associations, 57 competent centers, eight test labs, and 31 training centers.

It’s important to remember that we are a global organization because if you’re a global manufacturer, chances are there’s PROFINET support in the country in which you’re located, and you can get that support in the country’s native language. In the, lower right part of the slide here, we are showing our technologies under the PI umbrella. And I really wanted to point out that these, these technologies all the technologies within PI umbrella are supported by a set of working groups. And these working groups are made up of participants from member companies, and they are the ones that actually create and update the various standards and specifications. Also, any of these working groups are open to any member company.

So, PI North America is one of the 24 regional PI associations, and we were founded in 1994. We are a nonprofit member supported organization where we think globally and act locally. So here in North America, we are supported by our local competence centers, training centers, and test labs. And and competence centers, provide technical support for things like protocol, interoperability, and installation type questions. Training centers provide educational services for things like training courses and hands on lab work.

And test labs are, well, just that. They are labs that provide testing services and device certification. So any member company can be any combination of these three. You can see here if you’re looking at the slide, that the Profi interface center is all three, where we have JCOM Automation is both a competent center and a training center. And here in North in North America, we are pleased to have HMS as a training center and Phoenix Contact also as a competent center.

Now one thing I would like to point out to everyone is that what you should be aware of is that every PROFINET, device must be certified. So if you make a PROFINET device, you need to go to a test lab to get it certified. And here in North America, you certify devices at the PROFINETERFACE center. So I think it’s important to begin our discussion today by talking about the impact digital transformation has had on factory networks. There has been an explosion of devices in manufacturing facilities, and it’s not uncommon for car manufacturers to have over 50,000 Ethernet nodes in just one of their factories.

Large production cells can have over a thousand Ethernet nodes in them. But the point is is that all of these nodes increase the amount of traffic automation devices must handle. It’s not unrealistic for a device to have to deal with over 2,000 messages while it’s operating, while it’s trying to do its job. And emerging technologies like automated guided vehicles add a level of dynamics to the network architecture because they’re constantly entering and leaving various production cells located in different areas of the factory. And, of course, as these factories become more and more flexible, networks must support adding and removing devices while the factory is operating.

And so in response to this digital transformation, we have gone from rigid hierarchical systems using field buses to industrial Ethernet based networks where any device can be connected to any other device. This means devices at the field level can be connected to devices at the process control level, the production level, even even the operations level and above. But this doesn’t mean that the requirements for determinism, redundancy, safety, and security are any less on a converged network. It means you need to have a network technology that supports these requirements, and this is where PROFINET comes in. So to understand PROFINET, I I think it’s instructive here to start with the OSI model since the OSI model defines networking.

And, of course, PROFINET is a networking technology. The OSI model is divided into seven layers as I’m sure we are all familiar with by now, starting with the physical layer. And this is where we get access to the wire, internal electrical signals into bits. Layer two is the data link layer, and this is where we turn bits into bytes that make up an Ethernet frame. Layer three is the network layer, and this is where we turn Ethernet frames into IP packets.

So I like to think about Ethernet frames being switched around a local area network, and IP packets being routed around a wide area network like the Internet. And so the next layer up is the transport layer, and this is where we turn IP packets into TCP or UDP datagrams. These datagrams are used based on the type of connection needed to route IP packets. TCP datagrams are connection based, and UDP datagrams are connectionless. But, really, regardless of the type of connection, we typically go straight up to layer seven, the application layer.

And this is where PROFINET lives, along with all the other Ethernet based protocols you may be familiar with, like HTTP, FTP, SNMP, and and so on. So then what exactly is PROFINET, and and what challenges is it trying to overcome? The most obvious challenge is environmental. We need to operate in a wide range of harsh environments, and, obviously, we need to be deterministic, meaning we need to guarantee data delivery. But we have to do this in the presence of IT traffic or non real time applications like web servers.

We also can’t operate in a vacuum. We need to operate in a local area network and support getting data to wide area networks and up into the cloud. And so to overcome these challenges, PROFINET uses communication channels for speed and determinism. It uses standard unmodified Ethernet, so multiple protocols can coexist on the same wire. We didn’t have this with field buses.

Right? It was one protocol, one wire. But most importantly, PROFINET is an OT protocol running at the application layer so that it can maintain real time data exchange, provide alarms and diagnostics to keep automation equipment running, and support topologies for reliable communication. So we can think of PROFINET as separating traffic into a real time channel and a non real time channel. That mess messages with a particular ether type that’s actually eighty eight ninety two, and the number doesn’t matter.

But the point here is that the the the real time channel, is is where all PROFINET messages with that ether type go into. And any other ether type, they go into the non real time channel. So we use the non real time channel for acyclic data exchange, and we use the real time channel for cyclic data exchange. So cyclic data exchange with synchronization, we we classify this as time critical. And without synchronization, it is classified as real time.

But, really, the point here is that this is how we can use the same standard unmodified Ethernet for PROFINET as we can for any other IT protocol. All messages living together, coexisting on the same wire. So we take this a step further here and and look at the real time channel and and the non real time channel, and and these are combined together into a concept that we call an application relation. So think of an application relation as a network connection for doing both acyclic and cyclic data exchange, and we do this between controllers and devices. This network connection consists of three different types of information to be exchanged, and we call these types of information communication relations.

So on the lower left part of the slide, you can see here that we have something called a a record data communication relation, and it’s essentially the non real time channel for acyclic data exchange to pass information like configuration, security, and diagnostics. The IO data communication relation is part of the real time channel for doing this cyclic data exchange that we need to do to periodically update controller and device IO data. And finally, we have the alarm communication relation. So this is also part of the real time channel, because, what we need to do here is it it’s used for alerting the controller to device false as soon as they occur or when they get resolved. Now on the right part of the slide, is we can see some use cases for, application relations, and and these use cases are are either a single application relations for controller to device communication, and we have an optional application relation here for doing dynamic reconfiguration.

We also use an application relation for something we call shared device, and, of course, why we are here today and talking about applications relations is actually because of system redundancy. And so we’ll get, into these use cases in more detail here in a moment. But first, I wanted to point out that when we talk about messages being non real time, real time, or time critical, what we’re really doing is specifying a level of network performance. Non real time performance has cycle times above one hundred milliseconds, but we also use this term to indicate that a message may have no cycle time at all. In other words, acyclic data exchange.

Real time performance has cycle times in the one to ten millisecond range, but really that range can extend up to one hundred milliseconds. So time critical performance has cycle times less than a millisecond, and it’s not uncommon to have cycle times around two hundred and fifty microseconds or less. Most applications are either real time or non real time, while high performance applications are considered time critical. These applications use time synchronization to guarantee data arrives exactly when needed, but we also must ensure that the network is open to any Ethernet traffic. So in order to achieve time critical performance here, and we do this for the most demanding applications like high speed motion control.

And so what we did is we added four features to basic PROFINET here, and and we call this PROFINET ISOCRANESS real time or PROFINET IRT. These added features are synchronization, node arrival time, scheduling, and time critical domains. Now IRT has been around since 02/2004, but in the future, PROFINET will move to a new set of I triple e Ethernet standards called time sensitive networking or TSN. PROFINET over TSN will actually have the same functionality and performance as PROFINET IRT, but we’ll be able to scale to faster and faster, networks and and as bandwidth is is increasing. So this chart shows the differences between PROFINET, RT, IRT, and TSN.

And the main difference is, obviously, synchronization. And these other features that, guarantee data arrives exactly when needed. Notice in in the under the, PROFINET IRT column here that that, the bandwidth for PROFINET IRT is a 100 mil a 100 megabits per second. And the bandwidth for PROFINET RT and TSN are scalable. Also, for those device manufacturers out there looking to add PROFINET IRT to their products, there are lots of ASICs and other solutions available in the market with IRT capability.

Alright. So let’s take a minute here to summarize all of this. We have a a single infrastructure for doing real time data exchange along with non real time information exchange. PROFINET uses the same infrastructure as any Ethernet network. Machines that speak PROFINET do so, using network connections called application relations, and these messages coexist with all other messages so information can pass from devices to machines, to factories, to the cloud, and back.

And so if you take away nothing else from this podcast today, it is the word coexistence. PROFINET coexists with all other protocols on the wire. So let’s start talking a little bit here about the main topic, system redundancy and and and why we got into talking about PROFINET at all. Right? I mean, what why do we need system redundancy and things like like, application relations and dynamic reconfiguration?

Well, it’s because one of the things we’re pretty proud of with PROFINET is not only the depth of its capabilities, but also the breadth of its capabilities. And with the lines blurring between what’s factory automation, what’s process automation, and what’s motion control, we are seeing all three types of automation appearing in a single installation. So we wanna make sure PROFINET meets requirements across the entire range of industrial automation. So let’s start out here by looking at the differences between process automation versus factory automation, and then we’ll get into the details. First off, process signals typically change slower on the order of hundreds of milliseconds versus tens of milliseconds in factory automation.

And process signals often need to travel longer distances and potentially into hazardous or explosive areas. Now with process plants operating twenty four seven, three sixty five, system must systems must provide high availability and support changes while the plant is in production. This is where system redundancy and dynamic reconfiguration come in. We’ll discuss these again here in in just a minute. I just wanted to finish off this slide with saying that an estop is usually not possible because while you can turn off the automation, that’s not necessarily gonna stop the chemical reaction or whatever from proceeding.

Sensors and actuators and process automation are also more complex. Typically, we call them field instruments. And process plants have many, many, many more IO, tens of thousands of IO, usually controlled by a DCS. And so when we talk about system redundancy, I actually like to call it scalable system redundancy because it isn’t just one thing. This is where we add components to the network for increasing the level of system availability.

So there are four possibilities, s one, s two, and r one, r two. The letter indicates if there are single or redundant network access points, and the number indicates how many application relations are supported by each network access point. So think of the network access point as a physical interface to the network. And from our earlier discussion, think of an application relation as a network connection between a controller and a device. So you have s one has, single network access points.

Right? So each device has single network access points with one application relation connected to one controller. S two is where we also have single network access points, but with two application relations now connected to different controllers. R one is where we have redundant network access points, but each one of these redundant network access points only has one application relation, but those are connected to different controllers. And finally, we could kinda go over the top here with r two, and and here’s where we have redundant network access points with two application relations connected to different controllers.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, I wanna just stop here and talk about s two. And for the people who are listening, which I know is about a quarter of you guys out there, think of s two is you have a primary controller and a secondary controller. If you’re seeing the screen, you can see I’m reading the the slide. But you have your two primary and secondary controllers. Right?

So you have one of each, and, primary controller has the, application one, and secondary has application resource number two. And each device that’s connected on the Ethernet has both the one and two. So you went maybe you have a rack of IO out there. It needs to talk to both the primary controller and the secondary controller. And so to me, that is kinda like your classic redundant PLC system where you have two PLCs and you have a bunch of IO, and each piece of IO has to talk to both the primary and the secondary.

So if the primary goes down, the secondary can take over. And so I think that’s why there’s so much interest in s two because that kinda is that that that classic example. Now, Tom, let me turn it back to you. Would you say I’m right on that? Or

Tom Weingartner (PI): Spot on. I mean, I think it’s great, and and and really kinda emphasizing the point that there’s that one physical connection on the network access point, but now we have two connections in that physical, access point there. Right? So so you can then have one of those connections go to the primary controller and the other one to the secondary controller. And in case one of those controllers fails, the device still can get the information it needs.

So, yep, that that’s how we do that. And and, just a little bit finer point on r one, if you think about it, it’s s two, but now all we’ve done is we’ve split the physical interface. So one of the physical interfaces has has, one of the connections, and the other physical interface has a has the other connection. So you really kinda have, the same level of redundant functionality here, backup functionality with the secondary controller, but here you’re using, multiple physical interfaces.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Now let me ask you about that. So as I look at our one, right, it seems like they connect to port let’s I’ll just call it port one on each device to switch number one, which in this case would be the green switch, and port number two of each device to the switch number two, which is the blue switch. Would that be typical to have separate switches, one a different switch for each port?

Tom Weingartner (PI): It it it doesn’t have to. Right? I I I think we chose to show it like this for simplicity kinda to

Shawn Tierney (Host): Oh, I don’t care.

Tom Weingartner (PI): Emphasize the point that, okay. Here’s the second port going to the secondary controller. Here’s the first port going to the primary controller. And we just wanted to emphasize that point. Because sometimes these these, diagrams can be, a bit confusing.

And you

Shawn Tierney (Host): may have an application that doesn’t require redundant switches depending on the maybe the MTBF of the of the switch itself or your failure mode on your IO. Okay. I’m with you. Go ahead.

Tom Weingartner (PI): Yep. Yep. Good. Good. Good.

Alright. So, I think that’s some excellent detail on that. And so, if you wouldn’t mind or don’t have any other questions, let’s let’s move on to the the, the the next slide. So you can see in that previous slide how system redundancy supports high availability by increasing system availability using these network access points and application relations. But we can also support high availability by using network redundancy.

And the way PROFINET supports network redundancy is through the use of ring topologies, and we call this media redundancy. The reason we use rings is because if a cable breaks or the physical connection, somehow breaks as well or or even a device fails, the network can revert back to a line topology keeping the system operational. However, supporting network redundancy with rings means we can’t use protocols typically used in IT networks like, STP and RSTP. And this is because, STP and RSTP actually prevent network redundancy by blocking redundant paths in order to keep frames from circulating forever in the network. And so in order for PROFINET to support rings, we need a way to prevent frames from circulating forever in the network.

And to do this, we use a protocol called the media redundancy protocol or MRP. MRP uses one media redundancy manager for each ring, and the rest, of the devices are called media redundancy clients. Managers are typically controllers or PROFINET switches, and clients are typically the devices in the network. So the way it works is this. A manager periodically sends test frames, around the network here to check the integrity of the ring.

If the manager doesn’t get the test frame back, there’s a failure somewhere in the ring. And so the manager then notifies the clients about this failure, and then the manager sets the network to operate as a line topology until, the failure is repaired. Right? And so that’s how we can get, network redundancy with our media redundancy protocol. Alright.

So now you you can see how system redundancy and media redundancy both support high availability. System redundancy does this by increasing system availability, Walmart. Media redundancy does this by increasing network availability. Obviously, you can use one without the other, but by combining system redundancy and media redundancy, we can increase the overall system reliability. For example, here we are showing different topologies for s one and s two, and these are similar to the the the topologies that were on the previous slide.

So, if you notice here that, for s one, we can only have media redundancy because there isn’t a secondary controller to provide system redundancy. S two is where we combine system redundancy and media redundancy by adding an MRP ring. But I wanted to point out here that that even though we’re showing this MRP ring as as as a possible topology, there really are other topologies possible. It really depends on the level of of system reliability you’re trying to achieve. And so, likewise, on on this next slide here, we are showing two topologies for adding media redundancy to r one and r two.

And so for r one, we’ve chosen, again, probably for simplistic, simplicity’s sake, we we add an MRP ring for each redundant network access point. With for r two, we do the same thing here. We also have an MRP ring for each redundant network access point, but we also add a third MRP ring for the controllers. Now this is really just to try to emphasize the point that you can, you you can really, come up with just about any topology possible, but it because it really depends on the number of ports on each device and the number of switches in the network and, again, your overall system reliability requirements. So in order to keep process plants operating twenty four seven three sixty five, dynamic reconfiguration is another use case for application relations.

And so this is where we can add or remove devices on the fly while the plant is in production. Because if you think about it, typically, when there is a new configuration for the PLC, the PLC first has to go into stop mode. It needs to then re receive the configuration, and then it can go back into run mode. Well, this doesn’t work in process automation because we’re trying to operate twenty four seven three sixty five. So with dynamic reconfiguration, the controller continues operating with its current application relation while it sets up a new application relation.

Right? I mean, again, it’s it’s really trying to get this a a new network connection established. So then the the the controller then switches over to the new application relation after the new configuration is validated. Once we have this validation and the configuration’s good, the controller removes the old application relations and continues operating all while staying in run mode. Pretty handy pretty handy stuff here for for supporting high availability.

Now one last topic regarding system redundancy and dynamic reconfiguration, because these two PROFINET capabilities are compatible with a new technology called single pair Ethernet, and this provides power and data over just two wires. This version of Ethernet is now part of the I triple e eight zero two dot three standard referred to as 10 base t one l. So 10 base t one l is the non intrinsically saved version of two wire Ethernet. To support intrinsic safety, 10 base t one l was enhanced by an additional standard called Ethernet APL or advanced physical layer. So when we combine PROFINET with this Ethernet APL version of 10 base t one l, we simply call it PROFINET over APL.

It not only provides power and data over the same two wires, but also supports long cable runs up to a kilometer, 10 megabit per second communication speeds, and can be used in all hazardous areas. So intrinsic safety is achieved by ensuring both the Ethernet signals and power on the wire are within explosion safe levels. And even with all this, system redundancy and dynamic reconfiguration work seamlessly with this new technology we call PROFINET over APL. Now one thing I’d like to close with here is a is a final thought regarding a new technology I think I think everyone should become aware of here. I mean, it’s emerging in the market.

It’s it’s quite new, and it’s a technology called MTP or module type package. And so this is a technology being applied first here to, use cases considered to be a hybrid of both process automation and factory automation. So what MTP does is it applies OPC UA information models to create standardized, non proprietary application level descriptions for automation equipment. And so what these descriptions do is they simplify the communication, between equipment and the control system, and it does this by modularizing the process into more manageable pieces. So really, the point is to construct a factory with modular equipment to simplify integration and allow for better flexibility should changes be required.

Now with the help of the process orchestration layer and this OPC UA connectivity, MTP enabled equipment can plug and operate, reducing the time to commission a process or make changes to that process. This is pretty cutting edge stuff. I think you’re gonna find and hear a lot more about NTP in the near future. Alright. So it’s time to wrap things up with a summary of all the resources you can use to learn even more about PROFINET.

One of the things you can do here is you can get access to the PROFINET one day training class slide deck by going to profinet2025.com, entering your email, and downloading the slides in PDF format. And what’s really handy is that all of the links in the PDF are live, so information is just a click away. We also have our website, us.profinet.com. It has white papers, application stories, webinars, and documentation, including access to all of the standards and specifications. This is truly your one stop shop for locating everything about PROFINET.

Now we do our PROFINET one day training classes and IO link workshops all over The US and parts of Canada. So if you are interested in attending one of these, you can always find the next city we are going to by clicking on the training links at the bottom of the slide.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, guys. Shawn here. I just wanted to jump in for a minute for the audio audience to give you that website. It’s us.profinet.com/0dtc or oscardeltatangocharlie. So that’s the website.

And I also went and pulled up the website, which if you’re watching, you can see here. But for those listening, these one day PROFINET courses are coming to Phoenix, Arizona, August 26, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 10, Newark and New York City, September 25, Greenville, South Carolina, October 7, Detroit, Michigan, October 23, Portland, Oregon, November 4, and Houston, Texas, November 18. So with that said, let’s jump back into the show.

Tom Weingartner (PI): Alan, one of our most popular resources is Profinet University. This website structures information into little courses, and you can proceed through them at your own pace. You can go lesson by lesson, or you can jump around. You can even decide which course to take based on a difficulty tag. Definitely make sure to check out this resource.

We do have lots of great, webinars on on the, on on the website, and they’re archived on the website. Now some of these webinars, they they rehash what we covered today, but in other cases, they expand on what we covered today. But in either case, make sure you share these webinars with your colleagues, especially if they’re interested in any one of the topics that we have listed on the slide. And finally, the certified network engineer course is the next logical step if you would like to dive deeper into the technical details of PROFINET. It is a week long in Johnson City, Tennessee, and it features hands on lab work.

And if you would like us to provide training to eight or more students, we can even come to your site. If you would like more details about any of this, please head to the website to learn more. And with that, Chai, I think that is, my last slide and, covered the topics that I think we wanted some to cover today.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And I just wanna point out that to you guys, this, training goes out through all around The US. I definitely recommend getting up there. If you’re using PROFINET and you wanna get some training, they usually fill the room, like, you know, 50 to a 100 people. And, it’s you know, they do this every year.

So check those dates out. If you need to get some hands on with PROFINET, I would definitely check out those. And, of course, we’ll have all the links in the description. I also wanna thank Tom for that slide. Really defining s one versus s two versus r one and r two.

You know, a lot of people say we have s two compatibility. A matter of fact, we’re gonna be looking at some products that have s two compatibility here in the future. And, you know, just trying to understand what that means. Right? You know, when somebody just says s two, it’s like, what does that mean?

So I really if that slide really doesn’t for you guys listening, I thought that slide really kinda lays it out, kinda gives you, like, alright. This is what it means. And, so in in in my from my perspective, that’s like it’s you’re supporting redundant controllers. Right? And so if you have an s two setup of redundant, seamless controllers that or CPUs, then you’ll be that product will support that.

And that’s important. Right? Because if you had a product that didn’t support it, it’s not gonna work with your application. So I thought that and the the Ethernet APL is such a big deal in process because I you know, the the distance, right, and the fact that it’s it’s, intrinsically safe and supports all those zones and and areas and whatnot, that is, and everybody everybody all the instrumentation people are all over. Right?

The, the, the Rosemonts, the fishes, the, the endless houses, everybody is is on that working group. We’ve covered that on the news show many times, and, just very interesting to see where that goes, but I think it’s gonna take over that part of the industry. So, but, Tom, was there anything else you want to cover in today’s show?

Tom Weingartner (PI): No. I I think that that really, puts puts a a fine finale on on on this here. I I do wanted to maybe emphasize that, you you know, that point about network redundancy being compatible with, system redundancy. So, you know, you can really hone in on what your system reliability requirements are. And and also with with this this, PROFINET over APL piece of it, completely compatible with with PROFINET, in in of itself.

And and, also, you don’t have to worry about it not supporting, system redundancy or or anything of of the like, whether, you know, you you wanted to get, redundant even redundant devices out there. So, that’s that’s, I think that’s that’s about it.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Alright. Well, I again, thank you so much for coming on. We look forward to trying out some of these s two profanet devices in the near future. But with that, I I really wanted to have you on first to kinda lay the groundwork for us, and, really appreciate it.

Tom Weingartner (PI): No problem. Thank you for having me.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. I did. I enjoyed sitting down with Tom, getting up to date on all those different products, and it’s great to know they have all these free hands on training days coming across United States. And, you know, what a great refresher from the original 2020 presentation that we had somebody from Siemens do. So I really appreciate Tom coming on.

And speaking of Siemens, so thankful they sponsored this episode so we could release it ad free and make the video free to everybody. Please, if you see Siemens or any of the vendors who sponsor our episodes, please tell them to thank you from us. It really helps us keep the show going. Speaking of keeping the show going, just a reminder, if you’re a student or a vendor, price increases will hit mid September. So if you’re a student, you wanna buy another course, now is the time to do it.

If you’re a vendor and you have a existing balance, you will want to schedule those podcasts before mid September or else you’ll be subject to the price increase. So with that said, I also wanna remind you I have a new podcast, automation tech talk. I’m reusing the old automation new news headlines podcast. So if you already subscribed to that, you’re just gonna get in the new the new show for free. It’s also on the automation blog, on YouTube, on LinkedIn.

So I’m doing it as a live stream every lunchtime, just talking about what I learned, in that last week, you know, little tidbits here and there. And I wanna hear from you guys too. A matter of fact, I already had Giovanni come on and do an interview with me. So at one point, I’ll schedule that as a lunchtime podcast for automation tech talk. Again, it still shows up as automation news headlines, I think.

So at some point, I’ll have to find time to edit that to change the name. But in any case, with that, I think I’ve covered everything. I wanna thank you guys for tuning in. Really appreciate you. You’re the best audience in the podcast world or the video world, you know, whatever you wanna look at it as, but I really appreciate you all.

Please feel free to send me emails, write to me, leave comments. I love to hear from you guys, and I just wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace.

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Aaron Moncur of Pipeline Design and Engineering to discuss “The Most Underrated Skill in Automation,” as well as the upcoming Product Design Expo, and the “Being An Engineer” podcast, all in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 243 Show Notes:Special thanks to Pipeline for sponsoring this episode so we could release it ad free on all platforms! To learn more about Pipeline, the PDExpo, and Aaron’s Podcast, see the below links: PDX: Product Design Expo, Registration Link (use coupon IIA50* to save $50!) * Being An Engineer podcast * The Wave (engineering community website) * Aaron’s LinkedIn profile * Pipeline company website

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Thank you for tuning back in to the automation podcast. This week, I meet up with Aaron Moncur from Pipeline Design and Engineering to talk about what he thinks is the most important skill to have in industrial automation. And we also talk about his upcoming event, PDX, which is, coming up just in a few weeks, and we even have a coupon if you wanna go to save you $50 off the admission price. And we also talk about his podcast.

He has over 300 interviews with engineers from all kinds of backgrounds, and, I think you guys will find that interesting as well. And, we just had a great time just talking and chatting about different strategies and different challenges we’ve had over the years in the automation world. So with that said, let’s go ahead and jump right into our interview with Aaron Moncur of Pipeline Design and Engineering. I wanna welcome to the show for the first time, Aaron. And, we have a very exciting topic to talk about today.

Should be very interesting to all you controls engineers and you high end electricians and technicians out there do automation. But, before we jump into the discussion, Aaron, please, tell the people a little bit about yourself.

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Alright. Well, Shawn, thank you so much for the introduction and having me on the podcast. I’ve been excited to talk with you. I have my own podcast as well, actually. I’ll I’ll touch on that a little bit, but, I love talking about engineering and, business and automation.

My company, Pipeline Design and Engineering, we’ve been around for about fifteen years now, and our focus is, industrial automation. We’re integrators. We also do a lot of, just test fixtures, you know, smaller, not necessarily automated, but manual fixtures, things like that, machine building. We even do we actually started fifteen years ago in in general, product design. And so we did a lot of medical device design, consumer products, things like that.

And then about three, four years in, one of our customers asked us if we could design a test fixture for them. And we said, what’s a test fixture? Yes. And so, we figured out, you know, what that was all about and delivered it and they really liked it. And they said, this is great.

We need more of this kind of thing. And so ever since then, slowly but surely, we we’ve, been moving more and more into that area of, like, fixtures. And then at some point, we started adding a little bit of motion, a motor, and a pneumatic actuator. And then at some point, we started doing full automation. And and at this point, that’s that’s kind of our focus is automation machine building, and we still do test fixtures and, a little bit of of product design as well.

But I I have a degree in mechanical engineering, and I’ve been doing this, for a little over twenty years. Interesting story of getting laid off and then starting my company and, just living the dream here with a wonderful, wonderful group of people doing engineering and automation work.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, I’ve worked with a lot of custom machine builders over the years, and a lot of what they do is test stands. And a lot of them are automated, and some of the most interesting ones I’ve seen were a lot for medical devices and whatnot. A lot of them are for things that we use every day, like the pieces that go in your door, like the door switch and the windows, you know, that send them up and down. Those things need to be not only assembled, a lot of time, pick and place type of, systems, but they have to be tested. And they’re gonna be tested a lot, like, millions of times.

A lot of times, if the prototypes, they gotta go through some very rigorous testing, and there’s a lot sometimes lots of data collection that goes along with that. So I got an idea for for what you’re saying and some, you know, test stands and actually, you know, manual assemblies. Sometimes you just need a bunch of jigs and different layouts so you can put something together quickly and, you know, in manufacturing, some of that has to be done by hand as well. So very interesting stuff. And so, with that said, I know we wanted to jump into a go a couple different ways here, but I do know I before we get too far in, you do have a upcoming event.

So I wanted to make sure we get the talk about that a little bit before we jump into the topic of what would, you know, the meat of what we’re gonna discuss today.

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Yeah. Thank you. Something that’s really big for me, important for me is, building community around engineering. And, we have a few ways that we’ve done this. We have our podcast, Being an Engineer.

We also have an online community called The Wave. It’s thewave. Engineer, free resources and tools, education for for engineers. And then we also have an event called PDX, and PDX stands for the Product Development Expo. It is, inclusive of all things hardware.

So that includes, you know, product designers. It includes metrology folks. It includes automation experts. Basically, anyone who touches hardware developing, hard goods products would be a good fit for for this event. The, the PDX event is happening this October.

That’s a Tuesday and a Wednesday just outside of Phoenix, Arizona. And, kind of the unique innovative format of this event is that it’s it’s not just like a trade show where you show up and and, you know, you get a flyer or a brochure from a vendor. The focus of this event is is training and education. It’s kind of like a two day boot camp for hardware professionals, whether they’re mechanical engineers, automation engineers, manufacturing engineers. And so we have about about 35 experts in the industry who are are gonna be there as instructors training on different topics.

These include AI tools for engineering workflows, GD and T, tolerance stack, modular extrusion for machine frames, robot programming, linear motor, motion control, precision fluid dispensing, CAD data management, FEA, engineering documentation, simulation, DIY, PCB design and prototyping, three d scanning, reverse engineering. So it’s pretty extensive. There’s something for everyone there. Again, it’s a two day e event, a training boot camp, October, just outside, Phoenix, Arizona. You can go to pdexpo.engineer to learn more about the event and sign up.

The cost is $295 and that’s inclusive of all the different training topics that you can choose to sign up for at the event.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. That sounds like a pretty good deal too. If you have somebody junior on your staff or if you’re changed roles in your company and you’re getting more into this kind of type of product design and engineering, then, definitely check that out. You typically can’t go anywhere for two ninety five. Right?

So Right. Just a walk in the door for a day is typically it’s not and and I know that the people out there, they’re probably gonna have some services that they can offer as well that some of you guys may wanna take, take advantage of. But for you folks, especially if you’re in the area or if you have a need at work for one of these things, please check it out. And, if I get it correct, it’s pdexpo.engineer?

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): That’s right. P d e x p o dot engineer.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Excellent. And speaking about engineering, of course, you’re a mechanical engineer. We see a lot of mechanical engineers in automation as automation engineers when especially when it comes to, systems that have servos on them, systems that are very, you know, a lot of acceleration, a lot of mass, systems that require more than just, you know, very sequential type of logic that, you know, we have lots of parts moving around that have to be in certain places at certain times. And so, can you tell us a little bit about, you know, your journey as, the owner of a company? And I know how you came came to this conclusion about the most valuable resource in automation.

We’re not gonna give the answer away yet, because then we would never show. But, in any case, can you talk a little bit about that, your journey and what you’ve gone through and the different things you ran into and learned?

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Yeah. I I think there is a a very underrated skill in automation, and it’s not something that people talk about very often. But over twenty years in the industry, I’ve definitely seen this over and over and over. And so we’re we’re gonna talk about that today. In terms of my journey, how I got here, I worked at an engineering company twenty years ago and great company, very smart people.

And in the beginning, I loved it. I got to do all the things that I enjoyed, right? CAD design and prototyping and, you know, working on a mill and a lathe to to make some parts and assembly is wonderful. Then the economy slowed down. Right?

This is back in 02/1989. Mhmm. And the I’ll just call it the the fun work, the quote, unquote fun work, kind of dried up. And what our company had left was kind of a lot of documentation and and paperwork, not fun work, at least by most engineers’ standards. And, I was young and and probably, immature, and I kind of checked out mentally.

You know, I’d show up every day and I’d put in the the hours, but, my heart wasn’t in it and and my mind wasn’t really in it. And the owners of the company, they were, you know, intelligent people. They could tell that my heart wasn’t really in it. And they pulled me in one day and said, hey, Aaron. Unfortunately, we we need to let some people go.

And, we can tell that you’re just not very engaged right now. So you are one of the people that we’re gonna let go. And it was a a shock. It shouldn’t have been. Right?

Like, looking back, hindsight is twenty twenty. I should have seen it coming, but, again, young, naive, immature, I didn’t. So it was a shock. My wife and I had, just bought our first home. We had a new child.

Right? Our first kid had just been born, and so it was it was a gut punch for me, and I remember feeling physically ill for several days after that. But eventually, I I got my feet back underneath me and decided, okay. I need to figure out what’s next. You know, what am I gonna do?

And the the the first thought was, well, I’ll just go out and find another engineering job. But I started thinking, and, it was true. What the statement that the owners of this company had made saying you weren’t very engaged. And I thought, you know what? They’re they’re right.

I I wasn’t very engaged. Why is that? What what happened to make me disengaged? And I I thought that maybe I had fallen out of love with engineering. And so I was I had actually been doing some side hustles, but I was still employed at the company.

I had started a photography company with a buddy of mine. I’d started a little web design company on my own. I was even exploring commercial real estate. So kind of very different things, right, than engineering and thinking to myself, I I I don’t know if I like engineering anymore. I think I I might just wanna do something completely different.

Well, a few months into that, my father-in-law, he pulls me aside and he says, hey, what’s the plan here? Like, what what are you gonna do to he he didn’t come out and say it this way, but support my daughter and my grandchild. Right? And, he suggested that maybe I did still like engineering, and and maybe it was just the way I was doing engineering that had turned me off. And I thought, that’s that’s pretty sage advice.

I’m I’m gonna take that. And so I jumped back into engineering only the way I did it differently this time was instead of going out and looking for another job, I just started doing it myself as a a freelance engineer. And I would just call companies up and say, hey. I’m I’m Aaron. I’ve got some good engineering skills.

These are the things I can help with. And lo and behold, I I got a few jobs, you know, some small things. Didn’t pay well. I remember working sixty, seventy hour weeks and getting paid like $35 an hour back in the beginning. What was so interesting was that I loved it.

It was so fun. You know, all of a sudden I loved engineering again. I was back in it and I, what I learned about myself back then was I really thrive on high level autonomy. When I’m given, responsibility over kind of the the entire machine as opposed to just being a cog in the machine, That’s what really lights me up and and gets me excited. So that was the start of my company, Pipeline Design and Engineering.

We did, largely consumer product design back then, medical devices, things like that. And then we talked a little bit about the the test fixtures and that led into machine design and automation. And these days that is our focus. Everything from kind of desktop to standalone, you know, maybe five by five by seven, eight feet tall, something like that. That’s our sweet spot for automation and engineering.

Along the way, I decided, the company where I worked before, great company, good people for sure. Right? Very grateful for the experiences I had there. Nevertheless, there were some things that I didn’t love about the culture at that company. And so I decided when I started Pipeline, I really wanted to focus on developing, a wonderful culture where people just they liked being here.

They enjoyed, the camaraderie with the different team members. They enjoyed the work. They enjoyed the environment. And so, building a successful culture was really important to me. And, you might be thinking right now, okay, culture, that’s the underrated skill.

Well, it is one of them, but it’s not the underrated skill that we’re going to arrive at. So so stay tuned. But but, that became a a big focus for me. And, it is to this day. And there have been a variety of things that we’ve done to to cultivate a culture where people really love being.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, I was thinking about what you were just saying and and, you know, I was always surprised. I’m I’m thinking about it. I’m like, you know, as a parent, I was surprised how different the personalities of my children were. And I still I’m thinking as you’re talking, I’m like, man, they’re they’re they’re so different. And then when I started visiting customers after I got my college degree and got into this crazy industry and I was visiting helping customers with their PLCs and other products, I was amazed how different company cultures were.

And and and some of them were definitely toxic. I mean, it came to the point where you’d be like, yeah. I’m not going there. I don’t care if they never buy anything from us again. You know?

They’re just so toxic. Right? And the salesman, we used I’m the I was always a technical guy, so the salesman would have heartburn of that, but I’m like and then some places you just didn’t wanna leave. They had such camaraderie, such they worked so well together. They were they were just they you know, nobody was out trying to prove that they’re better than everybody else.

They were just trying to make the customer, get them the machine or the service or, you know, make the product as good as possible. And it’s just such a a a range. And I you know, I’m sitting here. I’m thinking, why why are the cultures so vastly different than the cost leadership at each facility? You know, gen you know, promotes different types of cultures, and there’s such a age gap from boomers to, you know, now Gen z.

Right? In the in in the, you know, in these facilities that you don’t even know what you’re gonna get. You could have something that feels like you’re out of the sixties or something that feels like you’re out of the twenty second century. You know? But, yes.

So it it is amazing how many different cultures in, and I I guess not a lot you know, a lot of people maybe they have four or five different jobs. So they’ve probably been through four or five different cultures, and they can relate to what we’re saying there about how how how, you know, cultures can really affect not just the efficiency and the effectiveness, but also just the the the satisfaction of the employee. And I think I think in today’s world, especially in The US where people change jobs every three to five years, if you’re investing in a high-tech person, if you’re gonna invest in training, invest in education and mentoring, you you know, having a good coach is so important. Are you gonna you gonna keep having turn I and I’ve met a lot of people that are like, we just can’t keep somebody in this position. Well, it’s because you guys are a bunch of jerks.

It’s not your pay. Absolutely. It’s not what they have to work on. It’s just that you guys are unpleasant to be around. I wouldn’t wanna work here.

You know? And so just some random thoughts about culture as you were talking about that, but that’s that was what’s going through my head.

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Yeah. People need a certain amount of money, right, to to

Shawn Tierney (Host): pay their

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): bills and live. But but beyond that baseline, money isn’t much of a motivator. But good culture is enjoying where you work, enjoying the people with whom you work. Even though I didn’t I haven’t worked at a lot of places. I had a few internships and I had even after I started pipeline and it was just me, I worked at a a few places contract, right, for three months, six months, things like that.

There’s this one place I work. It was an an automation, place here locally. I won’t say the name. Actually, I think they’re they’re gone at this point anyway. Anyway, the the owner, I think I think maybe he was bipolar is my guess.

Sometimes he would be super nice. In fact, I remember, when my wife and I had our our second child, he gave me I was a contractor. Right? So I didn’t have any PTO or anything like that. He he gave me two days pay while I was, you know, just out at the hospital with my wife and son.

I thought that was so kind and and generous. So he had these moments when he was just very thoughtful and then other moments where he was a tyrant. He would just he’d walk into the office, just start yelling at people, literally yelling at people.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm.

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): I had never been in an environment like that before, a work environment like that. And so it was it was a shock to me. And you could see the effect on culture. You know? People were scared of him.

They were not performing at their best because they didn’t know what to expect when they showed up at work. So when I started Pipeline, I I decided that I wanted to have a strong purpose and and core values. Now people talk about purpose and core values, and and I think oftentimes they end up as as platitudes on a wall that don’t really mean much. You know, they’re they’re corporate marketing bullet points, basically. I like to think that our purpose and core values are are things that have actually meaningfully contributed to the culture that we have.

And and that shows up in comments from team members. I’ve been approached by team members. We do one on ones where we just, you know, create an open forum for people to talk and and share. If they have questions or concerns, they can talk to me directly. And in these one on ones, I can’t tell you the number of times where an engineer has said to me, I didn’t know it could be this way at a company.

This is the best place I have ever worked. I’m not afraid to tell you what I actually think. You know? And these these comments go on and on. So the purpose that we have at Pipeline is to promote joy in the lives of our team members.

Now be before you, stop listening because you’re thinking this is way too woo woo for me and and hippie dippie, I I’m telling you that a happy employee, a happy engineer is a productive and effective engineer. This this leads directly to productivity and taught in fact, one of our core values is focused on productivity. But if you ask why enough times, you know, you look at what you’re doing day to day and ask why am I doing this? Well, here’s the reason. Okay.

What’s the reason for that? Why? Keep asking why. In my opinion, you ultimately end up at joy. You know?

The that’s really why we do anything because we want to experience joy in our lives. I won’t get too philosophical about that, but in the doctrine of Aaron, that’s why we do pretty much everything we do to experience joy. So, that’s our purpose is to promote joy in the lives of our team members. And then we have our our four core values. We have, number one is treat the customer well, but treat your team members better.

Number two is governed by productivity, not bureaucracy. Number three is suffocate chaos, promote order. And number four is prevent surprises. And we use these core values to to make decisions and to manage and govern the company. There was one example.

We moved into a new building years ago. And, in this building, we had a warehouse where we’d build, you know, machines and and, automation and and things like that. And one day, an an engineer had, I can’t remember what, a drink or or maybe it was even, you know, some food or something like that in in the build area. And our our director of engineering walks in and he says, hey. You can’t have food in here.

Like, we’re we’re building machines. Right? Totally reasonable statement to make. Like, it’s it’s not safe for you to have food in here. Either you’re gonna contaminate the machines or the machines are gonna contaminate your food.

Either way, it’s not good for anyone. And, so we had a conversation as a team about this because while the the sentiment I agreed with wholeheartedly, it it creating a policy and just flat out saying no food in the warehouse didn’t feel like the pipeline way to me. It didn’t quite sit right with me. And I I asked myself, why is that? It’s a very reasonable request.

Right? No food where you’re building machines. And, it just just the idea of adding, like, layers of policy doesn’t sit well with me. So we sat down as a team and said, hey. Core value number one is treat our customers well, but treat our team members better.

How how how do we treat our team members better, in this particular situation? And what we came up with was instead of just adding a policy, we’re gonna we we do we do something called governing principles and supporting behaviors. And so the the, the governing principle is the high level, like, why. Right? Why are we doing this?

Why does it matter? And then some people do like having actual rules to follow, and that’s fine. So the supporting behaviors are are kind of those rules. And we empower our team members to circumvent those supporting behaviors if it’s in support of the governing principles, which is ultimately all we care about. So for this particular situation, our governing principles are we wanna keep the human safe.

We wanna keep the machines clean. We want an area that we can be proud of when our customers walk in. Right? And they’re not seeing, you know, food wrappers or things. These are the things that we actually care about.

And then we have some supporting behaviors that are things like don’t keep, open beverages in the you know, that we have a perimeter where the this is the designated build area. Clean up clean up after yourself after you’re finished working in an area, things like that. And, we found that the the team really appreciated the fact that management didn’t just layer on another policy. Right? We had an open conversation about this core value number one, how can we treat the team better, and, that’s that’s worked out really well.

And we use that same philosophy, the governing principles and supporting behaviors in other areas of the company as well.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, I yeah. As you’re as you were saying that I think back to I think it was the seven habits, by Stephen Covey. And and one of the things that he he through his research, he found was that, you know, you can’t be efficient with the people. You can only be effective with the people.

And what brought my mind to that was the fact that, like you said, some people want a bunch of rigid rules, some people don’t. And in fact, every person is different. And so, you know, there are some people who you need to have meetings with often to touch base with them. And there’s other people who you don’t have to have meetings with as much because they’re much more in tune with your what you’re thinking, the way you’re doing things, and it’s kinda like you end up just having the same conversation over and over again. But there are other people who maybe not know as much as, may maybe don’t feel as in tune to this to the, to the to the system.

Maybe they’re a new employee, and it can be very helpful. I it’s amazing the misunderstandings as both as a father and it being in this business that I’ve seen other people have. You know, you try to choose your language, your words, the extra words you use. I’m trying to be aware of the connotations you to attach those words with different age groups even in different areas of the country, and still people can get. And a lot of times, it’s not because of what you’re saying.

It was because of something else they were thinking about when you started talking to them. And so it’s it’s very easy for people to misunderstand, and that’s why I have an open communications. You You know, those companies that have open communications like your company, I think, do very well as far as employee satisfaction because then then, you know, somebody’s not going around with a ruler in a in a pad trying to get people in trouble. People are talking to each other. They’re sharing with their ideas.

They’re sharing the thoughts and and the things they’re running into. And, they get to talk through, like, you just gave in this example. They get to talk through different situations. The other thing I you know, when you as you were talking, I was thinking about too is, you know, it it’s it’s, you know, what do people want? And and a lot of people have said this a lot of different ways.

You you say people want joy. I think people want to feel like they’re part of a team. That that that team and that team has a purpose, a good purpose, a purpose that they can sign up for, they can believe in. So I wanna create test stands that help my customer test their products quickly and efficiently so they’re selling products that work to their customers. And they can’t build a test stand themselves, so we build it for them.

We wanna do the best job we can for them, but we don’t wanna we don’t wanna become slaves to them. We wanna we wanna be able to enjoy, you know, a a good pay, a clean work environment, you know, a happy work environment as we do this very valuable and important thing. And I think most people and I think a lot of times and, again, I you know, with my my youngest son is still in his, late twenties, but some of the jobs he’s worked at and the stories he’s told me, it’s like he’s definitely not feeling like part of a team. You know? You get a college degree.

You go work as an engineer somewhere. And when you don’t feel like a part of the team, there’s really something wrong. Like, he’s had peace jobs during the summer, you know, during college where he he just worked either at a UPS facility or at a at a injection molding place just doing piece work. Right? And you really weren’t there wasn’t a big team.

It was like you had to move so many boxes from here to there. Right? So it was very goal orientated and but, when you’re in an engineering role or a higher level role, management role, you’re working with the sales team or whatever it is, something above just, you know, digging a ditch or moving boxes, something where you’re doing a lot of self work. That team, they feel like you’re all pulling together on the same row. I think for most people is very important, and and that’s what I thought of when you’re talking about joy.

Right? The the joy of work. Right? Is that you guys you’re all pulling for the common for a common goal, and you wanna achieve it, but you also don’t there’s no slavery involved. There’s no, we’re just gonna have to work eighty hours a week, and we’re gonna just gonna have to pay ourselves half as much as the other guy so our customer would be happy.

Of course, that would be ridiculous. But in any case, so that I guess that’s kinda my reaction to what you’re saying. Do you see any of that in, in your facility, in in your business?

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Every single day. Yeah. In fact, we had a customer walked in. This is a few years ago. Right in in the front of our office, as soon as you walk in, there’s a large mural with our core values.

Right? Treat the customer well, treat the team members better, governed by productivity, not bureaucracy, etcetera, etcetera. Mhmm. And as this customer walks in and and he looks at core value number one, treat your customers well, treat your team members better. Mhmm.

And he kind of cocks his head and looks at me and he says, I think you had that backwards. Shouldn’t you be treating your customers the best and then your employees? And I thought it was such an an interesting, statement to make, you know, and I explained my reasoning, which was, ultimately, we of course, we have to treat our customers exceptionally well. We need to bring, profound value to them or or they’re not gonna come back, and we understand that. The best way to accomplish that goal of of treating our customers well and getting them what they want is to treat our team members so well that they are overjoyed to be here doing this work.

I mean, would you if you’re paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to have this custom machine developed, who do you want working on it? The guy who’s just showing up for a paycheck or the guy who loves being there, who who enjoys working with his team members, who feels fulfilled by the work that he does. So it it might sound backwards to some people, but, I mean, if if you flip it and think about who’s gonna be the most effective at at producing value for the end customer, it’s it’s the team members who are being treated really well and are happy there.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And I think a lot of times, we we they we’d people do think that that’s backwards because they think that, you know, this is your job, so you should be, miserable doing it. And and you should wait on your customer like they are the second coming. And it’s like, no. A better situation is the customer is overjoyed to do work with you because they know you’re gonna give them a great product, and they know your staff is exceptional and top top of the top of the industry.

And so they would expect that if you wanna keep your highly talented staff that produces these phenomenal machines, then you’re gonna have to treat them extremely well. You’re gonna have to treat them more than just a customer who’s you know, buy something every once in a while. You gotta treat them like the true members of your team, your family, and that they are the they are the they’re the golden they’re the golden, they’re the goose that lays the golden egg. Right? You can have customers can come and go, but if you don’t have these people producing these awesome pieces of equipment, then what’s left for the company?

And I think we I’ve seen a lot of companies over the years kinda really go down in the tubes because they were treating their people so horribly. They couldn’t get anybody good to stay with them. And that in the in the short run, the the lower price you may be charging may help business. But I think in the long run, you know, if you have just so many different issues with your production, eventually, you’re just not gonna get any more orders. And, yeah, that that’s just what I’ve seen from my experience.

So we’ve talked a lot about these different topics. Right? How how does this or or does this segue us into what you think the most important thing in in in automation is? Like, what is like, if if people are looking at, like, whether you’re an OEM, an integrator, or an end user, I mean, when as we’re focusing on, you know, trying to trying to answer the question we put in the title of the podcast, Have we gotten close to that? Are we ready to talk about what you what you and your company say that is?

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): I think so. Yeah. We’re ready for the grand reveal. This is not gonna be a shock to anyone after we’ve danced around the the topic of culture. The the most underrated skill in automation, in my opinion, is is people, is making people happy and, the the soft skills.

Right? It’s a lot of people you can learn the technical skills at college, but there’s there’s not really or on the job. There are not many places where you can learn the people skills. Right? How to communicate, how to get along, the soft skills of engineering, I like to call them.

There’s a book called Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. And, he cites three pillars of building great culture that ultimately the purpose of culture, right? If we go back to our governing principles and supporting behavior, why do we care about culture? Who cares, right, good culture, bad culture? Well, the reason, the why is because culture leads to good people.

And and that’s ultimately the objective here is is to build wonderful people who are happy about what they do and and understand, you know, how to communicate, how to get along with others. And, in in this book Culture Code, he he talks about three principles that are are most effective for establishing environments, cultures in which people can thrive. And the first one is is build safety. The second one is share vulnerability. And then the third one is establish person purpose.

We’ve talked about, pipelines purpose already. By the way, on the topic of purpose, you know, again, companies some companies will have these just kind of generic, like, platitudes that don’t really mean much. Right? I think the purpose needs to be it needs to be like a just cause, I think is what Simon Sinek calls it. He’s got a couple wonderful books, The Infinite Game and and Start With Why, but he refers to purpose as as a just cause.

It needs to be something that is, transcends just, you know, the the the technical side of work. And so ours promote joy in the lives of our team members. People hear that, and they’re motivated by it. I I’ve I’ve received so many applicants for jobs here who say, hey. I I read about your culture, and I I love it.

I love what you’re doing there. I would love to work there. Like, it means something to people on a deep human level. It’s not just let’s go out and make money. Of course, making money is important too, but, there has to be purpose behind it.

Anyway, I I had a, an example of that first principle, build safety. Right? People need to feel safe in in order to develop their their skills. And unfortunately, there was a time in the past at Pipeline, our company, where, we weren’t doing so hot. You know, there were a few reasons for this, but work was pretty slow.

And, I could see the writing on the wall that, unfortunately, we’re gonna have to let some people go. And, I, this was another another kind of pivotal moment for me as, as a business owner as a because I hadn’t had to do this ever before. Right? And I thought, okay, How how do I do this? How do we do this in a a humane way for our team?

And so the first thing I did was I I told the team what was happening. I said, hey. Everyone was probably aware that we’ve been slow for a while. Here are our financials. Like, I actually show them the the full p and l.

Right? Like, here’s what’s going on. Unfortunately, we’re we’re we’re gonna have to we started with a few furloughs, and I said, we’re gonna have to furlough some people if this doesn’t change in the next thirty days. Mhmm. And I was really reluctant to say that because I didn’t wanna scare people.

Right? I didn’t want people to think, oh, shoot. I’m gonna lose my job. I better just bail right now and go look for something new. I was really worried that that would happen.

I I certainly didn’t wanna lose any of our, like, our our best core team members. But I thought, you know, core value number one, I think the right thing to do is to tell people where we are and what might happen. And, and and sure enough, things did not turn around. And we did have to furlough some people and eventually let some people go. But not a single person was upset with me when they were furloughed or or let go.

In fact, I had so many people on the team contact me and say, hey. I’ve never been at a company where they were this upfront and, like, told us what’s going on. Thank you. None of the core team members left, and, you know, it it sucked that we had to lose some people. But in the end, we were we were stronger for it, and, everyone just really appreciated that that openness.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Yeah. And I I can think back to some of the great people I worked with who, you know, went through at our monthly meetings and talked about earnings before interest and taxes and, you know, revenues and, you know, really helps you I think it’s easy for somebody to just assume that this is a big company. They just make lots of money, and I just come show up eight to five, and everything’s gonna be great. And and in most cases, that’s not the case.

Now the bigger the company, the less visibility you’ll have into that. But, you know, the smaller company, the more visibility you have into that. And I think that’s important. And, you know, a lot of times, you know, this this cycles to the economy. Things go up and those goes down, and people have you know?

Most companies I’ve worked with, they’ve been layoffs over time. So it’s not it’s never pleasant, but it’s part of it’s part of the cyclic economy that, we’re we’re we’ve been through this this last last many decades. That said, I feel like we’ve left something out. Is there anything else you wanted to bring up before we wrap up and talk about I wanna talk about your podcast again. I wanna talk about the expo again.

But, what are the things as far as, you know, people? And that that really it’s people and culture that are the most important things in in our industry today. Do you wanna Yeah. Can you expand on that at at all?

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Yeah. Yeah. There are a couple of specific, topics or or principles that I’ve noticed, a pattern over the years with with engineers, when it comes to their nontechnical skills, right, their communication skills. One is that engineers generally don’t love asking for help. And it’s not because they’re prideful.

It’s because as technical professionals, what we love doing is solving problems.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm.

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): So it’s fun for us to sit and, like, work through a problem and just, you know, spend whatever time we need to solving that problem. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work so well on the commercial side of things. Right? So a skill that I try to cultivate here at Pipeline and with engineering groups that I I I speak at is, the skill of asking for help early. There there’s a a non engineering example I have.

I have engineering examples as well, but, I don’t wanna throw anyone under the bus. So I’ll share a non engineering example. My team and myself, we were at a a large trade show a couple years ago, And, I had recently purchased a, a Rivian R1T truck, and I I love the Rivian. I won’t I’m not afraid to admit it. I’m a fanboy.

I love the company. I love the product. I love everything about it. But it was my first EV. And, I I wasn’t super familiar with it yet.

So here we are at, the hotel in the morning getting ready to leave to go to the trade show, and I could not get the charger out of the port. We’re, you know, we didn’t wanna pull too hard, of course. Yeah. And, you know, we’re engineers who are like, okay. There’s a latch in there and the mechanism’s not disengaging.

How do we get it off? And, I mean, we we were starting to get to the point where, like, we’re getting flashlights and tools out. We’re about to take things apart. Right? And we probably spent, like, ten minutes trying to figure this out and and didn’t figure it out.

And when I saw the toolbox come out and I was like, alright. Hold hold on, guys. Let’s let’s not do that. We just called Rivian support and we said, this is what’s happening. How do we get it out?

And in five seconds, they told us how to get that charge charger out of the port. It was so simple. It was just something that I had neglected to do because I wasn’t super familiar with it. But the point is spend some time trying to figure it out on your own. Build that muscle because that is important, but don’t spend an obscene amount of time trying to figure it out yourself.

Ask someone who knows how to do it. Try for whatever a reasonable period of time is, and that depends on the scope of the task. Right? Might be thirty minutes. It might be a few hours.

May might be a few days, but but ask for help soon. It’s it’s okay to do that. And it it will be so much better for you and your business if you can learn to do that. Another one of these soft skills is apologizing when you’re wrong. You know, we all make mistakes.

It’s understandable. It’s expected. We’re human. We make mistakes. That’s fine.

Just apologize when you’ve made a mistake. Another non engineering example of this long time ago, probably twenty years ago, I was driving down the road, came to a stoplight, and it was turning red. And so I I, I I changed lanes probably kind of abruptly. I can’t remember why I didn’t change lanes, but I did. And then I stopped at the light.

And all of a sudden, I see this motorcyclist come up on the side of me. And he’s yelling and he’s gesticulating and and I realize he’s he’s looking at me. Right? He’s this big dude tattooed up, like, not the kind of guy I would wanna mess with. I’m not a a big guy myself.

I was like, oh, crap. What have I done? And I rolled my window down. He said, you cut me off. You almost, you know, side swiped me out of my motorcycle.

You could have caused an accident here. And I realized that he was right. I I I didn’t, like, check before, not well enough. And I just said first thing I said was, I’m so sorry. You’re totally right.

It’s my fault. I’m in the bad. Are are you okay? And it was amazing how this guy went from a level 10 of of anger and fury down to zero just like that. He said, I’m okay.

Don’t worry about it. And that was it. Right? A simple apology. These things, they seem small, but the soft skills, they matter so so much.

The last one I wanna talk about is being a a principle that that, I teach here at Pipeline called being respectfully aggressive. Now time is a big deal in our industry. We need to get things done fast. And it seems like the the the more the years march by, the the faster, our customers’ expectations are that that we can get things done. And this partially goes back to asking for help.

Right? There there there’s a way to ask for things to be done more quickly and a way to to not I’m gonna go back to Rivian here, my my fanboy. So they have, mobile servicing that they’ll do for your vehicle if something’s wrong. There was something wrong with my vehicle, and I called up and said, hey. I’d love for your mobile, servicing to come out.

And they said, great. We’re about a month out right now. I was like, ugh, a month. I don’t It wasn’t a critical item, so I said, okay. Fine.

I’ll I’ll wait for a month. But then I thought, you know, I’d really love to get this taken care of sooner than a month. And I I called them back the next day, and I said, hey. I’m scheduled for a month from now, but is there any way we could do it, like, next week? And I was super nice about this.

Right? Respectfully aggressive. And, they said, you know what? Not the mobile, but I think we might be able to get you in, like, in the shop if if you could do that. I said, that’s not ideal, but sure.

I’ll do that so I can get in earlier. And, then I thought, you know, we scheduled it for, like, the the following Thursday or something. They said, next Thursday is a lot better than a a month from now, but, yeah, I sure would like to get it taken care of even earlier than that. So I I I think this time I may have texted them or something. I was like, hey.

I’m scheduled for next Thursday. There’s probably no way you can do this, and I totally understand. You’ve got, you know, plenty of customers that you’re supporting. Is there any way that I could maybe get in Monday instead? And they said, you know what?

We’re not sure if we can get you in Monday, but give us a few hours to look into it, and and we’ll get back to you. So this was on a, a, a Thursday that I had sent this last message. The next morning, Friday, a mobile tech shows up at my house. And he says, we had a cancellation. We saw your notes, and I’m here.

So it went from a month out to next Thursday to requesting next Monday to the very next day, Friday. And so this this principle of re being respectfully aggressive, it can dramatically move the needle in your projects. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had vendors say, it’s gonna take us three weeks to get this part to you. And I’ll be like, guys, respectfully aggressive. Call them up.

Be nice about it, but let them know what we want, what we need, and and ask them not can this be done, but how can we get this part by, you know, two days from now or or or whatever it is. And it it has moved mountains, that principle being respectfully aggressive. So those are a few of the common themes that I’ve seen when it comes to, like, the soft skills of engineering and and people development.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, and I I would add to that too. A lot of times, it’s it’s so easy to assume the other person knows your state of mind or knows your urgency, but that’s not always true. And I’ve I’ve I know in just in my history of people upset they needed a PLC quickly, but when they called and they said, do you have that PLC? It’s like, no.

They’re back ordered for a month. They just said, oh, okay. And they hung up, and then they get all mad with their with their staff. And it was like, woah. If you told me this is emergency, I mean, there’s several different things we can do.

If you just want a plain Jane one off the shelf, you don’t wanna pay any special shipping or yeah. Then, yeah, they’re backed up a month. But if you have an emergency, let’s say you have to you have to bill it this week or you have to install it this weekend or, you know, you’re in a down situation. There’s like, look. You have to tell us if you’re down.

If you’re down, we do anything. We’ll take it out of our out of the showroom. We’ll we’ll go to another customer who has spears and buy one back. I mean, don’t assume that the the person you talked to knows again, maybe they just get off the phone with a a family member. Maybe there’s some hardship going on in the family.

Maybe somebody got hurt. Maybe somebody’s in an accident. Don’t assume that they’re a 100% dialed in. You know, if you have an urgent need, you know, be respectful like you said, but be aggressive too. Don’t settle for no right away.

And, and and, you know, sometimes, no matter how how forceful you are, it doesn’t change it doesn’t change the situation. But, in any case, I agree with that. The you know, another thing too is, asking for help and then sharing sharing what you learn. Right? I think these are very important things.

So I used to love going to the factory, talking to the product managers, and then coming back and sharing that with the engineers, saying, oh, there’s this new thing you could do here. You like, you’re Arabian. You may not this isn’t obvious, but you’re gonna love it because it’s gonna save you tons of time. So you go here, you do this, and then look at what that gives you. Right?

And so you can always have insight into why the software is designed a certain way. But if you know of a trick or a feature or something that you can do to to make lives easier, then share it. And I know there were so many cultures that I got the experience where sharing information you know, The people always thought that I can’t share any of my secrets because when it comes time for the layoffs, you know, I gotta be show that I have value and that I know things other people don’t. And, you know, god bless you if that’s what you think, but that’s not I’ve never been that way. Share everything.

Save people pain. Save people agony. Help them be more efficient. You know? Be be a true team member.

Nobody wants a ball hog. I played basketball as a kid. Nobody wants a ball hog. They want people who are gonna pass it to whoever’s open. Right?

That’s right. Absolutely. Attitude. But, also, you know, I have this, issue with my car. I have a I’m a Dodge Charger owner, and the damper wasn’t closing.

So in the summer, it’s only 95 here in the summer, not a hundred hundred and ten. But in any case, the dampers weren’t closing, and it’s been this way for a while. And I’m like, ugh. I don’t wanna take apart all the different now I’m thinking that one of the the the the ducks is stuck and there’s maybe some leaves or something in there. And I’m like, this is gonna be nightmarish.

You know, should I get one of those telescock telescoping, cameras to go through all the ducks if I could find it? And so I was really just dreading it. And then I said, I’m gonna research this. Maybe I’ll get lucky. Right?

Maybe it’s in in in this in researching, I found it was a $30 part. It was actually a humidity sensor that’s mounted right on the side of my my mirror on my dashboard that stops that from closing. And I’m like, really? In literally ten minutes, I had it off and back on, And now I have cool air conditioning again.

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Beautiful.

Shawn Tierney (Host): And it’s like, if I hadn’t if I hadn’t I just imagine I could dismantle all the ducks, taking apart the dashboard. I could have done so many things. You know, wasted so much time just to find out, you know, just with the you know, hey. I and then a lot of times, you don’t have luck when you search on these things. You don’t find the answer you’re looking for.

I know it’s frustrating, but, you know, if you know somebody, you can call them and ask them. I think that’s when humans are best is when we’re working with each other, helping each other, and and also educating each other on these type of things. So just a couple stories to add to what you are talking about.

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): I love it. Thank you for adding, though, Shawn. Yeah.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Now I wanna make sure as we come to the end of the show, I do wanna make sure we cover, the expo again. So let’s go through that, and then we’ll talk a little bit about your podcast before we close out. So, give us all the details again. If somebody just tuned in or maybe didn’t have a pen when we talked about it earlier, now they’re they’re ready to text themselves, so they got a pen to write this down on. Tell us the details about the expo one more time.

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Yeah. The the innovative format that we’re doing here is, again, you’re not showing up and just getting a a brochure or, a flyer from a vendor. You’re receiving meaningful training on technical topics. Right? So I talked a little bit about there’s like FEA and, PCB design and programming robots and motion control, linear motors, GD and T, all these different things.

We we have we have, I think, 35 instructors, and some of these instructors are actually teaching two topics. So there are, call it, I don’t know, 35 plus, maybe 40 ish different, training topics that you can sign up for. There’s a event website. And once you register for the event, you have access to the event website where you can see all of the different training sessions. You can see the training sessions even before you register, of course, but you can see the time slots where all those different training sessions are scheduled.

You sign up for as many as you want. Conceivably, you could do up to a dozen. It’s a two day event, six hours per day, and each of these training sessions is thirty to sixty minutes. So it’s kind of a crash course. Some of them are are more basic one zero one type courses.

Others are more advanced, you know, graduate level, call it, courses for the, academic analogy. And and and that’s it. So, just outside of Phoenix, Arizona, October, that’s a Tuesday and a Wednesday, show up, and and we’re gonna have a good time in person. It’s all about learning and education, connecting with other like minded engineers. The focus is really on on really truly practical information and knowledge that that you can go back to work and start using right away and sharing with with your team members.

Many of the, exhibitors are are gonna be giving away, tools or materials that you can take back and and share with your team so that you’re not the only one who benefits from this training.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And so, give us the website again.

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Pdexpo.engineer. So pdexp0.engineer.

Shawn Tierney (Host): And, guys, I will try to get that in the show notes. So wherever you’re watching or listening, whether it be YouTube or Spotify, iTunes, the automation blog, you’ll have access to those links so you don’t have to write all that down. But I did want you to go through it. A lot of people do listen or they’re walking the dog or mowing the grass or whatever. And so I wanted to make sure we gave that out.

Very easy to remember, folks. But please check that out. So valuable training. I think you said it was, $2.95. It’s very difficult to find at that price point.

And check out the website and see if there’s something either for yourself or maybe for one of your junior people that would make sense, especially if you’re in driving distance. But even for that price, it’s, and, typically, the hotels in that area are fairly reasonable because of where it’s located. It sound like you’re, you know, New York City. Right?

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Or Right.

Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, downtown. Right? So in any case, check it out and, let if you do attend or you have somebody attend, let us know. We want your feedback. I know we got a several weeks here before it actually takes, takes off, but I will remember that we had this podcast.

So please feel free to come back to the show on any platform and leave your comments. Let me know what you think. And, you know, if I was in the area, I’d definitely be checking it out. With that said, let’s talk a little bit about your podcast before we end here. So you you mentioned it earlier.

What is it’s an engineering podcast. So tell us a little bit about what is the podcast, what’s it called, what do you cover, and where can people tune in?

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): It’s called being an engineer, and you can find it on all the major podcast platforms, Apple, Spotify, etcetera, etcetera. And this this whole thing started, over five years ago. So we’re in season six right now. We have over 300 episodes that are out there. We release a new episode every week, and we just interview engineers, largely senior level engineers, but sometimes we’ll have newer engineers in there as well.

And we ask them about how they do their work. You know, what are some pro tips, some insights that you can share with us to help us work better, to help us become better at, this this profession of engineering. And, there’s some some really cool episodes out there. There’s, we have the the founder of SolidWorks, John Hirschdick. He was a guest.

We had, the, the flight director for the Mars Curiosity Mission, David Oh, from, JPL, the Jet Propulsion Lab. He had some really cool stories about, you know, being the first person to see this, rover land on on Mars and living on Martian time for, like, six weeks as as the, rocket flew up there. Yeah. So, anyway, lots of episodes out there. We don’t we don’t get super technical.

Occasionally, we will go into a a technical topic and talk about it a little bit, but it’s it’s it’s more along the lines of, how do you do your work and and what are some pro tips that you can share with the rest of us.

Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s awesome. That’s great. So, guys, check that out. I know I only do a podcast. We we don’t we don’t do one every day of the week.

So, I love having other podcasters on to talk about what they have because I know most of us have 10 commutes per week we need to fill up with a podcast or 10 you know, five days or seven days a week we had to walk the dog or whatever you do when you do your podcast. But in any case, Aaron, I wanna thank you so much for coming on, and I wanna wish you a lot of, success with the event. And I would love to have you back on in the future to talk about, you know, what you’ve learned over the coming months and what happened at the event and also, talk more about your podcast and maybe start go over some of your favorite episodes with other different engineers. But for now, I think we’re gonna wrap it up. I’m looking at the time.

Aaron, thank you again for coming on the automation podcast.

Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Thank you so much, Shawn. I appreciate you having me on.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I hope you guys enjoyed our conversation. I know I enjoyed talking to Aaron about all those different topics. And I also wanna thank Pipeline for sponsoring this episode so we could release it to you completely ad free. Thank you, Pipeline. We really appreciate your support.

Also, don’t forget there’s a $50 off coupon on your screen now. If you wanna go to the PDXpo, check it out. You don’t find many, two day training sessions that cost just $295. Also, don’t forget to check out Aaron’s podcast and tell him we sent you. He has a lot of great guests that have been on.

He has over 300 episodes. And, it may be something you guys enjoy watching or listening to. And with that, I just wanna thank you guys again for tuning in. I wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace.

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Paul Scott of Inductive Automation to learn all about this year’s Ignition Community Conference in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 242 Show Notes:Special thanks to Inductive Automation for sponsoring this episode so we could release it ad free on all platforms! To learn more about the Ignition Community Conference, see the below links:* Ignition Community Conference * Download Ignition * Inductive University – Learn Ignition for free * The Forum: Talk to the Ignition Community * Schedule An Ignition Demo

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Thank you for tuning back in. It’s Shawn here from Insights and Automation. And in this episode of the automation podcast, I meet up with Paul Scott from Inductive Automation to learn all about the Ignition Community Conference. Now if you’re like me and you like going to these things, meeting other users and learning what’s new and coming out for the product, then I think you’ll enjoy this episode.

And, you know, if you use Ignition or you’re thinking about using it, you really should consider looking into the community conference because it’s a unique once a year event that, really allows you to get a look at the not only the product, but their partners and talk to other users of the software. Now if you are interested, I’m gonna include all the top links in the description in the show notes so you’ll have them on whatever platform you’re viewing or listening on. And I also wanna thank Inductive for sponsoring this episode so it would be ad free, both the video and audio editions. So thank you very much to them because we always like it when it’s ad free. Right?

With that said, let’s go ahead and jump into this week’s episode of the automation podcast and learn all about the Ignition Community Conference. I wanna welcome to the show Paul from Inductive. I’m so excited to have you guys on. This is the third appearance from somebody from Inductive on the show. And, before we start talking about the upcoming conference, which I’ve covered in years past, before we start covering that, could you introduce yourself to our audience?

Paul Scott (Ignition): Sure thing. Yeah. Thanks, Shawn. Happy to be here. So, yeah, my name is Paul Scott.

I joined Inductive Automation in 2013 as a tech support rep. And then I, a couple years later, switched over to an instructor role, which sort of got me into documentation, which is where I currently am right now. I oversee our technical documentation as well as, our video library, Inductive University. I like to tell people that’s my day job. The reason I’m here today, is, because of the conference.

So I also help out with managing content for our annual conference, the Ignition Community Conference or ICC, as you’ll you’ll only say a whole lot. So

Shawn Tierney (Host): yeah. That’s cool. And now I’ve covered it in the past. You guys do so much cool stuff, but I don’t you know, because it’s, you know, I think a lot of the audience have been to, you know, maybe more regional shows they may not be as familiar with. You know?

What we find a lot in our industry is a lot of people don’t get to travel to every show. There’s so many that go on through at least just even North America, never mind the entire world. And so can you tell them a little bit about, you know, what the show is like, what there is to do if they go, and, you know, just from there, tell us about the the the conference.

Paul Scott (Ignition): Sure. Yeah. I if you’ve never been to ICC before, I’d like to tell you that it’s probably a little bit different than a lot of these sort of industry, conferences you go to. So Mhmm. It’s got a lot more of a familiar vibe.

It it’s well, it started actually in 2013. It was actually started the year I joined the company, but, hilariously, I joined a couple months late. So I missed the first one. It’s the only one I missed. But yeah.

No. It’s, it is a a conference that has been growing over the years, and it’s kinda it has a very close knit feel to it, which is something we’ve always kind of loved. It’s a great opportunity for us to just meet members of the community and people use the software, from all different parts of the industry, all different parts of the world, and really kinda connect and share ideas. And so yeah. No.

There’s I wanna say it definitely started off as just sort of like a professional sort of conference, right, where we’re talking about the software, talking about the company, what’s coming up, over the next year, and then we have, you know, community members come out and share their ideas, share their projects they worked on and stuff like that. And it has evolved quite a bit. There’s still that. There’s still this professional sort of aspect to it. But, yeah, as you could sort of alluded to earlier, there’s there’s we like to have a little bit of fun too.

So, I think one of the sort of standout activities or or sessions, you’ll you’ll find at

Shawn Tierney (Host): the conference is the Buildathon, which we’ve been doing for I don’t know how many years now. But it’s, yeah. So just just to give your your

Paul Scott (Ignition): your viewers an idea, it’s it started off as an idea of we had two members of our company. It’s Travis Cox and Kevin McCluskey. These are two individuals that have been using the software for a long, long time. Very brilliant. They do all kinds of crazy cool stuff.

They they help build customer solutions or or they did. They do they do a lot of other stuff nowadays. But, both just like wizards with the software. And so we thought, hey. Let’s put them on the stage and have them just try to, like, compete against each other.

And then it, like, turned into this whole thing where we’re doing, like, on social media. It’s like, oh, team Kevin, team Travis. And there’s, like, music videos and diss tracks being thrown around. There’s, like, props. There’s costumes.

And and the there’s a couple of, sort of, I guess, staples of of the session, which would be, one, there’s usually a musical act of some sort. I don’t wanna put them on the on on the hook for for this year, but, it it started the first year where there’s we had our host, Kent Mills, another another, wonderful guy who works with the company here. And, he was sort of the acting MC, for for the whole event. Right? So while Kevin and Travis are kinda building you know, I just watch people staring at a computer for, like, forty five minutes or an hour.

It’s kinda boring. Right? So so Ken’s up has, like, this tall order of, like, entertaining the entire conference while that’s going on. So one of the things he did is he started singing a song and kinda got the whole crowd involved in it. And that so then that evolved to, like, oh, okay.

Cool. Let’s do that again. And so we started making, like, music videos. We put together. We call it the, the IA, Inductive Automation Band.

And so just a bunch of employees who have some sort of musical background, and we’ve made music videos. And it’s been kinda crazy. So that that’s kind of the spirit of of what the Build a Thon is. Right? Like and then they’re always trying new stuff and always getting kind of excited.

So usually, that was one thing I recommend folks check out or maybe a reason to to kind of attend is the sort of this, like, industry conference that has this really fun, lighthearted sort of, session there. So but, yeah. No. That’s that’s is that aside from that, I mean, there’s a lot of different activities to come and check out. Something we’re doing new this year that I’m I’m actually kinda happy to talk about, is we’re so we have a new room that we’re bringing to the the venue.

We’re calling it the CoLab because we like it’s short collaborative lab.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah.

Paul Scott (Ignition): We like work we like our wordplay. And so we’re trying to turn this room into sort of a, kind of a hands on sort of room. Right? So a lot of conferences, they’re very passive. Right?

Like, you’re you’re there. You’re there to listen. You’re there to maybe converse with folks if you get a chance to, but there’s usually a lot of things to watch. Right? But, you know, we we have this conference, and it’s about software.

It’s like, well, should probably do something with the software or try to get some more hands on

Shawn Tierney (Host): time

Paul Scott (Ignition): with it. Right? Yeah. So in the collab, we’re we have two activities planned. One is the community design challenge.

And the whole point of that is we have our instruction team who who teach our classes, and they handle our certification tests and all that fun stuff. They’re they are cooking up a bunch of challenges that need to be solved in Ignition. So the idea is that they’re gonna give you a bunch of, like, very small prompts, very, very small, like Yeah. Specifications and say, hey, can you build a solution in Ignition that does x y z? And the idea is to have you do within half an hour or so.

We don’t want you to sit in all day feeling like you’re building a project when you’re at a conference. Right? And, once you complete it, we’ll both check you off, and they’ll add a point to your team. And we’re gonna have everyone who participates on one of three teams. So kinda channeling the spirit of the bill a thon.

I just talked to someone. Yeah. Yeah. And have the community kind of work against each other and also together, I suppose, you could say when you’re talking about within teams. And we’ll now see the winning team at the end of it.

We’re gonna have a whole bunch of challenges on every day so people can come back. If they wanted, we keep kinda showing off solutions or kind of, like, challenging themselves. So, really excited. It’s the first time we’re doing it this year, but hoping it it kind of brings some very creative ideas and then see what people can show off. Right?

So so that’s one of the activities. The other activity in the collab would be the huddles we’re calling them or community huddles we’re also calling them. So, think of, like, a science fair. You have a bunch of people kind of presenting thing work they’ve done. Right?

And then the audience, they kinda walk around. That’s kind of the vibe we’re going for. So so the idea is to get, like, speakers who are coming to the conference, vendors that are coming, thought leaders, people who aren’t even really presenting something, but they had something really cool that they wanted to show off to the community. Right? Like, they built some really cool application that does something really neat.

And then we saw it was like, oh, that’s really cool. The idea is to have them come hang out for an hour at a time. We’ll have a whole bunch of them in the same again, in the collab, and they’ll just kinda show off demo, whatever it is they worked on. If they’re speakers, they’ll just kinda be there to hang out and maybe talk about their presentation. So, you know, if, maybe you sat in on their session and maybe you couldn’t maybe you had a question you wanted to ask, but maybe you couldn’t get into it because, you know, maybe you ran out of time or whatever.

Hey. You can come say hi to them afterwards. Come maybe ask a question, interact with them. Yeah. You know, kinda you have a good chance to kinda mingle and meet with a speaker.

Right? So good opportunity to sort of meet people that you who are presenting ideas or doing other fun stuff at the conference. So really excited to see how that’s, gonna play out this year. So hope hope you folks will enjoy that.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. I think go ahead. I know.

Paul Scott (Ignition): No. I was gonna say, I have more I can cover. I just don’t know if you want me to keep going.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. No. Let me let me stop there. So Sure. You know, for the build a thon, I remember covering it the last couple of years for the new show.

And, you know, it just I thought it was just so incredible. So, you know, this is a very serious business. Industrial automation, that’s you know, I know your your stuff can be used outside of industrial automation, but industrial automation, it’s very serious. And when you’re working with custom machine builders or integrators, you actually can have some fun because you get to see the vision of what can be done with control systems and how they can take a process that was maybe costing a company money to turning it around to being profitable. And just I always like watching machines in motion, you know, whether it’s a bottling line or robot arms or palletizers, depalletizers, whatever.

And, but it’s just it’s just it’s like it’s like building, one of those Goldberg machines, but that actually has a purpose that does something positive. Right? It’s not just to be, you know, a where’s the for the eyes. It’s it’s actually to be something that that changes the life and make things possible. And, you know, I get frustrated with some some older folks who are like, automation is bad as they sit there holding their smartphone, which they live on and could not be created without any automation.

So but in any case, the HMI skate a part of our Ignition and other packages like it. It’s a place where we can use a lot of create creativity that we don’t usually get to use unless we’re building something for a trade show. We we get to use on the controller side and you know? And so a lot of times, you know, those of us who love using those packages, we like to be creative. I know at a conference that kinda turned into a corporate thing and then got canceled.

But conference I used to go to go to back in the day, I would we would we would challenge each other to build stuff and, like, I would build video games. Right? Pong, multiplayer Pong using a client server based system and, you know, you know, the interface from Star Trek or, you know, Space Invaders inside of a SCADA package. You know, I would it was just a way to kinda let go and have fun and, you know, talk to colleagues, and I really, really miss those times. And so you guys have captured that, put it in a bottle.

And I like that the Build A Thon, how you invite all your integrators to kinda take part in it. And, like, a lot of it can be pre you know, done before the show, and then, you know, you have your finalists to actually do something at the show. And if did that change, or is that still the same way?

Paul Scott (Ignition): It’s still the same way. Yeah.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Okay. Yeah. I think that’s so smart because it gets the whole community involved, but, you know, there’s not time for everybody to do that at the show. But with the with the collabs, I can definitely see even end users and OEMs and other people getting involved where they may not be an authorized integrator, but they they they are, you know, passionate about the product, and they wanna they wanna show off, or just have fun and and see if they can they can build anything in the time allotted. So I think your guys are really capturing the spirit and and innovation, ingenuity of your users and keeping that community.

You said that the the the event seems like, very friendly, like, very familiar. It’s probably because you, you know, you have good customers and they keep coming back, and they keep learning, and you’re responsive to their request. We used to follow your your releases every or your point releases and what you would add, and you guys are very responsive to feedback. Again, we all know from the product side, you can’t add every request that somebody has. Sometime just like when you program in a POC, sometimes they’re like, well, can you just have it go from there to there?

That sounds so easy. It’s like, none of the equipment can actually move from there to there, so that’s impossible. Right? So, I really love what you guys are doing with that. I wish more people on an issue would do that.

I just think it’s and I remember times in the past where I was involved with things like that. It was just so much fun, but also that camaraderie you have and and, you know, just everybody’s working together to make the product better and find new uses for the product innovate in a ways innovative ways to use it. So, it’s pretty exciting, and I appreciate you going over that stuff for you. Now before we go any further, we should probably I should probably have you tell us where it is in the date because, the last thing I wanna do is wait till the end to say that because sometimes people, they don’t get to finish the podcast. They get to work.

They have to pause it. Maybe they won’t come back. So can you share with us the, the date and where it’s located?

Paul Scott (Ignition): Absolutely. Yeah. So the conference opens, Tuesday, September 16. K. In the last three days.

Right? So we’ll go all the way to Thursday. And the venue is gonna be the Safe Credit Union, which is in Sacramento, California. This is actually pretty notable year for us because this is the first time where we we’ve gone to that venue, actually. The the conference has always been in Folsom, California in the Harris Center, which is a fantastic, location, but it’s, it’s one of those things where the conference has just been growing year after year after year.

It’s like, alright. We gotta we gotta try to find somewhere a little bit larger to go. So really excited. Really excited for it.

Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s awesome. So we’ve covered those parts of the conference. Are there other things we should talk about? Like, are there any pre camp, people coming in to do talks, or is there any, like, hands on training? Or what else are you guys doing at this conference?

Paul Scott (Ignition): Sure. Yeah. So there’s gonna be a large number of talks, which I’m really excited about. Something we’ve introduced in the past and I encourage people to participate with this year is, this table talks activity, which is if you’ve ever heard of what a non conference is, it’s kind of our sort of telling of it. But it’s basically an opportunity for attendees to sort of suggest topics that they wanna talk about and try to have, like, a targeted group discussion.

So the idea is that, you know, people suggest ideas. Hey. I wanna talk about x y z. I wanna talk about, you know, UNS or, you know, whatever. Right?

Mhmm. We’ll put that up on a schedule, and then attendees will say, oh, okay. I can go talk about that at this time. And then it’s lightly moderated. Basically, we have someone in the room to kinda, like, start things off, but then the idea is to back off and then and it’s becoming kind of discussion.

People can kinda go wherever they want fit. In the past, that has been sort of the source of inspiration for future sessions that have Okay. Have have come up at the conference. Right? So so I highly recommend people come check that out.

Aside from that, we’re also collaborating with the private conference that actually happened earlier this year. I don’t know if you’re if you’re reserved familiar with it, but I’ll just do, like, a very quick overview. So yeah. No. It’s it’s the the main sort of, the interesting thing about Pruvit is that they ask their vendors to basically prove that their solutions work, which is where the name Pruvit kinda comes from.

So, yeah, they they basically create a this entire conference where they create a virtual factory, they call it. So they have, you know, namespaces and all kind of data points that all the vendors are supposed to connect to, and they’re supposed to, like, build a solution that works with that virtual factory, and then they demonstrate how it solves, you know, modern solutions or modern or modern problems, how it solves those. Right? So that that’s kind of the fun thing is, like, it’s not just the vendor going on stage and say, hey. Buy my product.

It’s like, okay. Cool. But what did it do? Like, what did you do with it? That that’s the that’s the main thing.

So we’re partnering with them this year, to basically kinda take over our old exhibitor showcases, and they’re kinda running it with their style. We’re really excited to see what they do with it and kinda how they, you know, sort of force the the these these solutions to kinda, like, adhere to some standard. So I’m gonna come check out a couple of those talks. Right? They’re gonna be, you know, presentation style so you can kinda see what’s going on.

But the idea is people will kinda show off their solutions. And and, yeah, you get to see how they how they’re supposed to work in a real

Shawn Tierney (Host): kinda, I say real world setting, but, obviously, it’s virtual, but you get the idea. So, yeah, I’d say that’s another exciting thing to come check out. Yeah. Now I know I wasn’t able I’m not able to get out there, just because of the timing. But your company did say, well, Shawn, we’ll give you a virtual pass so you can share what you learn with the audience, and I appreciate that.

Thank you. Could you describe that, though? So I’ve never been to your conference virtually. So, could you describe to our audience what that and there may be people here on the East Coast or down south who won’t be able to get out to the West Coast, for the show. What what is the virtual pass?

Paul Scott (Ignition): Sure. Yeah. So, you know, I’m I’m trying to talk about all these other fun activities that are there at the venue, but, obviously, those those are kinda like side, you know, sides to the main event, which would be all of our sessions, all all of the, all the talks we’re gonna give you. Right? So the virtual pass would would really I like to check out the streams that we’re gonna do.

Right? So you’ll be able to see these sessions play out the entire conference schedule, play out live. It also gives you access to recordings of them. So say for example, you know, talk comes up at a certain time, you’re busy, you got some other stuff going on, that’s fine. You can always sign back into the platform later on and check out the recording much sooner than, the videos are normally publicly available.

Normally, we make all of our conference content, like, the recordings available the following year just because we do some cleanup, with them before we start them on our website. So so, yeah, it’s just a great opportunity to be able to check out all of the sessions. And I’d say, you know, that’s that’s definitely one of the main or really the one of the few gripes I ever kinda hear about the conference is that there’s too much to do. Like, there’s too many talks going on, so people can’t do everything, which is true for a lot of conferences. You know what I mean?

I got I’m gonna do it in so many places. So, yeah, the that pass is a great way to make sure you’re able to to to see all the different talks. So

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. I think that that is there’s always it’s, you could spend hours at some of these conferences prior to the conferences trying to map out the perfect the perfect. And then it gets blown up when you see somebody in the hallway in between sessions, and you’re like, I’m gonna miss what I you know, my main thing. But, anyways yeah. Yeah.

So no. That’s good. That’s very good. And, so if anybody if especially if you’re using the product or looking at using the product and you really wanna get up to speed to learn more, find out what’s happening in the community, that’s a good alternative. And if the boss won’t let you out of work, at least you can catch the replays afterwards and, which is which is great, you know, and you still can feel like you’re you came up to speed, you know, without having to take a flight out there, which it would be better that, like, obviously, to do everything in person.

But, sometimes, especially end users, they just it’s hard to get out of the plant. You know? And I shouldn’t say just that. End users, oh, yeah. It’s integrated.

It can be it can be difficult to to travel halfway across the country and, you know, get that approved. But, hopefully hopefully, you’ll have a lot of people from the East Coast representing representing us. And, in any case so it just sounds like a great time. Sounds like a fun time. It’s coming up quick, so the people interested should try to sign up soon.

What else do should we talk about about the conference?

Paul Scott (Ignition): Well, you know, you you mentioned a little bit earlier, about sort of, the creativity of folks in this space. You you kinda Yeah. You kinda talk about making video games and stuff like that in in different systems. It’s kinda funny you mentioned that because one of the other activities we have is our we call it our SCADA arcade. So this Really?

Yeah. So this this started off as, like, a project in our tech support division as sort of, like, a product knowledge development program where it’s like, hey. Make a video game in Ignition. Right? Which which is a little challenging because it’s not you know, it doesn’t have a lot of tools you’d find in, like, a modern, like, game engine.

But, like, you know, that’s that’s engineers do great with with challenges like that, right, which is, I think, kinda to your point. So, yeah, we’re so, you know, in the past, we’ve basically brought these games that our support engineers have worked on just so people can check it out. This year, we’re returning to a larger room. We’re gonna try to have some some physical games there too so people can kinda play around and check it out. But, yeah, so that’s making a return.

That that ended up being kind of a fan favorite, that that came out there. And then, I would also say, something else we’re doing this year is, we’re creating a room called The Hub. So one of the things we found it’s kind of funny running a a conference. This is something I didn’t really realize, but, there’s just a lot going on. And it turns out a lot of the attendees might wanna actually chat with someone.

Shawn Tierney (Host): From Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Paul Scott (Ignition): And, it’s really hard when, like, you know, a good chunk of of your company is also running around, like, helping, facilitate the, the the conference. So we decided, alright. Let’s make a little room where we’re just gonna have people from different teams, you know, so, like, our support division or sales engineering, stuff like that. If you wanted to go talk to them or ask some questions. We’ll even have our product managers from software engineering.

So if you wanted to, like, you know, mention, like, pinpoints or suggestions for ideas, there will be people there that you can kinda just chat and say hi. So, definitely recommend checking that out too. Just it’s a good way to kind of interact with the company. And I think that’s something that maybe a lot of your audience, a lot of attendees maybe don’t really realize that the conference is kind of a selfish thing for us because it’s a good opportunity for us to, like, talk to the folks that use the conference. That ends up being a huge draw for us.

We we have a really strong community around the software. Right? And we we feel very blessed with it, you know, because there’s a lot of organizations out there that, you know, people have some not so nice things to say about the company for one reason or another. Right? But it it seems like we have some some really true true fans.

So the conference is a is a fantastic time for us to really make sure we’re still connected to those folks where we’re still interacting. Like, you you sort of commented a little bit about us, like, reaching out to our community and interact with them. And so this is that’s really where that’s really why we’re here doing it every year is just we just like chatting with people and and throwing a little party where you can come and tell us what they’re working on. And and, it it it it it honestly, it motivates a lot of folks at the company. It also is a great introduction for a lot of folks because it’s maybe one of the things that’s a little less obvious, but maybe maybe once you think about it, it makes sense, is that, you know, we we’re a software company, which I know that seems kinda weird for me to say.

But we’re we’re definitely, like, kind of we’re sort of like a step removed from the people that are using the software. Right? Like, we’re kind of a step at least a step or two away from from integration companies. Right? So the conference is a great way to say, hey.

Come talk to these end users. Come talk to these integrators. See what they do with our software. Yeah. Right?

Because that’s something that’s a little bit harder to capture, on their own at at IA. So we we like to make sure we’re talking with community members and sort of exposing them to, hey. Here’s what our users are doing. Here here’s here’s how the product actually gets used. So Yeah.

That’s that’s a huge hugely important thing or aspect of the conference, I should say.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. I mean, I think, over the years, one of the one of the bad trends we’ve seen, I think we’re all signed to realize this. You know, they say twenty twenty is hindsight is twenty twenty, is that, you’re not as you’re not as efficient or you can be super efficient when you’re conversing with people, when you’re talking to people, when you’re, in even in person. Right? That’s even better.

And a lot of people, because of everything we’ve been through, doing everything remote or but you don’t you don’t get to see the inflections. You don’t get to understand. You know? And when you’re when you’re not not at a conference, you don’t usually have the time to really get into things on a deeper level. So there’s a lot of advantages.

I know I’ve been doing this for thirty five years. I still learn new things talking to my students and talking to the vendors that come on. I’m learning stuff every day. And, if I just sat, read a book, and just sat and film videos, I would there must be so much I would never have learned. And because every every every human being is not all unique, but they’re in unique situations.

And so for a vendor like yourself, Indefinitely see, you know, a conference like this, your customers are bringing you things that you’ve never thought of a certain way because you’ve never been in that situation. So it’s huge that you guys are doing this. Again, I recommend all vendors do something like this, but, I’m glad you guys are doing it. And, and I think that’s probably why you have a very loyal customer base. And, I, you know, I just wanna throw out there one thing too.

Anybody who who is not a gamer, they do make, I actually built my own arcade machine, and they do make USB to arcade controls. So don’t poo poo it. You can actually take your favorite software package to make pong. Right? Anybody can do that, and, you can wire it to real arcade controls very simply and easily through, through a USB blob, block.

So and it’s a lot of fun a lot of fun to do that too. So in any case, with that and, again, we know your your there’s a maker version of your software. We covered that in our first episode. And, so, you know, people can play with it if they want after hours and learn it as well. But in any case, so I’m looking forward to it already, even though I’m only gonna be attending virtually.

Is there anything else we should cover in this episode about the conference itself or the company?

Paul Scott (Ignition): Yeah. I I like to tell folks. I mean, there’s a lot to check out, and I’m obviously very I have some bias, and I’m very excited about a lot of things going on there. But, you know, if you can only, like, check out a few things, I’d I’d I would like to just kinda point out that we do have our two other keynotes that that we we have. So we have our main keynote and our technical keynote.

And those are always usually very forward facing, forward thinking. So we kinda, like, talk a little bit about, you know, changes of the company, where the company is going, as well as the software. Right? Which which I think is what ends up pulling a lot of folks. Right?

So it’s a it’s a conference for a piece of software. You figure go figure the the talk where we we we we we explore the future of the software ends up being the most popular one. So yeah. if, you know, end up not being able to attend, that’s totally okay. Maybe we’ll catch it in future use.

But, yeah, once those recordings available, always recommend folks maybe check out those keynotes just because it can kind of kind of give you a little bit of insight of what we’re trying to do and where we’re going. So, but, yeah, no. I hope hope to continue to grow. Hope hope maybe we can get you out here on these times. I know, obviously, scheduling’s the the challenge, but love to love to have you come out, Shawn, sometime for sure.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. I know I would enjoy. I know it would be a blast. And and I just wanna say out to the audience too, they do a great job of putting the point releases up like I’ve covered in my shows. And and really, they do a good and they do a lot of tongue and cheek with it too, which just makes it fun to read as well.

But you can always see, and they they in those even in their regular point releases, they’re talking about things they wanna do, things that were customer suggestions, things they’re working on. So just kudos to the company for being so forward and transparent and really putting their customers first. And, yeah, I just I just was always impressed with those things. And, Paul, I just wanna thank you for coming on. What I’ll do is just so the audience knows, we’re gonna fill the, description with the important links so that you can either get your in person pass or you can get your virtual pass and, any other important links we think need to be in there so you guys don’t have to go search in the web or click, and they’ll be right there in the, description.

I do wanna thank Inductive for making this episode ad free. We really appreciate it. So all that they’ve they’ve covered our cost to edit the episode and publish it so you guys are are enjoying it. So, Paul, thank your company for that, and, and, thank you for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

Paul Scott (Ignition): Yeah. Thanks for having me, Shawn. This is

Shawn Tierney (Host): a lot of fun. Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode, and I wanna thank Paul for coming on the show and bringing us up to speed on the Ignition Community Conference. Really appreciate him coming on and sharing all those stories and all that information. And I wanna thank Inductive too for sponsoring the episode so we could bring you the audio and video completely ad free. That said, don’t forget all the links are in the description.

And if you do use or are thinking about using, Ignition, then definitely consider going. I also was given a free pass to attend the virtual event, so I’ll try to get you guys reporting on that as the event is ongoing. Now with all that said, I do wanna thank you all for tuning back in this week. Please share the podcast with other people. It really helps us find new vendors to come on the show or maybe new product managers at existing vendors that we haven’t really hooked up with.

So I really appreciate when you guys share the show out there. Let the vendors know you’re watching and listening. Or if you’re a vendor, let your colleagues know that it’s worth coming on the show because you get in front of this great audience. And with that said, I wanna wish you, my great audience, good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace.

Until next time, Peace ✌️

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Shawn M Tierney
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Shawn Tierney meets up with Eugenio Silva of Emerson to learn all about Dust Collection Systems, and Emerson’s Monitoring and Control Solution in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (host): Welcome back to the automation podcast. My name is Shawn from Insights, and I wanna thank you for tuning back in. Now in this episode, I had the pleasure of meeting up with Eugene Silva from Emerson to learn all about the industrial control and monitoring system that comes with their industrial dust collectors. Now I thought it was very interesting. I hope you do as well.

But before we jump into this episode, I do wanna thank our members who made the video edition possible. So So when a vendor does a sponsor of the episode, the video becomes a member only perk, and that is just $5 a month to get started. So thank you members for making the video edition possible. With that, I also wanna thank our sponsor for this week’s show, the automationschool.com and the automationblog.com. I have an update later in the show what’s going on on both sites, and I hope you’ll, stick around and listen to that, towards the end of the show.

But with that said, let’s go ahead and jump into this week’s episode of the automation podcast. It is my pleasure to welcome Emerson back on the show and Eugene on the show to talk about dust collector monitoring. You guys can see the slide if you’re watching dust collector monitoring and control solutions. I’m excited about this because this is a solution versus, like, a discrete product. So with that said, Eugene, would you please introduce yourself to our audience?

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Yes. Shawn, thank you very much for this opportunity. Hello, everyone. Here’s Eugenio Silva. I’m a product manager, intelligence automation within Emerson, the discrete automation part of Emerson.

I’m glad today gonna share some, some of our understanding and learnings with the dust collector monitoring control solution. And, when I talk about that, Emerson is also involved in in others, types of solutions that, our purpose is to drive innovation that makes the world healthier, safer, smart, and more sustainable. And I’m also responsible for continuous emission monitoring, pest collectors is one, utility, energy and compressed air management solutions. So for today, I prepared something that, we go a little bit, into why this type of, test collector solution is important, from understand of our customers and industry point of view. We’re going to look into the fundamentals of a dust collection, from the particle sensors to the dust collector systems, and then dive in into the dust collector solution where I’m going to provide you, some features, also explanation why they are there, and how this kind of capabilities deliver value to our end users and customers, and, hopefully, to have time as well to have a short, recorded demo that, brings us, full scope how the operators look into into that solution when they they use it.

Shawn Tierney (host): But before we jump in, I wanna thank the automationschool.com for sponsoring this episode of the show. That’s where you’ll find all of my online courses on Allen Bradley and Siemens PLCs and HMIs. So if you know anybody who needs to get up to speed on those products, please mention the automationschool.com to them. And now let’s jump back into the show.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): In terms of key applications, industries use cases, dust collector is essential for many industries that produce dust, produce any kind of a pounder, any kind of a fume, and typically air pollution control, boundary processing, handling, industrial dust, fume ventilation are covered by one or another way by dust collectors. And, the industries that I put in both, these are the the dirty ones in the sense that they produce a lot of, particle, either in terms of gases or dust. Therefore, the regulations that are in these industries are quite strong. So cement, metals, chemical plus, carbon, black and toner, like lithium battery assembly, disassembly, metal foundry. And what is interesting is the either you produce a waste that you have to manage it properly, can be also recycled, for example, in the industries like plastics in food or wood.

All the collected dust that you have, you can also reuse and sometimes recycle. But why? Why this is important? Why is it important to extract dust from these industries? Let’s start on the right side because this is what the the customer is looking for.

Because the cost of our pollution, the hazards, this this safe safety accidents that can be caused by this kind of harmful airborne and particles and forms are so substantial, then of course, it’s very much regulated in all these industries. And if you calculate the costs on the public health, Sometimes big accidents in plants where even big fires or hazards to people operating the plant. We talk about billions per year, the cost of that. And one of the consequences of having such issues is that when the dust extraction system is not working properly or you have really a downtime. For example, I’m going to explain that this really depends on components that are very, they use so often that they wear down, like filters, like post files.

And each time that we have a downtime is not the cost of the dust collector downtime that’s important. It’s the overall downtime costs that imposes to the operation of the plant because in order to be conformist, they have to stop operating until they fix the issue. And these downtimes, of course, arise in many ways in different aspects. How complex is this dust collector. But I’m I’m going to give you, some insights that, if a dust collector system does not have any solution to monitoring real time or control, the efficiency.

Basically, the personnel is managing these assets without any sight, and everything can go wrong. That’s why the TCO and the maintenance aspects are quite important. Because if you’re not aware where is the problem, when you have to plan and this becomes a firefighting or reactive mode, then your costs are going to be quite high. And when you talk about the TCO, it’s about the cost of the equipment, the acquisition, the cost of operation, meaning not only the personnel, but in this case, we use a lot of compressed air. I’m going to explain why.

The maintenance costs, as we explained, and the disposal costs. Disposal means, the filter bags that must be replaced and and changed, but also the the dust, the fume, all the elements that must be, properly managed and recycling sometimes. So this is the aspects why it’s important. Now let’s turn us about, the benefits and savings. So if you use the dust collector solutions, of any kind that can monitor in real time all the aspects, of the operation of a dust collector system and, also contributes turning maintenance from reactive to preventative and maybe predictive, then the best thing that you can do is to avoid huge penalties.

As you can see on this graph, every decade, let’s say, the fines are getting steeper. And the reason for that is because of the the damage and the result of a big, like, say, issue on the plant regarding to this dust part is is quite heavy. So, therefore, we talk about 100 k’s or even plus in some industries like primary metal and chemical, where one single incident, it’s about a 100 k in average or more. And then, of course, to avoid that and to be completely compliance, you have to operate that systems, in many cases, 24 by seven. And, therefore, any way possible to reduce downtime and, as a plus, reduce the energy costs because for compressed air, you have to use electricity, then, it pays off because you’re going to be full time compliant.

And the other thing is if you do properly, monitor and control your dust collector system, you also increase the filtration efficiency. So that means you are far from the high levels, where after that threshold, you would be penalized. You can operate under, conformist, under compliance, but can also expand the equipment life. For example, the life bags, the post valves, you don’t have it to replace as often, which is the case if you don’t do any real time monitoring diagnostics. On the left side, the way that we talk about improving maintenance is the total cost.

When we talk about the filter life, at least one unit of a filter, It’s about 18 k, US dollars. And you see that, the tip of a iceberg is just the purchase price. The dust collector system, like, of course, has an acquisition cost. But below that, as a total cost of ownership, you have the energy that you expand utilizing the systems. You have the filter bags.

You have to keep parts in your inventory. You have to dispose of that. And, of course, you have the downtime costs and also the labors labor costs. Now I’m going to just to give, a chance to say, okay. Tell me how a dust collector system works.

Shawn Tierney (host): Before we get to that, we gotta pay the bills. So I wanna tell you about our sponsor, the automationschool.com. It’s actually the next room over. We have a huge training room. We have, some of the most unique products you’ll be able to work on.

You know, I know everybody has a bunch of CompactLogix or s seven twelve hundreds or 15 hundreds and, you know, VFDs and HMIs. But some of the products we have here, you’re not gonna find in anybody else’s training room, not even the factory’s training room because we cover all different products. Right? So if you’re coming over to do training with us, you can actually learn Siemens and Allen Bradley at the same time. You can learn how to get Siemens and Allen Bradley to talk together.

You guys know I’ve covered that on the show, but you could do it hands on. And some of the other things is like working with third party products. Right? So, you know, if you go to a vendor’s course, they’re not gonna have third party products. But we have as you remember from the wall in my studio, we have all kinds of third party products.

And I’m gonna be taking some more pictures of all the different labs we have, the equipment we use, with these third party products. So if you know anybody looking for training and we can do custom things too. So if you wanna start training at noontime or 01:00 because you’re gonna drive in three or four hours away, I was recently just at a, large vendor’s customer doing some training on their behalf. And, yeah, that was a long drive. So if you want your, students to show up in person at twelve or one and then train and then at the on the last day, leave around twelve or one, we can do that as well.

I don’t care. We could actually run into the night if you wanted to go, do evenings. Or, again, some people don’t learn very well in the evenings, but in any case, because I own the company, we can do whatever you want. As long as we have the equipment and the time to put it together, we’ll do it for you. So I just wanted to make you aware of that.

We also if you’re, just wanna come yourself, if you go to the automationschool.com forward slash live, you will see a place where you can preregister for an upcoming class. And when I get enough people to sign up, I’ll reach out to you and tell you what date is gonna be held. And by preregistering like that, you will save $50 off the $500 price. And if you’re already a student, you will save the price of your online course off of the in person course. So maybe you bought my $200 Siemens or CompactLogix, ControlLogix cost.

They’re gonna get that off of that $500. Right? And if you don’t own the online cost, don’t worry about it. If you come here for in person training, at the end of your training, we’re gonna enroll you, in one of those online courses completely free of charge so you can continue your learning. And you don’t have to worry about trying to blitz all the content while you’re here because whether you’re here for a day or five, it doesn’t matter.

Whatever you have left to learn, you’ll be able to do it after hours at home, and there’s no additional charge for that. So with that said, let’s get back into this week’s episode of the automation podcast.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): And these are going to be general principles and basics. In general, a dust collector system looks like this. It’s a unit where the air is pulled in at the bottom of the compartment, and this could be forced or not. And then the air gets out, on the top, the outlet, and the dust is collected on the outside of the bag. So if you see this, in this picture, we have one full bag in kind of light brown color with a specific fabric, could be porosis fabric, a PVC, or some even paper in some cases.

And then the cleaner exceeds at the top. And the what happens is that the dust cake builds up on the bags, on the outside part of the bag. And, if you see the number one on top, in that particular, entry point, we have two pulse valves with, compressed air in order to shake a little bit these, post bags, filter bags, and then knocks down the dust out of these bags, and then they are collected by a hopper at the bottom. Okay? So that’s basically, in general, how it works the principle.

It’s a bit more complicated. Here is just to show that in order to automate a dust collector system including the filter bags, we use, a combination of, electrical and pneumatic, components. And these are from post valves, the ones that continuously blow air into these pipes, the compressed air tanks that hold the right pressure and the right compressed air capacity in order to keep the filtration efficiency very high. Then you have the filter regulators that, you have to bring, the pressure of this line to higher enough, to to be efficient, but not so high to spend too much compressed air. Then you can use controllers, black boxes that are able to do a time based sequencing, but these are not so so much sometimes efficient because it doesn’t take into consideration all the diagnostics that you can get out of it.

And then, basically, the very important element is this, particle sensor that is on the outside of the clean air because that is gonna be your canary in the mind. Right? It’s gonna be the one that indicates if the filter, system is efficient efficient and if the the job is done right. And then the other things. But let’s go back to a very interesting view.

You remember this picture here that, you you’re looking at, a cross session of the dust collector. Now you could imagine how it looks like from the top. From the top, it looks like that. There is a compressed air tank, that covers, certain portion of the filters units. For example, it’s very common that a filter, complete filter unit, might have different compartments.

And in each of these compartments, you have a series of filter bags. And then imagine that you provide short but very powerful pulses of compressed air that are periodically injected on top of this columns. And below, there’s a filter bag. So, therefore, they are going to to receive to expand a little bit, and the dust cake then, outside of of their surface follows. And by inertial forces, of course, this dust is accumulated at the bottom, which is, extracted into a hopper.

Of course, now depending of the number of the filters per line, per roll, these pulse valves needs to pulse a little bit faster or not. And the interval time, if you just follow time based approach, could be three to six minutes. Now if you calculate the average filter units, you may have 12 of these filter bags. You can have about seven to 10 pulse valves per unit. It’s very common that, one large installation would have about, like, 500 pulse valves and four, six times more filters, install it.

And imagine that if each of them having boost every three minutes, 24 by seven, during seven days a week. So can you imagine the amount of compressed air that can be spent? That’s why these pulses must be very short and powerful, in hundred milliseconds to avoid it also big waste. I think that, picture on the left side, just to simply say that, it’s a lot of, interesting things to to get the dust removal, but basically is a jet of compressed air on top, that shakes the filter. And then by gravity, the dust cake is removed.

Shawn Tierney (host): It’s not just a filter. You know, I think main main people may just think, well, a dust collector is just this bag that catches all the dust. You’re actually, you know, you’re you you do have the bags, but, you’re using compressed air to sequentially, depends depending on how many you have, shake those bags in a sense by blowing air into them, to shake off the dust so it falls into the hopper. And so I can you can definitely see, like you were mentioning, if you have lots of these cylinders or these bags, then the sequencing has to be, you know, pretty pretty precise and and pretty, repeatable to make sure you’re you’re cleaning all of the bags off. And I’m I’m assuming too, you need to know when the hopper is full because everything stops working if if if the hopper gets, over full.

So very interesting. I think your diagrams do a great job of explaining it as well.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Yeah. If I play a little bit when I mention that, it’s a a little bit the reverse, way of our vacuum cleaner. Right? Because Yeah. We suck the the dust inside of the bags.

Mhmm. And when the bags are completely full clogged, the suction, power, it’s far reduced. Right? So then you have to to empty our, let’s say, filter bags. Here is the although the all the dust is accumulated on the outside, the outer surface of the fabric, but the effect is the same.

If there’s so much dust on the surface or out of the surface, then, the air that is shown here, the intake, the air, and then the filter simply stops. That’s why affects completely the efficiency of, that, unit. And the post jet cleaning is a way to unclog or to clean, the filters in order to bring them to the more efficient operation.

Shawn Tierney (host): Yeah. Especially if you have lots of dust, you need an automatic way to continue to clean it and get it off of the filter and into the bin. So yeah. No. That makes a lot of sense.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Yeah. In in other cases, although you talk about, dust, of course, it could be any kind of a pounder. Like, for example, in the foods and beverage industry, you don’t want this for example, let’s say, a dry milk production. You don’t want that dust to be floating around because it can bring contamination. But believe it or not, it can ignite fire sometimes.

So that’s why it’s important to to get that completely eliminated. So this is the part that very people would say, okay, on the outlet where the the air should be cleaner, as you can see on the right side, that this, particle sensor is located at the outlet, clean air side. It has a very interesting the way it works is quite interesting. We use a we have a sensor in our portfolio called p 152 that, we take advantage of this triboelectric effect. Basically, this sensor, is coated with PTFE or a Teflon layer, so it’s completely electronic, electric isolated from from, of course, the media.

And then when the dust starts touching, that probe, a DC charge is transferred. But because of this, sensor probe is completely isolated, we set the flow layer, the resolution and the electric charge is in the order of a peak ramp. So 10 minus 12. And that the resolution is about point five picoamp. So, therefore, if you’re touching the particles, depends of their size, They are going to generate more or less electricity that’s going to be transferred.

And the ones that are just surround, they are not touching. For example, imagine that this, duct air exhausting pipe is quite big. A bit half meter, maximum one meter around that sensor, the particle also generates, induced charge in AC. And by measuring that, we have an idea about how clean is, of course, there that’s getting out. But it’s a bit more tricky than you can imagine because it looks like this.

Shawn Tierney (host): Hey, everyone. I hope you enjoy this week’s show. I know I really enjoyed it. And, of course, I wanna thank our members for making the video edition possible. So this vendor did not sponsor this episode.

So the video edition is available for members, and there’s some great graphics in their presentation you guys may wanna check out. Now with that said, we do have some really exciting podcast episodes coming up. I’m sitting down with Inductive. I’m sitting down with Software Toolbox. I’m sitting down with Siemens and a bunch of other vendors.

So we have plenty of new podcasts coming up in the coming weeks this summer. And I also wanted to give you an update of what’s going on over at the automation blog. We’ve had some new articles come out. Brandon Cooper, one of our freelancers, wrote a great article about emulating Allen Bradley e threes. We had a vendor, actually, submit an article and sponsor the site to submit an article about what makes a good automated palletizer.

We also had an update about the automation museum. That’s a fundraiser we’re running. We’re trying to open a automation museum. I got a lot of legacy stuff I’d like to donate to it, and I’d love to have it so you can come in and actually walk through, not just see the stuff, but actually learn on it. Right?

So maybe you have some old stuff in your plant. You come out to the automation museum, and you can learn how to use it. With that said, we’re also looking at possibly doing a podcast for automation museum to drive awareness of legacy automation. So any of you out there interested in that, contact me directly. And, you can do so over at the automationblog.com.

Just click on the contact button. And, we also have an article two articles from Brandon Cooper about things he learned as he transitioned from working in a plant to traveling around and visiting other plants to help them with their processes and automation. So check those articles out over at the automation blog. And finally, over at the automation school, you know, we have the new factor IO courses. We also have I just added a new lesson to the logics version of that course.

Somebody wanted to try to use bit shifts instead of counters, so I added a lesson on that. Plus, I’m now starting to update all of the courses, including the brand new ones I’m working on. So you’re gonna see a brand new start here lesson later in the week, and I’m working on some cool emulation, lateral logic for my PLC courses that if you don’t have any push buttons or limit switches, you can actually use this code I’m gonna give you for free to simulate the widget machine that I use as kind of the basis for my teaching. So in any case, check that out if you’re in one of my PLC courses over at the automationschool.com. And with that said, you know, I’m very thankful for all the vendors who come on, especially those who sponsor the episodes so I don’t have to do these commercials.

I’m not a big commercial guy, but I do wanna thank you for hanging in there and listening through this update. And now we’ll get right back into this episode of the automation podcast.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Every time you get, use the jet boost with the boost valves on top of the filter bags, it creates a peak. So that means the cleaning cycles that are happening in a duration of, just a 100 milliseconds. That’s why they are very, very thin. And they happening every two, three minutes, per roll. They have to they have in nature a little bit of noise because imagine that every time that, you clean, more dust gets into inside of the the filter back.

So that means it’s like when you clean your vacuum cleaner, immediately when you turn on that, some of this dust is gonna get inside immediately, and that’s the peak. But now imagine that, you have a rupture in the filter or you have a big role because, unfortunately, these the things are wear out. And then these peaks starts getting higher and higher. So, therefore, what we do when we, put that solution in place for a little time, let’s say, couple of days, we needed to kind of, set up, these thresholds. We need to figure out the level of noise that could be because depends very much the capacity, the types of, of a test.

But once you do that, in our solution, we set the thresholds like alarming, a warning alarm, which means that after that point, the maintenance crew, starts looking at, that could be a early indication that a filter bag is not okay until the maximum point that avoids any any nonconformist, issue, which is already a rupture. You really pass the time where this filter, must be replaced.

Shawn Tierney (host): So we’re looking at this chart for those who are listening. And the particle sensor, you know, it’s measuring the particles as air flows normally. But during the pulse, right, we’re forcing a lot of air back in, back down. So we’re getting a lot more, you know, than the average air would have x amount of particles. But if we’re forcing a bunch of it back in, we’re gonna see a lot more particles per, let’s say, hundred millisecond pulse.

Right? So we do expect a peak when we when we pulse it because we’re just forcing a lot of get back go into the reverse direction. So we can we catch the bag loose. But what you’re saying here on this chart, I find so in so much interesting. So you can quantify, like, the expected increase in, in dust that you’re gonna sense with the sensor when you go in the reverse, when you pulse pulse, blow the ear downwards to, to shake the bag free.

But you’re saying if that if that extra increased amount of detected dust is either too high, above normal, or too low below normal, then that tells you that you you could either have a clogged bag or you could have a burst bag. Is that am I understanding that correctly?

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Yes. Is this correct? And then the interesting thing is that as soon as you’re getting closer to replace a filter back, this baseline starts raising a bit with a kind of, how can I say, there is a drift? Why? Exactly what you said.

A filter is completely clogged. It’s not yet any rupture, but is the efficiency of the cleaning is not so okay. So therefore, this slightly changes needs to be analyzed. Why I’m showing row one to row 10? Exactly in the picture, if you remember, a compartment filter with several, let’s say, filter bags, they are under the row.

So under the row one, you may have 10 filter bags, row two, row three, and so on. So that means you are able to indicate which row is the problem, but it might be that you still need to check further which of the filters in that particular row have the problems. The more quick this peak happens, more number of, filter bags can have a problem.

Shawn Tierney (host): Mhmm.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Okay?

Shawn Tierney (host): So you have one sensor on the exhaust, and you’re sequencing through, you know, blowing out or shaking out, you know, pulsing each of the rows. So that’s why we see, you know, one reading across the, you know, across the horizontal, and we see your row, row one, row two, row three, row four, each of them with discrete values or pulses. And like you just said, if you have multiple issues on a row, then you’re going to see, you know, a higher or lower peak depending on what the issue is. I’m with you.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Yes. That’s why I’m going to show the other diagnostic capabilities that we needed to associate with this, particle sensor. And just to remember that, this particle sensor, we simply use one unit on the outlet part. That’s why I needed to make the sequence in serialization of the post because then I need to to synchronize with the post jets of every role.

Shawn Tierney (host): Mhmm.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): No? Row by row.

Shawn Tierney (host): And I think too, if you tried to do them all at once, the the you would need a lot higher pressure. So it it kinda makes sense to do it row by row because it reduces your maximum pressure required.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Yeah. In this practical sense, we’re not be able to

Shawn Tierney (host): Differentiate.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Identify which of the roles, would be the problem. That’s why we kind of still have to do that. But now let’s give in a solution overview, and I think that, some of the key capabilities and features are going to highlight even more, the other, diagnostic capabilities that we are able to to provide in order to identify correctly and early as possible such issues. So this is a typical dust collector system. And if you look at around, if this dust collector system is just, let’s say, automated with nomadic electric components and they don’t have real time monitoring, you’re not really know the emission level.

If it also this is not real time monitoring with some diagnostics, then you are not able to identify when this particle sensor, for example, is completely taken by, the dust because the humidity entrance in that, in that pipe, or it might be that, it’s so dirty, your dust that, is already ingrained so much on the probe. Mhmm. So that’s why the poor, reliability or the low level sensitivity of that could be affected. And if you were not monitoring, these signals that I showed the these peaks synchronized with the post valve jets Mhmm. You don’t have any early warning.

Okay? The post valves basically are coils. They are solenoid coils

Shawn Tierney (host): Mhmm.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): With tag diaphragms that open and close at the speed of a hundred milliseconds. The point is that their life time is about a couple of millions of cycles. Mhmm. But imagine, in some cases, one, two years is already enough to to have end end of life. So a fault valve, has to be connected to a control system because you need to know if this is a short circuit or if the diaphragm is completely open.

And you can only do that if every time that you cycle the valve, you also, check that. For example, the power that, you drive the coil gives you a feeling if that is a coil that is already gone. Okay? Now let’s talk about the compressed air. Right?

If you have a a filter that is open, there’s a rupture. If you have, a diaphragm that’s completely gone open, you start consuming higher and higher the compressed air. The point is this is continuously increasing. You can just imagine that this is normal. But if you go into average and look at this in a historical way, you’re gonna see that this trend is caused because of the broken post valves, for example.

So that’s why it’s also important aspect of the automation solution is to minimize the usage of the compressed air is to have a clearly operating under a baseline that is normal. The filter bags, independent of the materials, because if you talk about life sciences, foods, chemical, or metal, they have a different materials. They have a different, where else, lifetime span. The point is the costs might be the filter itself is not so expensive. But going up there, exchange stopping, moving things around, getting the dust out before you change, putting all the personal protection equipment may take hours.

So, therefore, that is the cost of that. And if you’re not able to prevent or even have an early warning when that is going to occur, is gonna be a reactive, maintenance issue. Right? So that’s why just convincing that, it’s worth looking into different aspects. And that’s why, on the left side, when we talk about solutions, we talk about, the connectivity part that, we have to work with devices that are hard or four to 20 milliamps.

Some of devices are modbus to CP. Newer actuators in post faults could be mu m q t t or even OPC UA. That’s the the PLC part that, we have. And we can work with pneumatic systems, for example, that they turn at AP, PROFINET, or any other, standards. Then, of course, we have the IOs, that, we have to look at to control the post jet systems, but also to monitor the differential pressures, to measure the compressed here in some cases, until the parts where at the top, we put HMI SCADA software platform that, we pre engineered, in order to to make it simpler the development, of that solution by our OABS or many cases directly to our end users.

And all in the right are the elements that we offer in our portfolio. Some cases, OEMs of a dust collector systems just to take from us, and they might be that they have their own solution as well.

Shawn Tierney (host): So just for the audio audience, I know we’ve covered these products a lot, especially on the news show. But, I mean, I’m just wanna kinda go through a couple of these things. You got the ASCO product line. Right? So remote piloted valves and, you know, all of those, that category, you know, the, pulse valves.

But we also got the Advantex, which we’ve talked about, like figure filter regulators and, different cylinders. Topworks, which I think we’re all familiar with, proximity sensors and whatnot. And, some of the other products you guys, Rosemount, differential pressure transmitters. We also see, we have, the PAC systems. In this case, you could have edge analytics, and so you may have one of the PAC systems, edge IPCs.

And we even see the, down in the corner there, the Emerson PLC and IOs, which I think we’re all familiar with as well. So that kinda shows you how, you know, this solution, you know, they’re taking all these different products they have in their catalog and putting it together in one solution, which is, you know, you kinda need all this stuff. You know, basically understanding how it works. We just went through it. And so it’s interesting.

I don’t think I’ve seen a slide yet from Emerson where they kinda include in one application all, if not all, many of their their, different product lines. And then, the the skate on the top, it looks like, just some beautiful screens and charts and and, you know, dials showing the current status. So, and and I I didn’t mean to interrupt you, Gino, but nonetheless say that, especially since the people listening, they’ll be familiar with all those trade names because we’ve covered those in the past. But, in any case, let me turn it back to you.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): No. No. It’s thanks for highlighting. And I I say that, when I introduce myself that I’m from the discrete automation part of Emerson. Mhmm.

Because most of, people would know Emerson by the Rosemont, for example, pressure, Fisher valves, and then the, you know, the delta v, DCS. Right? This is the discrete automation part, and that’s why probably something new, for everybody here. Thank you very much. So when I look at that in a nutshell, we, of course, have to put the sensory devices, the PLC on top, the HMI scanner.

And, basically, what we provide is real time monitoring of this particulate, emissions. We detect but also locate where the leak is by compartments in rows. You can see on the picture that, on the top of this HMI screen, we have a filter unit with three compartments, compartment one, two, three. And each compartment has these rows on top, which is the number of rows, then the more a number of filter bags that, within each, compartment. So, therefore, just locating which compartment and which row, you have a problem, I can tell you it saves half day of the people, in the maintenance.

We also optimize the push at cleaning. It’s an, patent based algorithm that is completely adaptive, and works not just with the post valves, but, we put, head pressure sensors. And this fluctuation and the differential pressure that we measure from the outlet and inlet allows us, of course, to, increase or decrease the frequency of these push heads, which allows not only to be more efficient, but also minimize compressed air. And then finally, when you talk about solidoids involved diaphragms, these ones we can indicate one by one where they have problems. So, therefore, if you look at down to the other HMI screen, there are two rows on top.

The one that is a solenoid, the one that is a diaphragm, and these vertical bars are the filter bag health. If they are getting closer to red with the high levels, meaning that, their life span is already gone. And if you have, light indicators on the solenoid, the diaphragm depend of the color might be that you have a short circuit fail, open diaphragm. Therefore, you have also to replace. And, basically, when we install that solution, sometimes our customers, ask it to also integrate with their control systems.

So, therefore, they compress their generation, the fan, the hoppers, the safety alarms, of the plant sometimes are fully integrated as well. Now let’s talk very much about few features features because these are the ones that probably you haven’t seen yet. Wanna talk about our HMI control system is based on Movicon, Movicon next platform. And, basically, it provides everything that you know from the Scott HMI. And that’s why to use this in general for applications like OIE, energy management, in some others, infrastructure monitoring, like, smart cities, wastewater facilities, solar, mega mega plants, etcetera.

Of course, it provides data visualization, but, I like to highlight that, you could ask we provide connectivity to all major POCs that you can imagine, with communication drivers. Of course, the open standards like OPC UA, like, Modbus. And on the lower part, the the green, let’s say, the the gray part here is what we used for that solution. Sometimes we use a geo maps, to indicate where the filters are. Some geo references, let’s say geo fences as well.

The people have to be, with a personal protection equipment to be there. So there are some, real time, data that, of course, we are collecting for the particle emissions and other elements like differential pressure, header pressure. And then you have the headlines. You can see some screens that are completely dedicated to alarms and alerts. And one of these, diagnostics that you see are related to the solenoid, to the filter bag, and to the diaphragm diagnostics.

A lot of them are diagnostic get diagnosed in different ways. For example, the solenoids, we look into the power output of our IO cards to see if the valve post the solenoid is open or complete short circuit. The filter bag, I already explained it. We detect with some logic with the the particle sensors, And the diaphragm diagnostics is based on the header pressure because if it’s this diaphragm is completely open, the differential pressure within the chamber, it starts fluctuating, and then you know that there’s something wrong there. But all of them increases the filtration efficiency, changes from reactive to predictive maintenance, of course, keeps the site compliant, minimize dust emissions, and for sure increase equipment lifetime, like the filter units, and reduce the compressed air usage.

If you sum up all of that, the return in investment is it might be quite fast, of course, for large big large installations might be within two years, but it’s still a very fast return in investment for that particular solution. That’s what it looks like. A little bit, let’s say, zoom in. You see that they’re not nice looking, but they indicate graphically where the issues are, the number of issues, on this screen about thresholds alerts. The second one on the right side, is like the number of cycles.

Imagine that every pulse valve would have, about a couple of millions of cycles of lifetime. Here, you can at least predict when or how many spare parts that, you need to have in the next quarter. And then, the yellow or red signals means that, red gone, you have is a faulty. And the white ones or the red the yellow ones are the ones that, you need to watch because they’re getting closer to the lifetime dead of lifetime. The other aspect is, like I said, when thus collector systems, you acquire that without the solution, it comes with this sequence box, which basically is a time based posting.

So it keeps posting three to six minutes, like I I said, hundred milliseconds, but it can change. It’s it’s fixed. And that means that leads to, an excessive use of the post valve. So you’re going to wear out quite sooner than it should, but also reduce the valve back life because stretching the the the back filters, of course, you’re gonna also wear out, and you waste much more compressed air than than probably you should. That’s why we implemented this other two types of a post jet cleaning methodologies.

One is on demand. That really depends on the high differential pressure between the the chamber and, you can set, in the in the solution how these multiple filter lines are going to operate normally, And this differential pressure threshold can be, for example, when the efficiency is getting bad, the differential pressure gets lower. And then if that is within a certain band, you can estimate that, there is accumulation of the cascade. The other one is very, intelligent. It’s a function block, in our PLC that, does a dynamic change.

So, therefore, you put the single set point and the adaptive algorithm based on the virtual pressure starts controlling the intervals between the posts. So the idea is that to optimize by eliminating unnecessary posts in the cycle of these valves and also minimizing the compressed air. Of course, when you install the solution and, you put the set point for the first time, the system needs a little bit time to learn, and it’s a learning algorithm that, starts adapting. And very soon, it starts performing optimally. Okay?

Shawn Tierney (host): Hey, everybody. I just wanna jump in here one more time. Just thank our members, both on YouTube and at the automationblog.com. I got some really exciting stuff coming up for you guys, in the fall. I’m I just have this huge plan that I’m working on.

And so, I really just thank you guys for being members. Don’t forget, you get access to Discord. Don’t forget, there’s a whole library of older episodes you get to watch. It’s such just what I’m doing this month for members. It’s, you get a whole library of stuff.

We did so much member only content over the last couple of years that you have hundreds literally hundreds of hours of content that you and only you get access to as a member, whether you’re on YouTube or you’re at theautomationblog.com. And, of course, if you have any questions about your membership, reach out to me directly, please. And with that, let’s go ahead and jump back into this week’s show.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): And that looks like that. This is just another, possibility to see. You see that, on the left side, you see a particular rows, and each of these rows have the filter bags. Each filter bag has a vertical bar that indicates the healthy of that solenoid diaphragm is on the top. And then, each of these compartments can navigate from one to another.

Then you have other additional elements like the header pressure, differential pressure, particle density, and you have a trained diagram that, you are able also to generate reports, but you also also to to monitor, in order to to type a little bit, the parameters in order to be more efficient. And then, completely right side, if you have more than one dust collector, you can create different screens if you want. But the idea here is that the C1, C2 means compartment one, two, three. Again, a diagnostics that leads to preventative predictive maintenance and avoids completely reactive maintenance. Interesting, if you don’t know, in order to replace a single filter, in order to check if a solenoid valve is completely short circuits, In order to see if, a diaphragm valve is open, you needed to get there in this personal protection equipment using mask, gloves.

You need to go up. You need to kind of get to know where these things are. And imagine that if you could avoid and just look at the screen and say, hey. I know that this is the compartment one of the filter a, and I know where I needed to look at. And by the way, I have the spare part because I had early indications to fix it.

So then we are not just talk about reduction time, but, I guess, reduction costs and avoid to put people every time in such a very interesting environment. Okay? I’m not going through the the right part because you can imagine that this is a description of how things are usually done. And if you turn this around into a proactive predictive maintenance, then you have less and maybe faster steps. And you can prevent and can plan in advance when you wanna go with these, units, and you have to wear this equipment for protection.

So very quickly in the developer position. Of course, like any solution, customers are interested to know if, they can pay off payback very quickly. So the return investment of that. So that’s why we check, the size, the number of, units, what’s the minimum size the customer could start with, because the it’s a pre engineered solution, how fast it could be that we implement in the whole site. It could be also, of course, calculate how much their current expenditure in terms of maintenance, reactive maintenance, the cost of utilities like compressed air, how many times they have to or they have downtime issues.

And from that, we can prove very quickly, very simply that, it’s worth investing in automation. 20 to 30% of our reduction is a lot if you consider that they use a huge amount of compressed air. And compressors, they use electricity. So, therefore, if you’re able to reduce compressed air, you also increase your operation efficiency because cost of utilities is one of the points. Downtime is everything.

Maintenance, it’s about preventing that you need to do these manual inspections. Just go there, check, and come back, and you see that, okay, we could wait for another week. But because I’m here, I’m going to change anyhow the filter. And that, of course, you’re not, increasing the lifetime of our equipment. And interesting that some downstream equipment, like the blowers, like the vacu pumps, if they get a lot of dust or excessive dust, they also, damage them.

So therefore, maximizing maintenance, optimizing every step pays off in that sense. And finally, of course, customers do that because they want the full compliance. Every possible issue can be tracked, can be report. The efficiency of the systems can be audit ready, reports. It can re really prove that you can you are reducing part commissions.

You provide a lot of visibility what’s going on. So, therefore, the technical teams are in very high confidence to operate the system. Because if without, they are operating blindly, And that’s why they feel a bit concerned many times that, might be that the bad things are just going to happen. In a nutshell, we talk about savings, extending the filter life. We talk about savings, reduce the compressed air.

We can avoid downtime. Each downtime is one event that costs not only in the maintenance part here, but also the whole production costs that are not calculate here. And half the penalties that, if you have a single issue, it’s gonna be a big one. So, therefore, it’s a good way to give customers an idea why they should invest the CapEx parts and how we can help with the OPEX to save, their budgets in the sense of operating dust collector systems. So, Shawn, if I have time three minutes, I’m going to run this HMI demo because then you can see on the screen how the different screens are operated, but it’s up to you if I if I if if I need to do that.

Shawn Tierney (host): Yeah. Go ahead.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Okay. So this is an HMI demo, of course, simulated here because imagine it’s not possible to connect to live or to have all this whole equipment. So then I’m going to click here. So, basically, you see how a operator would navigate the type of information that, is provided. I made this click through very quickly because then we don’t owe too too much time here.

But you see that, you are able to trend the particle density, the air consumption. You can set the alarms. You can indicate which boost valve is not okay. How is the level of filter bags? And now the settings.

The cleaning, these are the parameters that you can adjust. Like I said, we have an adaptive learning algorithm, but in many cases, you needed to steer at least set up, the sensors as well, how sensible sensitivity of that. There are many different thresholds. And then the diagnostic part, for the diaphragm and the rupture where you can detect. And once this is done, you can see that, you have, quite, interesting information.

For example, if you change, you devolve, you reset the counter. These are the alarms that you can acknowledge, etcetera. Okay? And, that’s it. That was the case.

Shawn Tierney (host): Yeah. That gives you a good idea of what you’re getting with as far as the HMI is concerned, and, it’s good to see a full screen. I mean, it looks it looks like a very well designed HMI. From my perspective, it looks like it’s really giving you it’s focusing in on any errors. So you have, like, just standard graphics, a very good looking graphics, and then if there’s an error, you see it in red or yellow, really calls the eye to it.

But, Eugeno, I see that, there’s a QR code on the screen right now. Can you tell people where that goes?

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Yes. It goes to the product page on our Emerson.com site. And from there, you can request for demo. We can request for proposal. We can request for more information.

So this is the entry point for you to go to know, how it how we provide that solution, which kind of, basic elements. And there, we have also the related product pages if you wanna get, get to know more.

Shawn Tierney (host): And I think the important part here is a lot of times you you, you know, when when you have a dust collector system that is that is constantly needing care, right, to keep you in compliance and make sure your products are products are being made correctly and you’re keeping people safe and all of that, You know, these systems, you’re gonna they’re they’re gonna be expensive. And, you know, larger systems, of course, are gonna be expensive. And so that cost savings, it’s like energy savings we do with VFDs on pumps and fans. Right? Or energy savings we do when we’re doing lighting, the folks over at Emerson are gonna wanna help you kinda quantify that because, you know, they know that for you to be able to justify not only, hey.

This has given us a lot of problems. We know it’s costing us money. You also wanna know your ROI. Right? And so they’re gonna work with you on that because that’s on these big projects, those are those are some of the things that we have to look at to be able to, you know, to budget correctly.

Anybody who has ever been in the budgeting part of a company knows you just don’t spend money because it’s fun. You know, you have to have a reason beyond everything. So I would I would guess I’m right on that, Eugenio.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Yes. And, Shawn, although I just covered the technical part, of course, without any commitment, we can talk to customers and consult them Yeah. To look it around and see, in terms of maturity, how they operate this dust collector systems. We can, of course, check the install base. We have a questionnaire, that can fill it in.

We can understand the size. We can, for example, talk about the energy consumption, the number of, hours that they are spend or active maintenance. And based on that, we give them opportunity to analyze whether they want to invest in that solution, which is a CapEx investment, but, also improve how much reduction they could have on the OPEX part.

Shawn Tierney (host): Yeah. Which is which is, yeah, how they’re gonna justify it. Well, Eugeno, I wanna thank you for going through that. I really enjoyed your presentation. I learned a lot more about about, this product line and actually this product category than I that I knew coming in, and you’re I think you did a great job of walking us through it all.

So thank you very much for coming on the show.

Eugenio Silva (Emerson): Shawn, on behalf of Emerson, we appreciate this opportunity. It’s my first one here, so I also enjoy it, and this was was great. A great conversation, great questions, and, thank you.

Shawn Tierney (host): Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode. I wanna thank Eugene for coming on the show and bringing us up to speed on dust collector systems. I really didn’t know all of those technical details, and I really appreciate him going through that. And it’s cool to see how they integrated so many different Emerson products into that solution. I mean, it’s just not like a PLC into my o.

The sensors, this I mean, you guys, sorry. I’m not gonna go through it again. But in any case, really appreciate that. And I also appreciate our members who made the video addition possible. Thank you, members.

Your $5 a month not only locks this video, but so many other videos that we’ve done, hundreds of videos I’ve done over the last twelve years. So thank you for being a member and supporting my work. I also wanna thank the automationschool.com and the automationblog.com. I hope you guys listened to that update that I included in the show. So many good things happen at both places.

I hope you guys would take a moment to check out both websites. And with that, I just wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace.

The Automation Podcast, Episode 241 Show Notes:To learn about becoming a member and unlocking hundreds of our “member’s only” videos, click here.Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Jackie Stokes of Siemens to learn how to commission VFDs using StartDrive in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)Shawn Tierney (Host): Everybody, thank you for tuning back in. In this episode, I actually meet back up with Jackie Stokes from Siemens to learn how to use a start drive to commission Siemens drive, specifically the g one twenty and the g two twenty. Although, I'm sure some of the other drives are very similar. And this actually came from a request from a viewer who's who asked that we have somebody on the show us that. And because I'm not the expert, I reached out to Jackie and she agreed to come on.So I'm looking forward to that. Now we're gonna cover the g one twenty. The g two twenty, we're gonna cover how to change Siemens drives to be Ethernet IP instead of PROFINET. They have Ethernet IP built in, which is really cool. And then we're gonna cover some free training they have coming up.I will include those links below as well as the links from Jackie below in the description. You should see that on all platforms. And I do wanna reach out to you and ask for a favor. I'm coming up on my ten year anniversary of doing this full time, and I was hoping that you guys could help me out to reach a 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. Now I know a lot of you listen on Apple, a lot listen on Spotify, a lot of you consume the shows over at the automationblog.com, and I appreciate you all.But I thought, wouldn't it be great if I could hit a 100,000 subscribers over on YouTube by the end of the year? And maybe if we do, we could have a celebration. We could do a live stream, do some q and a. I'd love to hear what you guys thought over I actually started the channel twelve years ago. I was doing a part time to start, and I'd love to know what your favorite episodes were or what episodes what kind of episodes you like to see in the future.And so if you guys I know even if you're on another platform, if you do have a YouTube account, if you could swing by, it's at insights I a. That's a lot shorter than insights in automation. So I shortened it up, I think it was a year ago or two years ago. So it's at insights I a. Again, if you guys are up to it, I'd love to try to hit a 100,000 subscribers by the end of the year to celebrate my tenth year doing this full time.And with that, let's go ahead and jump into how to use StarDrive to set up and commission Siemens VFDs like the g one twenty and g two twenty. Jackie, welcome back to the show. I'm so happy to have you back on and here to talk about using, Siemens VFDs inside of TIA portal. Now we've talked about your VFDs so many times on the show over the years, and but we've never actually, like, put one in TIA portal and tried it out. And I had actually had a a viewer ask about that.So thank you for agreeing to come back on. And just in case, some of the audience members didn't watch the previous episodes where you were on, Could you quickly introduce yourself before jumping into our topic for today?Jackie Stokes (Siemens): Sure. And thanks for having me back on the show. So my name is Jackie Stokes. I am a marketing programs development manager at Siemens. I work in the motion control business unit.I've been in the business for, oh my goodness, I'm getting old, like, fourteen years now. So I but I've been with Siemens for about three and a half years. So, yeah, we've talked about, our drives family. I think most recently, we talked about the Synamix g two twenty drive with Ivan, one of our product managers. But, yeah, happy to be back and talking about how to integrate our VFDs into portal.Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah.

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Winston Leung of QNX to discuss Trends in Robotics in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:Note: As mentioned above, this episode was not sponsored so the video edition is a "member only" perk. The below audio edition (also available on major podcasting platforms) is available to the public and supported by ads. To learn more about our membership/supporter options and benefits, click here.Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 239 Show Notes:To learn about becoming a member and unlocking hundreds of our "member's only" videos, click here.Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorEliminate commercials and gain access to my weekly full length hands-on, news, and Q&A sessions by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You'll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Rylan Pyciak of Cleveland Automation Systems to discuss Trends in Automation, Inspiring a New Generation of Controls Engineers, and more in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated) Shawn Tierney (Host): Welcome back to the Automation Podcast. My name is Shawn Tierney from Insights and Automation. And in this episode, I sit down with Ryland Pychak from Cleveland Automation Systems, a system integrator house, to talk about all things industrial automation, including how do we get more people involved in controls engineering as well as, like, what are the latest products and technologies people are using. So with that said, let's go ahead and jump right into my interview with Ryland Piechak from Cleveland Automation Systems. Ryland, it's great to have you on the show.Now before we jump into our conversation, can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself?Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. Certainly. Well well, first and foremost, thanks for having me as well, Shawn. Definitely appreciate the opportunity. Yeah.To give a little bit of background, I'm Radom Pyshak, founder, president of, Clearwater Automation Systems, as well as a controls engineer. You know, we've we've essentially been in business for ten years now. And, ultimately, you know, my background has been controls engineering through and through. Actually started the manufacturing floor myself. You know, a lot of maintenance technician role, a lot of day to day kind of supporting troubleshooting equipment and whatnot.From there, obviously, went off to college, got a controls engineering background, did a little stint at Rockwell, also worked at an OEM as well as a system integrator. And then from there, kind of saw the entire picture of manufacturing and decided to go out and start cleaning automation systems myself. You know, so since then, like I said, we've been in business going on ten years so far. And, yeah, it's been been great. You know, there's a lot of unique things we've come across in the manufacturing industry, and, I'm definitely very passionate.And it's, something that's very interesting from my perspective.Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I appreciate you coming on the show. And, really, that's our audience, the controls engineers, the, really, the automation electricians, those electricians who just really get into automation and do that as kind of a specialty, as well as the, maintenance technicians and control technicians, you know, maybe have an electronics background, a mechatronics background, and then get into automation. And so, really great to have you on. And it's you have a great pedigree. They have different companies you've worked with.You've kinda seen the industry from different angles, which, you know, a lot of people don't get that get that chance to work for a vendor and a integrator and an OEM and on the plant floor. So what really, tell us about your company, Cleveland Automation Systems. What do you guys do? Like, what was the purpose and found doing it? And and, really, what's your what's your focus?Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. Yeah. Certainly. So click on automation system is probably the best, you know, term for us as a system integrator. Right?We typically have various clients that come to us to solve unique problems. That's anywhere from simple, you know, field troubleshooting, simple service calls we get to complex equipment development, a lot of custom automation, as well as a lot of integration. You know? So, really, we work pretty much with every clientele across the board. I would say the main one, pretty much the only thing we don't do is oil and gas.

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Kelly Passineau of Rockwell Automation to learn about their new EtherNet/IP In-cabinet solution for networking motor starters, push buttons, and more in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:The "After Show" for Members: Additional Thoughts & CommentsNote: As The Automation Show "After Show" is a member/supporter only perk, the above video is not accessible to non-members. Learn more about our membership options here.The Automation Podcast, Episode 237 Show Notes:Special thanks to Kelly for coming on the show, and to Rockwell Automation for sponsoring this episode so we could release this episode Ad Free! Below you'll find links to more information about their Ethernet/IP In-Cabinet solution: Product Website eBook/Brochure User ManualUntil next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorEliminate commercials and gain access to my weekly full length hands-on, news, and Q&A sessions by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You'll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Colin Morris of MaintainX to learn about their CMMS solution for preventing unplanned machine downtime in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 236 Show Notes:Special thanks to Collin for coming on the show, and to Maintain for sponsoring this episode so we could release it Ad Free! Below you'll find links to more information about MaintainX: MaintainX overview MaintainX CoPilot Reporting overview Customer case studies Implementation overviewUntil next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorEliminate commercials and gain access to my weekly full length hands-on, news, and Q&A sessions by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You'll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Kyle Van Eenennaam of Inductive Automation to learn how to use Ignition in this episode of The Automation Podcast.Note: As this episode was not sponsored, the video edition is only available to our members on The Automation Blog and on YouTube. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:Note: As mentioned above, this episode was not sponsored so the video edition is a "member only" perk. The below audio edition (also available on major podcasting platforms) is available to the public and supported by ads. To learn more about our membership/supporter options and benefits, click here.Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 235 Show Notes:Special thanks to Kyle for coming on the show, and to our members for making this episode possible! To learn more about becoming a member, click here.Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorEliminate commercials and gain access to my weekly full length hands-on, news, and Q&A sessions by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You'll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Liz Prosak and Dennis Wylie of Rockwell Automation to learn what's new and next about Logix, including what's new with the 5590 L9 Controller, all in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For any links related to this episode, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:Member's Only Extended "RAW" Edition:Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 234 Show Notes:Special thanks to Liz and Dennis for coming on the show, and to Rockwell Automation for sponsoring this episode so we could release it Ad Free!Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorEliminate commercials and gain access to my weekly full length hands-on, news, and Q&A sessions by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You'll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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This week I cover the results from our 2024 Audience Choice Polls, recapping what industrial automation vendors our audience picked as their top choices in this episode of The Automation Podcast.Note: As this episode was not sponsored, the video edition is available to members only. For more information, check out the Show Notes below. The Automation Podcast, Episode 233 Show Notes:Special thanks to everyone who voted in our 2024 Audience Choice Polls! To unlock our extensive automation how-to library, become a member starting at just $5 per month. Visit TheAutomationBlog.com/Join to learn more.Link to the 2024 poll results: TheAutomationBlog.com/2024-audience-choice-polls/Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorEliminate commercials and gain access to my weekly full length hands-on, news, and Q&A sessions by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You'll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Zack Steck of Pepperl+Fuchs to learn about their latest Position Guided Vision product in this episode of The Automation Podcast.Note: As this episode was not sponsored, the video edition is only available to our members here on The Automation Blog and on YouTube. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:Note: As mentioned above, this episode was not sponsored so the video edition is a "member only" perk. The below audio edition (also available on major podcasting platforms) is available to the public and supported by ads. To learn more about our membership/supporter options and benefits, click here.Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 232 Show Notes:Special thanks to our members for making this show possible! To learn more about becoming a member, click here. Links mention in the show can be found below: 2024 Podcast Audience Choice Poll 2024 Audience Choice Awards - Select Your Preferred Vendors!Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorEliminate commercials and gain access to my weekly full length hands-on, news, and Q&A sessions by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You'll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Thomas Vasen of Anybus to learn about their new Defender Industrial Security Appliances in this episode of The Automation Podcast.Note: As this episode was not sponsored, the video edition is only available to our members here on The Automation Blog and on YouTube. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:Note: As mentioned above, this episode was not sponsored so the video edition is a "member only" perk. The below audio edition (also available on major podcasting platforms) is available to the public and supported by ads. To learn more about our membership/supporter options and benefits, click here.Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 231 Show Notes:Special thanks to our members for making this show possible! To learn more about becoming a member, click here.Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorEliminate commercials and gain access to my weekly full length hands-on, news, and Q&A sessions by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You'll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Luis Narvaez of Siemens to get an update on the new S7-1200 G2 PLC, as well as a first look at the hardware, in this episode of The Automation Podcast.To learn more about the S7-1200 G2, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 230 Show Notes:Special thanks to Siemens for sponsoring this episode and making it Ad Free! To learn more about the Siemens S7-1200 G2, see the below links: Siemens S7-1200 G2 Technical Slides Previous TAP Episode 203 S7-1200 & 1500 TrainingUntil next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorEliminate commercials and gain access to my weekly full length hands-on, news, and Q&A sessions by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You'll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Ryan Kuhlenbeck to learn about Manufacturing Execution Systems and Pico MES in this episode of The Automation Podcast.Note: As this episode was not sponsored, the video edition is only available to our members here on The Automation Blog and on YouTube. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:Note: As mentioned above, this episode was not sponsored so the video edition is a "member only" perk. The below audio edition (also available on major podcasting platforms) is available to the public and supported by ads. To learn more about our membership/supporter options and benefits, click here.Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 229 Show Notes:Special thanks to our members for making this show possible! To learn more about becoming a member, click here.Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorEliminate commercials and gain access to my weekly full length hands-on, news, and Q&A sessions by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You'll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Shawn Tierney meets up with Adam and Nick of Copia Automation to learn about their new Ai Copilot's features in this episode of The Automation Podcast.To learn more about Copia's Ai Copilot, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 228 Show Notes:Special thanks to Copia for sponsoring this episode and making it Ad Free! To learn more about the products covered, see the below links: Copia.io Copilot LaunchUntil next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorEliminate commercials and gain access to my weekly full length hands-on, news, and Q&A sessions by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You'll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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This week I meet up with John DeTellem of Siemens to learn what’s new in TIA Portal version 20 in this episode of The Automation Podcast.To learn more about TIA Portal, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 227 Show Notes:Special thanks to Siemens for sponsoring this episode and making it Ad Free! To learn more about the products covered, see the below links:* TIA Portal Webpage * TIA Portal Updates * TIA Portal v20 Trial * TIA Portal in the Cloud

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week I meet up with Greg Campion of Paessler to learn about their PRTG OPC UA Server in this episode of The Automation Podcast.To learn more about PRTG, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 226 Show Notes:Special thanks to Paessler for sponsoring this episode and making it Ad Free! To learn more about PRTG, see the below links:* Trial of the OPC UA server * How to monitor your OT Networks * Blog detailing OPC UA Sensors * Guide for OPC UA Server and its benefits * Monitoring HMIs * Original PRTG Podcast (199)

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week I meet up with Marc and Harry of Tatsoft to learn about the newly released FrameworX v10 in this episode of The Automation Podcast.To learn more about FrameworX, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 225 Show Notes:Special thanks to Tatsoft for sponsoring this episode and making it Ad Free! To learn more about FrameworX, see the below links:* Tatsoft Website * Free Developer Download * SCADA Applications * Connect on LinkedIn * Tatsoft YouTube channel * Previous Tatsoft Episode 65

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week I meet up with Dennis Gonzalez of Prosoft to learn all about their DF1 to Ethernet/IP Router in this episode of The Automation Podcast.Note: As this episode was not sponsored, the video edition is only available to our members here on The Automation Blog and on YouTube. For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Note: As mentioned above, this episode was not sponsored so the video edition is a “member only” perk. The below audio edition (also available on major podcasting platforms) is available to the public and supported by ads. To learn more about our membership/supporter options and benefits, click here.

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 224 Show Notes:Special thanks to our members for making this show possible! To learn more about becoming a member, click here.Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week I meet up with Rhonda Dibachi of HeyScottie.com to talk about AI, Technology, and Manufacturing in this episode of The Automation Podcast.Note: As this episode was not sponsored, the video edition is only available to our members here on The Automation Blog and on YouTube. For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 223 Show Notes:Special thanks to Rhonda Dibachi for coming on the show, and to our members for making this show possible! To learn more about becoming a member, click here.Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week I meet up with Quinton Lowry of Softing to learn how their tManager products can quickly connect Control Systems to Databases and the Cloud in this episode of The Automation Podcast.Note: As this episode was not sponsored, the video edition is only available to our members here on The Automation Blog and on YouTube. For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 222 Show Notes:Special thanks to Quinton Lowry for coming on the show, and to our members for making this show possible! To learn more about becoming a member, click here.Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week I meet up with Steve Mustard, Automation Consultant and former ISA President, to discuss the current Trends in Industrial Automation in this episode of The Automation Podcast.Note: As this episode was not sponsored, the video edition is only available to our members here on The Automation Blog and on YouTube. For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 221 Show Notes:Special thanks to Steve Mustard for coming on the show, and to our members for making this show possible! To learn more about becoming a member, click here.Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week I meet up with Ronnie Vuine of Micropsi to discuss their AI-Powered Computer Vision for Robots in this episode of The Automation Podcast.Note: For more information check out the “Show Notes” located below.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 220 Show Notes:Huge thanks to Ronnie Vuine for coming on this show to discuss their AI-Powered Computer Vision for Robots, and to Micropsi for sponsoring this episode to make it ad free!To learn more about Micropsi’s solutions, check out the below links:* Micropsi Industries website

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week I meet up with Chris Schultheis of Mettler Toledo to discuss their new Weigh Module SPE in this episode of The Automation Podcast.Note: For more information check out the “Show Notes” located below.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 219 Show Notes:Huge thanks to Chris Schultheis of Mettler Toledo for coming on this show to discuss the new Weigh Module SPE, and to Mettler Toledo for sponsoring this episode to make it ad free!To learn more about the Weigh Module SPE, check out the below links:* Weigh Module SPE

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week I meet up with Nick Rosner of Schneider Electric to discuss their new Altivar Solar ATV320 VSD in this episode of The Automation Podcast.Note: For more information check out the “Show Notes” located below.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 218 Show Notes:Huge thanks to Nick Rosner of Schneider Electric for coming on this show to discuss their new Altivar Solar ATV320 VSD, and for sponsoring this episode to make it ad free!To learn more about the ATV320, check out the below links:* ATV320 Solar SE.com landing page * ATV320 Solar promotional video * Getting started with Altivar Solar ATV320 * How to configure Pulse Counter function on Altivar Solar * Altivar Drives SoMove free software download page

Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week I meet up with Sumit Kapde of Emerson to discuss Robotic Paint Automation Solutions in this episode of The Automation Podcast.Note: For more information, see the show notes below the podcast.

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 217 Show Notes:Huge thanks to our members for making the production of this episode Possible! To learn about the benefits of becoming a member, visit us at TheAutomationBlog.com/Memberships.Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week I meet up with John Gardner to talk about his new book, Manufacture Local in this episode of The Automation Podcast.Note: You can pickup a copy of John’s book anywhere books are sold including Amazon, Barns and Nobel, and Walmart.com. For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 216 Show Notes:Huge thanks to John Gardner for coming on the show to talk about his new book, Manufacture Local, and for sponsoring this episode to make it ad free!You can pickup a copy of John’s book anywhere books are sold including Amazon, Barns and Nobel, and Walmart.com.Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week I meet up with Steve Mustard, Automation Consultant and former ISA President, to discuss Digital Twins as used in Industrial Automation in this episode of The Automation Podcast.Note: As this episode was not sponsored, the video edition is only available to our members here on The Automation Blog and on YouTube. For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 215 Show Notes:Special thanks Steve Mustard for coming on the show, and to our members for making this show possible! To learn more about becoming a member, click here.Until next time, Peace ✌️

If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

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This week I meet up with Ivan Spronk of Siemens to learn about their new G220 Variable Frequency Drive in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information and product links, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 214 Show Notes:Special thanks to Ivan of Siemens for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on their new G220 VFD. To learn more about the G220, check out the below links:* Siemens SINAMICS G220 website * Siemens SINAMICS G220 Catalog D 36.1 * Siemens SINAMICS Drive Software Catalog * Siemens DriveSim Engineer website * Siemens SINAMICS Portfolio website

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with Chuck Ridgeway of Horner Automation to learn about their new Canvas PLC+HMI as well as Cscape v10 in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information and product links, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 213 Show Notes:Special thanks to Chuck of Horner Automation for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on the new Canvas PLC+HMI as well as on Cscape v10. To learn more about those product check out the below links:* Horner Automation main website * Summer of Cscape playlist * Horner YouTube channel * Cscape webpage * Canvas product page

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with Dan White of Opto 22 to learn about their Groov Epic and RIO in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information and product links, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 212 Show Notes:Special thanks to Dan of Opto 22 for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on the Groov Epic and Groov RIO product lines. To learn more about those product please see the below links:* Opto 22 Home page * Opto 22 Training * Opto 22 Developer * Opto 22 Configurator * Opto 22 Videos

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet back up with Adam Gluck of Copia Automation to learn about the current state of Industrial DevOps as well as what’s new with their Git Base Source Control product for Industrial Automation in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information and product links, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 211 Show Notes:Special thanks to Adam from Copia Automation for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on the state of Industrial DevOps and Copia Automation. To learn more about Copia and DevOps, see the below links:* The State of Industrial DevOps Report * Downtime’s Margin-Crushing Impact: Key Takeaways from The State of Industrial DevOps Report * Seven Steps to a Successful Industrial DevOps Adoption * Mitigating the Hidden Threat of Shadow OT * Frost & Sullivan Report: Industrial DevOps named a top growth opportunity

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with Tony Carrara of Rockwell Automation to learn about FactoryTalk Design Studio in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information and product links, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 210 Show Notes:Special thanks to Tony from Rockwell Automation for coming on the show to introduce us to FactoryTalk Design Studio! To learn more about the Design Studio, see the below links:* Webinar Link * Webpage Link * Form Link

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with Alex Novak of Banner Engineering to learn about their new K50Z Multipoint Sensor in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information and product links, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 208 Show Notes:Special thanks to Alex from Banner Engineering for coming on our show to bring us up to speed on their new K50Z Multipoint Sensor! To learn more about the K50Z and Banner, see the below links:* K50A New Product Page * K50A Product Details * K50Z YouTube Intro Video * K50Z YouTube Software Deep Dive * Banner’s Sensor Product Page

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with Johann Kotze of Rockwell Automation to learn about what’s new in FactoryTalk View Machine and Site Edition in this episode of The Automation Podcast.Note: As this episode was not sponsored by the vendor, the video edition is only available to our members here on The Automation Blog and on YouTube. For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Note: As mentioned above, this episode was not sponsored by the vendor so the video edition is a “member only” perk. The below audio edition (also available on major podcasting platforms) is available to the public and supported by ads. To learn more about our membership/supporter options and benefits, click here.

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 208 Show Notes:Special thanks to our members for making this show possible! To learn more about becoming a member, click here.Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with Scott Reynolds of ISA to learn about what ISA has been doing in the area of OT Cybersecurity, including a rundown of the OT Cybersecurity Summit he attended last week, all in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Note: This episode was not sponsored by the vendor, so the video edition is a member only perk. To learn more about our membership/supporter options, click here. The general public can still listen to the episode below and on all major podcasting platforms:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 207 Show Notes:Special thanks to our members for making this show possible! To learn more about becoming a member, click here.Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with Matthew Tellier of AMCI to learn about the Motion Control products they offer in this episode of The Automation PodcastFor more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Note: This episode was not sponsored by the vendor, so the video edition is a member only perk. To learn more about our membership/supporter options here. To listen to the episode, see below.

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 206 Show Notes:Special thanks to our members for making this show possible! To learn more about becoming a member, click here.Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I discuss what episodes I have planned as well as the planned changes coming to the show as we kick off our second decade.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 205 Show Notes:Special thanks to all our listeners: You are the reason I keep doing the show!Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet back up with John DeTellem of Siemens to learn about Project Libraries in TIA Portal in this episode of The Automation PodcastFor more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 204 Show Notes:Special thanks to John DeTellem of Siemens for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on Project Libraries in TIA Portal.Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with Luis Narvaez of Siemens to learn all about their new S7-1200 G2 (generation 2) PLC in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 203 Show Notes:Special thanks to Luis Narvaez of Siemens for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on their newly announced S7-1200 G2 PLC. To learn more about Siemens’ S7-1200 G2 check out the link below:* S7-1200 G2

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with Brandon Penrod of IXON to learn about their Remote Access and IoT Edge Gateway Solutions in this episode of The Automation PodcastFor more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 202 Show Notes:Special thanks to Brandon Penrod of IXON for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on their Remote Access and Edge Gateway solutions. To learn more about IXON, check out the below links:* IXON IIOT Portal * Machine Connectivity in the age of Service Excellence * IXON Customer cases * Talk to an IXON specialist * Follow IXON on LinkedIn

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet back up with Noam Geffen of CaPow to learn what’s new with their Capacitive Power Solution for AMRs, Forklifts, and Drones in this episode of The Automation PodcastFor more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 201 Show Notes:Special thanks to Noam Geffen of CaPow for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on their Capacitive Power solution. To learn more about CaPow, check out the links below:* CaPow Website * CaPow YouTube Channel * CaPow MODEX Video * CaPow Genesis Video

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I give a tour of our new offices, share some reflections after 200 episodes, and express my thanks to YOU my audience, all in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 200 Show Notes:Special thanks to all of you my viewers and listeners who help us break 154K views/download in 2023. I’ll have more information about our new community in the coming days.Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with Johannes Liegert of Paessler to learn all about their IT and OT Monitoring Solution, PRTG, in this episode of The Automation PodcastFor more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 199 Show Notes:Special thanks to Johannes Liegert of Paessler for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on PRTG OT Monitoring Software. To learn more about PRTG check ou the links below:* Industrial IT monitoring with PRTG * PRTG OPC UA Server: consolidate your IT and OT views * Registration for OPC UA On Demand * PLC Monitoring with Paessler PRTG * Monitoring the Industrial Automation DataCenter with PRTG

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with Ramey Miller of Siemens to learn all about their new Unified Basic Panel HMIs in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 198 Show Notes:Special thanks to Ramey Miller of Siemens for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on the Unified Basic Panels. To learn more about theses new HMIs just click on the link below:* Siemens Unified Basic Panels

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with Kelby Seyl of Unitronics to learn all about their PLCs, HMIs, VFDs, and Servos in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 197 Show Notes:Special thanks to The Automation School for making this episode possible! To learn more about their PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses, click on the link below:* TheAutomationSchool.com

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with Kristen Quasey of Siemens to learn what’s new with their line of Industrial Computer products in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 196 Show Notes:Special thanks to Kristen Quasey of Siemens for coming on the show to talk to us about their IPC products. To learn more, check out the below links:* Siemens Industrial PC Portfolio * Siemens Industrial Tablet at RS

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet back up with Jay Cortel and Tom Reiter of Schneider Electric to learn all about the Pro-face line of HMIs and IPCs in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 195 Show Notes:Special thanks to Jay Cortel and Tom Reiter of Schneider Electric for coming on the show to talk to us about Pro-face HMIs and IPCs! To learn more, check out the below links:* HMI Centric * Product overview * Software Blue * Software Blue Open Studio * STC6000 HMI with IO and Control

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with Ashley David of Endress+Hauser to learn all about Radar Level Measurement, and what applications work best with the new 80gHz band in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 194 Show Notes:Special thanks to Ashley David of Endress+Hauser for coming on the show to talk to us about Radar Level Measurement and the 80GHz Band! To learn more, check out the below links:* Learn how Endress+Hauser can help you * Endress+Hauser Radar level measurement * Endress+Hauser Ultrasonic level measurement * Endress+Hauser Radiometric level measurement * Endress+Hauser Q&A on 80 GHz radar level sensors

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with Garett Williams and Raj Rajendra of Siemens to learn all about their machine mount I/O products in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 193 Show Notes:Special thanks to Garett Williams and Raj Rajendra of Siemens for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on their Machine-mount I/O. To learn more, check out the below links:* ET 200 Overview: Distributed IO – Industrial Automation Systems * ET 200 MultiFieldbus: SIMATIC MultiFieldbus Distributed IO Website * MF Support Documentation: Support.Industry.Siemens…. * IO-Link: IO-Link Industrial Communication Website * TIA Selection Tool: Siemens.com/tst

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with Sean Foley of Banner Engineering to learn all about their Distributed Remote I/O Products in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 192 Show Notes:Special thanks to Sean Foley of Banner for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on their Remote I/O Products. To learn more, check out the below link:* Banner Remote I/O Products

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I take a look at what’s new with Rockwell’s Logix and View products as seen at Automation Fair 2023 in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 191 Show Notes:Special thanks to our audience and all the vendors who came on the show this year and helped make us the #1 Industrial Automation Podcast and Show with over 158K downloads!If you’d like to support our work or come on the show, see the links below:* Sponsor, Advertise, or make a Guest Appearance * Join Our Community * Pickup one an eBooks or Video Collection

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.

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This week I meet up with John DeTellem of Siemens to learn what's new in TIA Portal v19 in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 190 Show Notes:Special thanks to John DeTellem of Siemens for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on TIA Portal v19. To learn more, check out the below links: TIA Portal v19 Links TIA Portal v19 TrialVendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(420 views)

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This week is our annual Year In Review Podcast in which we cover our Top Ten Blogs, Podcasts and Videos for 2023 (with commentary) in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 189 Show Notes:Special thanks to our audience and all the vendors who came on the show this year and helped make us the #1 Industrial Automation Podcast and Show with over 158K downloads!If you'd like to support our work or come on the show, see the links below: Sponsor, Advertise, or make a Guest Appearance Join Our Community Pickup one an eBooks or Video CollectionVendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(48 views)

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This week I meet up with Craig Nelson of Siemens to learn all about their S200 and S210 Servo Drives in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 188 Show Notes:Special thanks to Craig Nelson of Siemens for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on their S200 and S210 Servo Drives. To learn more, check out the below links: Siemens S200 Servo Drive Siemens S210 Servo Drive Digitalization in drive technologyVendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(166 views)

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This week I meet up with Jay Cortel, Nicolas Rosner, and Charlie Adkins to learn all about Schneider Altivar Machine (and Process) Drives in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 187 Show Notes:Special thanks to Jay Cortel, Nicolas Rosner, and Charlie Adkins of Schneider Electric for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on Altivar Machine Drives. To learn more about these Drives, check out the below links: Main Drive Website: www.altivardrives.com Download Software: https://www.se.com/us/en/work/products/explore/somove/ Technical FAQs: http://www.schneider-electric.us/en/faqs/home/ YouTube Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@schneiderelectric/search Training: http://www.schneider-electric.us/en/work/support/training-and-learning/customer-learning-center.jspVendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(135 views)

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This week I meet up with Chuck Ridgeway of Horner Automation to learn all about their OCS All-in-one Controllers in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 186 Show Notes:Special thanks to Chuck Ridgeway of Horner Automation for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on the OCS Platform.Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(71 views)

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This week I take a look back at some of our previous episodes, and share what I feel are the current Trends in Industrial Automation in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 185 Show Notes:Special thanks to all the Vendors who have come on our shows over the years, and Happy New Year to all!Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(93 views)

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This week my guest is Andre Ristaino of ISA, and he introduces us to ISASecure in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 184 Show Notes:Special thanks to Andre Ristaino of ISA for coming on our show and bringing us up to speed on ISASecure!Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(270 views)

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This week my guest is Zachary Stank of Phoenix Contact, and he introduces us to PLCnext and demos how to program it in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 183 Show Notes:Special thanks to Zachary Stank of Phoenix for coming on our show and bringing us up to speed on PLCnext!Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(144 views)

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This week my guests are Shannon Friedman and Doug Campbell of Auvesy-MDT, and they introduce us to Octoplant in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch the Show on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 182 Show Notes:Special thanks to Shannon Friedman and Doug Campbell of Auvesy-MDT for coming on our show and bringing us up to speed on Octoplant!Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(146 views)

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This week my guest is Shahid Javed of MOXA, and he introduces us to their newest line of Industrial Computers in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch the Show on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 181 Show Notes:Special thanks to Shahid Javed of MOXA for coming on our show and bringing us up to speed on their new IPCs! You can find out more about these products using the below links: MOXA IPC Product Portal MOXA BXP-C100 Series (Box) MOXA RKP-A110 Series (Rack) MOXA DRP-C100 Series (Din Rail)Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(34 views)

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This week my guest is John Gardner of CNC Broach Tools and Manufacture Local, and he shares some inspiring Industry Artworks while discussing the state of Manufacturing in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch the Show on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 180 Show Notes:Special thanks to John Gardner of CNC Broach Tools and Manufacture Local for coming on our Thanksgiving Week special to show us his art and discuss the current state of Manufacturing with us! You can find out more about John's company using the below links: CNC Broach ToolsVendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(46 views)

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This week my guest is Barry Turner of Red Lion, and he introduces us to IEC-62443 Zones and Conduits, as well as their RA10C Compact Intelligent Firewall in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch the Show on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 179 Show Notes:Special thanks to Barry Turner of Red Lion for coming on the show to introduce us to RA10C Compact Intelligent Firewall!Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(59 views)

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This week my guest is Mitch Holdren of Mettler Toledo, and he introduces us to their new Smart Single Point Load Cell with IO-Link in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch the Show on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 178 Show Notes:Special thanks to Mitch Holdren of Mettler Toledo for coming on the show to introduce us to their new Smart Single Point Load Cell with IO-Link.Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(53 views)

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This week my guest is John DeTellem of Siemens, and he introduces us to TIA Portal Cloud, Subscription Bundles, and more in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Update: The correct order number for the USA version of the annual TIA Portal Cloud is: 6ES7804-0CP41-1YA8Watch the Show on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 177 Show Notes:Special thanks to John DeTellem of Siemens for coming on the show to introduce us to TIA Portal Cloud, Subscription Bundles, and more! For additional information, see the below links: TIA Portal Trial Download TIA Portal Cloud Website TIA Portal Website TIA Selection Tool WebsiteVendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(97 views)

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Today my guests are Tom Reiter and Jay Cortel of Schneider Electric and they introduce us to their Harmony Line of HMIs and IPCs in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch the Show on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 176 Show Notes:Special thanks to Tom Reiter and Jay Cortel of Schneider Electric for coming on the show to introduce us to their HMIs and iPCs. For more information, see the below links: HMI Panels, Terminals & Industrial PCs | Schneider Electric HMI Configuration Software | Schneider Electric Industrial PC and display | Schneider Electric EcoStruxure™ Operator Terminal Expert | Schneider Electric EcoStruxure™ Machine SCADA Expert | Schneider ElectricVendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(113 views)

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Today my guest is Jon Vanderpas of Rockwell Automation and he introduces us to Rockwell's new ArmorKinetix Distributed Servo Drives in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch the Show on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 175 Show Notes:Special thanks to Jon Vanderpas of Rockwell Automation for coming on the show to introduce us to their new ArmorKinetix Servo Drives.Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(71 views)

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Today my guests are Steven Griggs and Todd Rigby of Rajant who tell us about their private, secure, and high speed Mesh Networking Products for Industrial Applications in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch the Show on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast on The Automation Blog:The Automation Podcast, Episode 174 Show Notes:Special thanks to Steven Griggs and Todd Rigby of Rajant for coming on the show to talk to us about their mesh networking products! For more information, check out the below links: Trends Report Cardinal Breadcrumb Video ES1 Breadcrumb Video Sparrow Breadcrumb Video Copper Mountain Case StudyVendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(201 views)

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Today my guest is Cindy Hollenbeck of SoftPLC and she tells us all about migrating and upgrading legacy Allen-Bradley PLCs in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch the Show:The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast:The Automation Podcast, Episode 173 Show Notes:Special thanks to Cindy of SoftPLC for coming on the show to talk to us about upgrading legacy Allen-Bradley PLCs to SoftPLC! You can find out more about these and other SoftPLC solutions below:- PLC Upgrades: http://softplc.com/products/migrations/plc/ - Gateways: http://softplc.com/products/comm/ab_gateways/Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(204 views)

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Today my guest is Jason Kovarik of OnLogic and he introduces us to their line of Industrial Computers in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch the Podcast:The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast:The Automation Podcast, Episode 172 Show Notes:Special thanks to Jason Kovarik of OnLogic for coming on the show to tell us all about their line of Industrial Computers! Learn more about the difference of OnLogic Industrial PCs - you can select the perfect computer with their ultimate Hardware Guide and Checklist here.Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(92 views)

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Today my guest is Mark Arnold of SMC and he introduces us to their Air Management System in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.Watch the Podcast:The Automation Podcast is also available on most Video and Podcasting platforms, and direct links to each can be found here.Listen to the Podcast:The Automation Podcast, Episode 171 Show Notes:Special thanks to Mark Arnold of SMC for coming on the show to tell us all about their Air Management System!Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contactUntil next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content CreatorHave a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.If you found this content helpful, consider buying me a coffee here.(119 views)

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Today my guests are Erik Barnes and Dana Voelker of Schneider Electric and they introduce us to their TeSys Island Smart Motor Starters in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 170 Show Notes: Special thanks to Erik Barnes and Dana Voelker of Schneider Electric for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on TeSys Island Smart Motor Starters!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️ Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content Creator Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. kofiwidget2.init('Buy Me A Coffee', '#29abe0', 'P5P5OK8F3');kofiwidget2.draw();

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On today’s show Quinton Lowry of Softing demos and answers questions on their OPC UA Server, dataFEED OPC Suite in this episode of The Automation Demo (D012.)For more information check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

The Automation Demo, Episode 12 Show Notes:Special Thanks to Quinton Lowry of Softing for coming on the show and demoing how to use the dataFEED OPC Suite.

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Show, Podcast, and Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is Jeff Holcomb of Mettler Toledo who introduces us to the Next Generation of Weighing Indicators, the IND360, in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 169 Show Notes: Special thanks to Jeff Holcomb of Mettler Toledo for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on the IND360 Weighing Indicator!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

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Today my guest is Alan Cone of Siemens who introduces us to WinCC v8, including base features and add-on options, in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 168 Show Notes: Special thanks to Alan Cone of Siemens for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on WinCC v8.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

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Today my guests are Armand Prezioso and Chris Stearn of Rockwell Automation, and they bring us up to speed on their new High Availability Distributed I/O, FLEXHA 5000, in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 167 Show Notes: Special thanks to Armand Prezioso and Chris Stearn for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on FLEXHA 5000.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

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Today my guest is George Konidaris of Realtime Robotics, and he brings us up to speed on their unique technology that enables collision free robotic automation in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 166 Show Notes: Special thanks to George Konidaris of Realtime Robotics for coming on the show to talk about Realtime Robotics.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

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Today I share some high points from the evolution of Programmable Controllers in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 165 Show Notes: Special thanks to all the engineers who helped develop the Programmable Controller!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

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Today my guest is Michael Szentkiralyi of Rockwell Automation, and we talk about What's New with FactoryTalk View Site Edition in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 164 Show Notes: Special thanks to Michael Szentkiralyi of Rockwell Automation for coming on the show to talk about what's new with ViewSE.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

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Today my guest is Enrique Martinez of WWT, and we discuss OT Security Threats and Risks in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 163 Show Notes: Special thanks to Enrique Martinez of WWT for coming on the show to OT Security Threats and Risks.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

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Today my guest is Mark Berger of Siemens, and he introduces us to the SIMOCODE Motor Management System in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 162 Show Notes: Special thanks to Mark Berger of Siemens for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on SIMOCODE!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

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Today my guests include Mohua Ghosh, Joel Zupancic, and Jay Cortel of Schneider Electric who introduce us to the current line of Machine Level Modicon PLCs in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 161 Show Notes: Special thanks to Mohua Ghosh, Joel Zupancic, and Jay Cortel of Schneider Electric for coming on the show to discuss their Modicon line of PLCs!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

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Today my guest is Chad Parker of IFM who introduces us to their 2D Vision Cameras in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Coming Soon

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, TuneIn, YouTube, Rumble, Amazon Music, Podcast Index, Deezer, Podchaser, RSS, or below:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 160 Show Notes: Special thanks to Chad Parker of IFM for coming on the show to discuss their 2D Vision Cameras!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

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Today I detail what I've been working on over the last several weeks in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast (coming soon):

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 158 Show Notes: Special thanks to Jordan Wiens of DinStorage for coming on the show to discuss his new products!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

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Today my guest is Jordan Wiens of DinStorage who introduces us to his new product line in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 158 Show Notes: Special thanks to Jordan Wiens of DinStorage for coming on the show to discuss his new products!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

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Today my guest is James Parsons of SCADAmatic who introduces us to their SimServe product in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 157 Show Notes: Special thanks to James Parsons of SCADAmatic for coming on the show to discussSimServe!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

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Today my guest is Rick Conneely of Eaton who introduces us to their Din Rail Mount UPS, Switches, and related products in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 156 Show Notes:Special thanks to Rick Conneely of Eaton for coming on the show to discuss their new Din Rail Mount UPS and related products!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is Frank Jakubec of Balluff who introduces us to their BVS Identsensor (next gen code reader) in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 155 Show Notes:Special thanks to Frank Jakubec of Balluff for coming back on the show to discuss their new BVS Identsensor!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is RC Crosby of Pepperl+Fuchs who introduces us to the technology behind LiDAR as well as to their LiDAR products in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 154 Show Notes:Special thanks to RC of Pepperl+Fuchs for coming back on the show to discuss LiDAR Technology and Products!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is Connor Hughes of FLEXIV who introduces us to their Adaptive Industrial Robots with Advanced Force Control in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 153 Show Notes:Special thanks to Connor Hughes of FLEXIV for coming on the show! Learn more about FLEXIV and their products below:* FLEXIV Website * FLEXIV YouTube

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is Noam Geffen of CaPow who introduces us to their Genesis Capacitive Power solution for Robots, Drones, and more in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 152 Show Notes:Special thanks to Noam Geffen of CaPow for coming on the show! Learn more about CaPow and the Genesis product below:* CaPow Website * CaPow on LinkedIn * CaPow on YouTube * Schedule a CaPow Demo at Automate 2023

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is Bill Meindl of Rockwell Automation and he details their new Branch Motor Control and Protection Devices in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 151 Show Notes:Special thanks to Bill Meindl of Rockwell Automation for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 75K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form.

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Today my guest is Ivan Mohler of Pi Control Solutions and he details their new SUPERTUNE PID Loop Tuning software in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 150 Show Notes:Special thanks to Ivan Mohler of Pi Control Solutions for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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This week I’m sharing my four livestreams from MIA, which include details of my trip, video from the show floor, how the news is made, a little about my background and more in this episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 149 Show Notes:Special thanks to Siemens for sponsoring my content from MIA23!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

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Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is John S. Rinaldi, owner of Real Time Automation, and we discuss a wide range of Industrial Automation topics in this “Tech Talk” episode of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 148 Show Notes:Special thanks to John Rinaldi of Real Time Automation for coming on the show to Talk Tech!Note: Apologies to the “Audio” audience about not giving information about the contest during the show – I was not made aware of the offer prior to the announcement, and so I didn’t have the below link available to announce during the show:* https://theautomationblog.com/contest/

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

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Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is Dennis Gonzalez of Prosoft who details the capabilities of their AN-X4-AB-DHRIO Ethernet/IP to DH+ Gateway in Episode 147 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

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Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, TuneIn, YouTube, Rumble, Amazon Music, Podcast Index, Deezer, RSS, or below:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 146 Show Notes:Special thanks to Dennis Gonzalez of Prosoft for coming on the show and also sending in a sample of the AN-X4.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guests are Amy Tylutki and Nick Skope of Electro-Matic, and Eric Kaczor of Siemens, and they bring us up to speed on this year’s Manufacturing In America show in Detroit on April 12th & 13th (I’ll be there too!) in Episode 146 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, TuneIn, YouTube, Rumble, Amazon Music, Podcast Index, Deezer, RSS, or below:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 146 Show Notes:Special thanks to Amy, Nick, and Eric or coming on the show! To learn more about the show and to register, check out the links below:* + Attend MIA + Shawn’s Sign-up Link

NOTE: If you sign-up using my link please ask me for a give-a-way – I plan to bring one for each user who registers using my link 😀

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is Gabi Daniely from CoreTigo who introduces us to their line of Industrial Highspeed Wireless IO-Link Products in Episode 145 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, TuneIn, YouTube, Rumble, Amazon Music, Podcast Index, Deezer, RSS, or below:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 145 Show Notes:Special thanks to Gabi Daniely of CoreTigo for coming on the show! To learn more about the , check out the below links:* + CoreTigo on LinkedIn + CoreTigo Solutions + CoreTigo Technology + CoreTigo Products + CoreTigo Events

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is Diane Davis from Red Lion who introduces us to their new N-Tron NT5000 line of Managed Gigabit Switches in Episode 144 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, TuneIn, YouTube, Rumble, Amazon Music, Podcast Index, Deezer, RSS, or below:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 144 Show Notes:Special thanks to Diane Davis from Red Lion for coming on the show! To learn more about the NT5000 Managed Gigabit Switches, check out the below links:* + NT5000 How-To Videos + NT5000 Home Page

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is David Peterson from Control.com who comes on the show to share his experience with PLCs based on Arduino and Raspberry Pi in Episode 143 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, TuneIn, YouTube, Rumble, Amazon Music, Podcast Index, Deezer, RSS, or below:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 143 Show Notes:Special thanks to David Peterson from Control.com for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is Mace Bittman who comes on the show to give us an update on four Rockwell I/O and HMI products in Episode 142 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, TuneIn, YouTube, Rumble, Amazon Music, Podcast Index, Deezer, RSS, or below:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 142 Show Notes:Special thanks to Mace Bittman for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is Andy Watkins of Romi who introduces us to what’s new with CNC Automation in Episode 141 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, TuneIn, YouTube, Rumble, Amazon Music, Podcast Index, Deezer, RSS, or below:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 141 Show Notes:Special thanks to Andy Watkins of Romi for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is Ron Bliss who introduces us to what’s new with FactoryTalk Linx and FTLinx Gateway in Episode 140 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, TuneIn, YouTube, Rumble, Amazon Music, Podcast Index, Deezer, RSS, or below:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 140 Show Notes:Special thanks to Ron Bliss of Rockwell Automation for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is Thiago Alves who introduces OpenPLC in Episode 139 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/TheAutomationPodcast-E139-OpenPLC-with-Thiago-Alves.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 139 Show Notes:Special thanks to Thiago Alves of OpenPLC for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is Dave Griffith, co-host of the Manufacturing Hub show, who tells us about his career, company, and co-hosting his show, all in Episode 138 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/TheAutomationPodcast-E138-Manufacturing-Hub-Co-Host-Dave-Griffith-Interview.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 138 Show Notes:Special thanks to Dave Griffith, co-host of the Manufacturing Hub showfor coming on our podcast!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is Mark Berger of Siemens who introduces us to the ET 200SP Motor Starter line in Episode 137 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/TheAutomationPodcast-E137-Siemens-ET200SP-Motor-Starter-with-Mark-Berger.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 137 Show Notes:Special thanks to Mark Berger of Siemens for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Today my guest is Scott Preston of Antaira who introduces us to their line of Industrial Ethernet Switches in Episode 136 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/TheAutomationPodcast-E136-Antaira-Industrial-Ethernet-Switches-with-Scott-Preston.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 136 Show Notes:Special thanks to Scott Preston of Antaira for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Curt Anderson from B2Btail talks eCommerce for Manufacturing in Episode 135 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/TheAutomationPodcast-E135-eCommerce-for-Manufacturing-with-Curt-Anderson.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 135 Show Notes:Special thanks to Curt Anderson of B2Btail for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Shawn Tierney wraps up 2022 with a Holiday Special Episode of The Automation Podcast covering the Top Ten Episodes and Shows of 2022, as well as his plans for 2023!For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/TheAutomationPodcast-E134-Holiday-Special-2022-Top-Ten-and-2023-Plans.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 134 Show Notes:Special thanks to everyone who tuned into The Automation Podcast in 2022! May you and yours have a very Happy, Healthy, Prosperous, and Joy Filled New Year!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Nikki Gonzales of the Automation Ladies Podcast is our guest in Episode 133 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/TheAutomationPodcast-E133-Automation-Ladies-with-Nikki-Gonzales.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 133 Show Notes:Special thanks to Nikki Gonzales for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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This week our guest is John DeTellem from Siemens, and he covers What’s New in TIA Portal V18 in Episode 132 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/TheAutomationPodcast-E132-Whats-New-in-TIA-Portal-V18-with-John-DeTellem.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 132 Show Notes:Special thanks to John DeTellem of Siemens for coming on the show! For more information, see the below link:* Sales and Delivery release of TIA Portal V18 * Sales and Delivery release of SIMATIC Step7 Professional / Basic V18 * SIMATIC Step 7, Safety, PLCSIm and WinCC V18 Trial download * TIA Portal Add-Ins * SPS 2022 – Fairs – Global (siemens.com)

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Sean Foley from Banner Engineering covers Eight Advantages of IO-Link in Episode 131 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/TheAutomationPodcast-E131-Eight-Advantages-of-IOLInk-with-Banner.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 131 Show Notes:Special thanks to Sean Foley of Banner for coming on the show! For more information, see the below link:* Learn more about IO-Link and Banner IO-Link Products and Solutions

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Jackie Stokes explains how to use Siemens VFDs with Allen-Bradley PLCs on Ethernet/IP, RIO, or DeviceNet in Episode 130 of The Automation Podcast.For more information, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/TheAutomationPodcast-E130-Using-Siemens-VFD-with-A-B-PLCs-and-Networks.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 130 Show Notes:Special thanks to Jackie Stokes of Siemensfor coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Until next time, Peace ✌️

Shawn Tierney
Automation Instructor and Blogger

Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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Bryan Powrozek from Clayton McKervey discusses Growing the Business Value of Automation Businesses in Episode 129 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/TheAutomationPodcast-E129-Growing-Automation-Business-with-Clayton-McKervey.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 129 Show Notes: Special thanks to Bryan Powrozek of Clayton McKervey for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 75K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form.

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Adam Gluck tells us about Copia Automation's new Automatic PLC Backup feature, Device Link, in Episode 128 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/TheAutomationPodcast-E128-Copia-Automations-New-Device-Link.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 128 Show Notes: Special thanks to Adam Gluck of Copia Automation for coming on the show! To fin out more about Copia, see the below links:

Copia Automation's Website Sign up for a free trial Learn more about DeviceLink Request a demo Get Our Tech Guide: Intro to Git-based version control for Industrial Automation

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Chris Novak of HBK discusses the Technology behind Strain Gauge Force Sensors in Episode 127 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/TheAutomationPodcast-E127-Technology-Behind-Strain-Guage-Force-Sensors-HBK.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 126 Show Notes: Special thanks to Ivan Mohler of PiControl Solutions for coming on the show!

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Thanks in advance for your support!

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Ivan Mohler of PiControl Solutions discusses Process Control Monitoring and Diagnostics this week on The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/TheAutomationPodcast-E126-Process-Control-Monitoring-and-Diagnostics.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 126 Show Notes: Special thanks to Ivan Mohler of PiControl Solutions for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

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Ron Knight from Prism Systems and John DeTellem from Siemens introduce us to the Cause and Effect Matrix in TIA Portal v17 in Episode 125 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/TheAutomationPodcast-E125-Cause-And-Effect-Matrix.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 125 Show Notes: Special thanks to Ron Knight and John DeTellem for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advance for your support!

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Travis Cox brings us up to speed on Ignition from of Inductive Automation in Episode 124 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 124 Show Notes: Special thanks to Travis Cox of Inductive Automation for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

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Peng Sang Cau of ATS comes on the show this week to share how Symphoni’s orchestrated motion produces powerful results in Episode 123 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/TheAutomationPodcast-E123-Symphoni.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 123 Show Notes: Special thanks to Peng Sand Cau of ATS for coming on the show! For more information about Symphoni, see the below links:

www.SymphoniTech.com

Symphoni Featured Video with Sound

About Symphoni Explainer Video

Symphoni on YouTube

Symphoni on LinkedIn

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Kristen Kosatka of Rockwell Automation comes on the show this week to share what's new with Studio 5000 v35 in Episode 122 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 122 Show Notes: Special thanks to Kristen Kosatka of Rockwell Automation for coming on the show! Note that V35 is scheduled to release next month (November of 2022.)

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This week Steve Mustard and Pascal Girerd come on the show to talk about Soft PLC Myths and Reasons To Use Them Today in Episode 121 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/TheAutomationPodcast-E121-Soft-PLCs.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 121 Show Notes: Special thanks to Steve Mustard and Pascal Girerd of Straton Automation for coming on the show!

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This week Malachi Greb comes on the show to talk about Elite Automation and AMR applications on Episode 120 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/TheAutomationPodcast-E120-Elite-Automation.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 120 Show Notes: Special thanks to Malachi Greb from Elite Automation for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

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This week Jackie, Craig, and Rafael of Siemens update us on VFD and Servo Drives on Episode 119 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/TheAutomationPodcast-E119-Siemens-Drives-and-Motion.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 119 Show Notes: Special thanks to Jackie, Craig, and Rafael from Siemens for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

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My guest this week is Jeremy Pollard, Senior Electrical & Automation Engineer, on Episode 118 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/TheAutomationPodcast-E118-Interview-Jeremy-Pollard.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 118 Show Notes: Special thanks to Jeremy Pollard for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

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This week Enrique Martinez of WWT discusses OT Security with us on Episode 117 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/TheAutomationPodcast-E117-OT-Security.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 117 Show Notes: Special thanks to Enrique Martinez of WWT for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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This week Robb Weidemann from Banner Engineering introduces us to their Smart Lighting and Indication Products on Episode 115 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/TheAutomationPodcast-E115-Smarter-Machine-Lighting-by-Banner.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 115 Show Notes: Special thanks to Robb Weidemann from Banner Engineering for coming on the show! For more information, check out Banner's website here:

PRO PRODUCTS BY BANNER

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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This week Dennis Wylie and Justin Wengatz from Rockwell Automation bring us up to speed on What's New and Coming for ControlLogix and Studio 5000 on Episode 114 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/TheAutomationPodcast-E114-Whats-New-with-Logix-Studio5K.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 114 Show Notes: Special thanks to Dennis Wylie and Justin Wengatz from Rockwell Automation for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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My guest this week is Daniel Winchester, Controls Engineer, on Episode 113 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/TheAutomationPodcast-E113-Interview-Daniel-Winchester.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 113 Show Notes: Special thanks to Daniel Winchester for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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This week our guest RC Crosby from Pepperl+Fuchs covers RFID Technology and Products on Episode 112 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/TheAutomationPodcast-E112-RFID-Technology-and-Products.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 112 Show Notes: Special thanks to RC Crosby of the Pepperl+Fuchs for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Senior Automation Engineer and Freelance Writer Paul Hunt is my guest on Episode 111 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/TheAutomationPodcast-E111-Interview-Paul-Hunt.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 111 Show Notes: Special thanks to Paul Hunt for coming on the show to be interviewed! You can see all of Paul's articles here:

https://theautomationblog.com/author/cntrlengr/

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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This week our guest Eric Coseman educates us about Cybersecurity, ISA99, and 62443 on Episode 110 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/TheAutomationPodcast-E110-ISA99-62443-CyberSecurity-with-Eric-Coseman.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 110 Show Notes: Special thanks to Eric Coseman of the ISA for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Interview with Lisa Richter, host of the Talking Industrial Automation Podcast from CSiA, on Episode 109 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/TheAutomationPodcast-E109-Talking-Industrial-Automation-Interview.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 109 Show Notes: Special thanks to Lisa Richter, host of the Talking Industrial Automation podcast from CSiA, for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Talent Acquisition and Learning and Development Lead Marc LeVine is my guest on Episode 108 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/TheAutomationPodcast-E108-Interview-Marc-LeVine.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 108 Show Notes: Special thanks to Marc LeVine of Thermo Systems for coming on the show to be interviewed!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In today's video I take a look back at the evolution of PLCs, then I talk about some of the next generation features vendors have available today, after which I discuss what me might see in the coming years. Note that I created this video for a session I hosted at Control.com's Control Automation Day 2022 on 06/21/22, and it was also made available a few days earlier to members of my Locals community here. (TAS2 E4) For more information check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Show:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/TheAutomationShow-S2E4-Special-PLCs-of-the-Past-Present-and-Future.mp3

The Automation Show, Season 2 Episode 4 Show Notes: Huge thanks to Control.com for inviting me to present at their event!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Show, Podcast, and Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Oliver Haya presents Remote Access Solutions from Rockwell Automation on Episode 107 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/TheAutomationPodcast-E107-Rockwell-Remote-Access.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 107 Show Notes: Special thanks to Oliver Haya of Rockwell Automation for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on their Remote Access Solutions.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Senior Controls Engineer and Freelance Writer Brandon Cooper is my guest on Episode 106 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/TheAutomationPodcast-E106-Interview-BrandonCooper.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 106 Show Notes: Special thanks to Brandon Cooper for coming on the show to be interviewed. To all of Brandon's articles, click on the below link:

Articles By Brandon Cooper

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Nehemiah McIntyre reviews Signal Conditioner Basics as well as the advanced features of HBK Smart Signal Conditioners on Episode 105 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/TheAutomationPodcast-E105-HBK-Signal-Conditioners.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 105 Show Notes: Special thanks to Nehemiah McIntyre of HBK for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on their Smart Signal Conditioners. To learn more, check out the below product links:

ClipX – The Precise and Easy-to-Integrate Industrial Signal Conditioner

How to work with ClipX

Measurement Technology 4.0 – Optimize Your Production Processes

Measuring Amplifiers, Transmitters, and Weighing Electronics

Preventing Errors in Signal Conditioning

Requirements of Modern Automation Systems

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Interview with Chris Luecke, host of the Manufacturing Happy Hour Podcast, on Episode 104 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/TheAutomationPodcast-E104-MFG-Happy-Hour-Interview.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 104 Show Notes: Special thanks to Chris Luecke , host of the Manufacturing Happy Hour podcast for coming on the show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Vic Parangelo introduces us to Prosoft Remote Access Gateways and Prosoft Connect in Episode 103 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/TheAutomationPodcast-E103-Prosoft-Connect.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 103 Show Notes: Special thanks to Vic Parangelo of Prosoft Technology for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on the Prosoft Remote Access Gateways and Prosoft Connect.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Ivan Mohler introduces us to Pi Control's Stepless Multivariable Closed Loop Tuning in Episode 102 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/TheAutomationPodcast-E102-PiControl-Loop-Tuning.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 102 Show Notes: Special thanks to Ivan Mohler of PiControl for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on their Stepless Multivariable Closed Loop Tuning software.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Mikel Ayani introduces us to Simumatik Simulation Software in Episode 101 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/TheAutomationPodcast-E101-Simumatik-Simulation.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 101 Show Notes: Special thanks to Mikel Ayani for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on the SIMUMATIK Simulation Software.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Welcome to a very special edition of The Automation Podcast! To celebrate our 100th Episode, I reached out to five of our previous guests from Siemens, Rockwell, Mitsubishi, Phoenix Contact and the ISA to interview them on where they see the Industrial Automation industry going in the next five to ten years. The result of these interviews is the below episode, which after editing comes in at just under two hours! If you'd like to learn more, including who our guests are and what topics they discuss, scroll down to this episode's "show notes" which your find beneath the podcast.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/TheAutomationPodcast-E100-Future-Of-Automation-Special.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 100 Show Notes: Special thanks to all our guests include John DeTellem of Siemens, Ira Sharp of Phoenix Contact, Jeff Brown of Mitsubishi, Tyler Phillips of Rockwell Automation, and Steve Mustard from the International Society of Automation. Below are some of the Main Topics we discussed, as well as the time of each guest appearance:

John DeTellem of Siemens: Our journey and what the future might hold for Control Systems Architectures, Virtualization, and Edge devices.

0:01:10 to 0:31:04

Ira Sharp of Phoenix Contact (Part 1): Thoughts on the future of Open Automation, as well as Equipment as a Service (EaaS)

0:31:51 to 0:50:53

Jeff Brown of Mitsubishi Electric: Thoughts on future challenges as well as how recent advancements give Engineers more flexibility, help with Innovation, and improve the Company's Top Line.

0:53:13 to 1:15:03

Tyler Phillips of Rockwell Automation: Thoughts on the future of Digital Twins as well as of Cloud Based solutions.

1:15:42 to 1:26:10

Steve Mustard of the ISA: Thoughts on the need for continuing education, certification, as well as the importance of robust cyber security.

1:27:43 to 01:50:17

Continuing the Conversation (with Ira Sharp of Phoenix Contact, Part 2): Learn about the Industry 4.0 Club where you can discuss industrial automation topics with your peers

1:51:45 to 01:56:47 Link to the Industry 4.0 Club: https://www.clubhouse.com/club/industry-40-club

You can now join our community and optionally support us at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Matthew Dulcey of PROCENTEC introduces us to SNAP Industrial Ethernet Fault Identification Episode 99 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 99 Show Notes: Special thanks to Matthew Dulcey of PROCENTEC for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on the SNAP. For more information, see below:

Click Here for more information about SNAP Our Global Sales Manager is: Jonathan Machin (jmachin @ procentec.com) People can also reach PROCENTEC via email at: info @ procentec.com

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Victor Parangelo introduces us to Data Logger Plus from Prosoft Technologies in Episode 98 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/TheAutomationPodcast-E098-Prosoft-Data-Logger-Plus.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 98 Show Notes: Special thanks to Victor Parangelo of Prosoft Technology for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on the Data Logger Plus.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Gary Pratt gives us a detailed look at his new book, The Book Of Codesys, in Episode 97 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/TheAutomationPodcast-E097-ControlSphere-The-Book-of-Codesys.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 97 Show Notes: Special thanks to Gary Pratt of ControlSphere for coming on the show to give us a detailed look inside his new book, The Book Of Codesys.

Link to book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3KqVSnT Link to OOIP Foundation: https://ooip-foundation.org Link to ControlSphere: https://www.ControlSphere.pro

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Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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The Book of CODESYS: The ultimate guide to PLC and Industrial Controls programming with the CODESYS IDE and IEC 61131-3.

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Louis Arone introduces us to the Next Generation of Automation Systems from Schneider Electric in Episode 96 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/TheAutomationPodcast-E096-Schneider-Electric-Next-Gen-Automation.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 96 Show Notes: Special thanks to Louis Arone of Schneider Electric for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on the Next Generation of Automation, including EcoStruxure™ Automation Expert and Universal Automation! (links below)

EcoStruxure Automation Expert Products

UniversalAutomation.org

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Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Kevin Wu introduces us to the Motion Control Capabilities of Siemens PLCs in Episode 95 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/TheAutomationPodcast-E095-Siemens-Motion-Control.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 95 Show Notes: Special thanks to Kevin Wu of Siemens for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on the Motion Control Capabilities of Siemens PLCs!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Sean Foley introduces us to Snap Signal from Banner in Episode 94 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, Amazon Music, Stitcher, RSS, or below: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/TheAutomationPodcast-E094-Banner-Snap-Signal.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 94 Show Notes: Special thanks to Sean Foley of Banner Engineering for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on Snap Signal! To learn more, check out the Snap Signal website HERE.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Larry O'Brien introduces us to the ARC Advisory Group in Episode 93 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 93 Show Notes: Special thanks to Larry O'Brien for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on ARC Advisory Group!

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Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Bob Meads introduces us to IQagent: AR for Industrial Automation, in Episode 92 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 92 Show Notes: Special thanks to Bob Meads for coming on the show to introduce us to, and demo, IQagent!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Markus Bachmann introduces us to CODESYS in Episode 91 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 91 Show Notes: Special thanks to Markcus Bachmann for coming on the show to introduce us to CODESYS!

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Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Adam Davis introduces us to the PowerFlex 755TS in Episode 90 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 90 Show Notes: Special thanks to Adam Davis of Rockwell Automation for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on the Poweflex 755TS!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Adam Gluck introduces us to Copia Automation's Git based Source Control solution in Episode 89 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, or RSS, or below: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/TheAutomationPodcast-E089-Copia.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 89 Show Notes: Special thanks to Adam Gluck of Copia Automation for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on their Git base Source Control Solution for Industrial Automation!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Jason Andersen introduces us to Stratus Fault Tolerant Solutions in Episode 88 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, or RSS, or below: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/TheAutomationPodcast-E088-Stratus.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 88 Show Notes: Special thanks to Jason Andersen of Stratus for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on their Fault Tolerant Solutions! See the below links for more information:

Website link

Product page

Solution-in-a-Box

Stratus ECX

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Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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RC Crosby of Pepperl+Fuchs introduces us to the USi-Safety Ultrasonic Sensor in Episode 87 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, or RSS, or below: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/TheAutomationPodcast-E087-PF-USi.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 87 Show Notes: Special thanks to RC Crosby of Pepperl+Fuchs for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on the USi-Safety rated Ultrasonic Sensor System!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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My guest this week is Ramey Miller of Siemens who gives us an overview of the complete line of Siemens HMIs in Episode 86 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/TheAutomationPodcast-0086.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 86 Show Notes: Special thanks to Ramey Miller of Siemens for coming on the show to bring us up to speed Siemens HMIs!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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My guest this week is Brad Prosak of Rockwell who introduces us to FactoryTalk Logix Echo in Episode 85 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/TheAutomationPodcast-0085.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 85 Show Notes: Special thanks to Brad Prosak of Rockwell for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on FactoryTalk Logix Echo!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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My guest this week is Raj Rajendra of Siemens who introduces us to Siemens Distributed IO in Episode 84 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/TheAutomationPodcast-0084.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 84 Show Notes: Special thanks to Raj Rajendra of Siemens for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on Siemens IO!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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My guest this week is Brian Arcangeli of Bih+Wiedemann who introduces us to the AS-i Field Bus in Episode 83 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/TheAutomationPodcast-0083.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 83 Show Notes: Special thanks to Brian Arcangeli of Bih+Wiedemann for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on AS-i!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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My guest this week is Tina Dear of Rockwell Automation, and she brings us up to speed on Rockwell's plans for Automation Fair 2021 (Nov. 9-11) in Episode 82 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/TheAutomationPodcast-0082.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 82 Show Notes: Special thanks to Tina Dear of Rockwell Automation for coming back on the show this year to tell us all about Rockwell's plans for this year's show!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Matthew Lawson of MDT Software is my guest this week, and he shows me how MDT AutoSave is used to backup and compare programs of automation devices like PLCs and HMIs in episode 81 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/TheAutomationPodcast-0081.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 81 Show Notes: Special thanks to Matthew Lawson for coming on the show to talk about MDT's AutoSave product. To learn more about AutoSave, check out the below link:

mdt-software.com/mdt-autosave

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Jim Wilmot of Siemens is my guest this week, and he covers the Siemens S7-1500 line of Advanced Programmable Controllers on episode 80 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/TheAutomationPodcast-0080.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 80 Show Notes: Special thanks to Jim Wilmot for coming on the show to bring us up to speed on the S7-1500 line of Advanced Programmable Controllers. To learn more about the S7-1500, check out the below link:

Siemens.com/S7-1500

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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I sit down with Mariam Coladonato of Phoenix Contact to talk about how IT and OT can come together to implement Cybersecurity in episode 79 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0079.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 79 Show Notes: Special thanks to Mariam for coming back on the show to talk about Cybersecurity and how IT and OT can work together. To learn more about Cybersecurity, check out the below links:

www.phoenixcontact.com/cybersecureworld

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Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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I sit down with Leah Walsh of Global American Inc. to learn about their unique line of Industrial PCs in episode 78 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0078.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 78 Show Notes: Special thanks to Leah for taking the time to come on the show and give us an update on Global American's unique industrial computer line, as well as for making this episode "Ad Free!" To learn more about Global American's products, check out the below links:

Boxer 6641

QBIX i3

QBIX i5

QBIX 2

Global American Inc.

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Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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I sit down with Yassir Rizwan, CEO of Labforge, to learn how their Smart Cameras use cutting edge features like Neural Network based object detection to solve difficult detection, tracking, and lighting applications in episode 77 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0077.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 77 Show Notes: Special thanks to Yassir Rizwan for taking the time to come on the show and give us an update on labforge! To learn more about labforge products, check out the below links:

Labforge website

FAST/AKAZE corners and YOLO v3 demo

Labforge Bottlenose GUI demo

Overview of our Bottlenose camera

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Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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I sit down with Michael Bowne of PI North America to learn about what's new and happening with Profinet Profibus International, including updates on PI working with OPC UA, IOLink, and Omlox in episode 76 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0076.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 76 Show Notes: Special thanks to Michael Bowne for taking the time to come on the show and give us an update on PI North America.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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I sit down with Mariam Coladonato of Phoenix Contact to learn about Cybersecurity and the mGuard line of remote connectivity products in episode 75 of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0075.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 75 Show Notes: Special thanks to Mariam Coladonato of Phoenix Contact for taking the time to come on the show and give us an update on Cyber Security and Phoenix Contact's remote connectivity products. Please check out the below links they provided that directly relate to our podcast:

https://www.phoenixcontact.com/mguard https://www.phoenixcontact.com/mguard1100

I also want to thank Phoenix Contact for sponsoring this episode and making it "ad free"!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, I sit down with Keith Hogan of Rockwell Automation to learn what's new and coming for the PanelView 5000 line of HMIs and Studio 5000 View Designer software. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/TheAutomationPodcast-0074.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 74 Show Notes: Special thanks to Keith Hogan of Rockwell Automation for taking the time to come on the show and give us an update on the PanelView 5000 line of HMIs.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, I sit down with Justin Shade of Phoenix Contact to learn about their Industrial Wireless Networking products. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/TheAutomationPodcast-0073.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 73 Show Notes: Special thanks to Justin Shade of Phoenix Contact for taking the time to come on the show and give us an introduction to their line of WLAN products.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, I sit down with Nathan Eisel of SMC to get a detailed introduction to EtherCAT. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/TheAutomationPodcast-0072.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 72 Show Notes: Special thanks to Nathan Eisel of SMC for taking the time to come on the show and give us an introduction to EtherCAT.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, I sit down with John DeTellem and Luis Narvaez with Siemens to learn what's new in TIA Portal v17. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/TheAutomationPodcast-0071.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 71 Show Notes: Special thanks to John DeTellem and Luis Narvaez with Siemens taking the time to come on the show and tell us all about the new features in TIA Portal v17! Catch the Siemens online event next week here.

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, I sit down with Jie Hong of Rockwell Automation to get an overview of the new features of Connected Components Workbench Version 13. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/TheAutomationPodcast-0070.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 70 Show Notes: Special thanks to Jie Hong of Rockwell Automation for taking the time to come on the show and tell us all about the new features in CCW v13!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, I sit down with Stephen Mustard, President of the International Society of Automation, to get an introduction to the organization. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/TheAutomationPodcast-0069.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 69 Show Notes: Special thanks to Stephen Mustard for taking the time to come on the show and tell us all about the International Society of Automation!

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, I sit down with Ira Sharp from Phoenix Contact to get up to speed on their next gen PLC line, PLCnext. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/TheAutomationPodcast-0068.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 68 Show Notes: Special thanks to Ira Sharp for taking the time to come on the show and talk to us about Phoenix Contact's PLCnext line of next gen PLCs! To learn more about PLCnext see the below links courtesy of Phoenix Contact: - Check out the PLCnext Starterkit - Get help from the PLCnext Community - Expand capability via PLCnext Store

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Learn about Real-Time Maintenance applications and IFM's products for those applications in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen via Apple, Google, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, YouTube, RSS, or below:

https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/TheAutomationPodcast-0067.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 67 Show Notes: Special thanks to Bob Drexel for taking the time to come on the show and talk to us about IFM's Real-Time Maintenance products and applications. Product links below:

Vibration Product Selector Real time maintenance Introduction Vibration technology page Vibration Product Platforms page Vibration Edge Controller page

You can now support our work and join our community at Automation.Locals.com!

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Learn about SMC's EX600 Industrial Wireless Communications and IO system in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/TheAutomationPodcast-0066.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 66 Show Notes: Special thanks to Mark Arnold for taking the time to come on the show and talk to us about SMC's EX600 Industrial Wireless Communications System.

To find out more visit the links below:

Catalog White paper Hydraulics and Pneumatics magazine article Instructional links Instructional video 1 Instructional video 2 Operation manual EDS file Configuration tool software manual I/O config tool software Customer video 1 Customer video 2 Animation video

You can now support our work on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Learn about FactoryStudio and FrameworX from TATSoft in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/TheAutomationPodcast-0065.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 65 Show Notes: Special thanks to Marc Taccolini and Harry McCollum for taking the time to come on the show and talk to us about TATSoft, FactoryStudio, and FrameworX.

To find out more visit: https://tatsoft.com/

You can now support our work on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Learn how to remove static charges from surfaces and products in automated systems in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/TheAutomationPodcast-0064.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 64 Show Notes: Special thanks to Les Rapchak for taking the time to review the many air amplification technologies used today in automated systems.

To find out more: Nex Flow Air Products Corp. Servicing the world with locations in north America, Europe and SE Asia plus agents and distributors around the globe Website: https://nexflow.com Les Rapchak, President Email: lesr "at" nexflow.com

You can now support our work on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Drew from Real Time Automation comes on The Automation Podcast to show us how to connect ASCII devices to Allen-Bradley Programmable Controllers via Ethernet. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/TheAutomationPodcast-0063.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 63 Show Notes: Special thanks to Drew from Real Time Automation for taking the time to talk to us about their 435NBX ASCII to EtherNet/IP gateway.

Product links below:

RTA 435NBX Free Book Offer

You can now support our work on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Learn about the changes coming to Rockwell's big annual event this year, and how you'll be able to attend remotely in our interview with Tina Dear, Vice President of Industry Marketing at Rockwell Automation. For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0062.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 62 Show Notes: Special thanks to Tina Dear from Rockwell Automation for taking the time to talk to us about Rockwell's plan to hold Automation Fair as a virtual even this year.

To find out more and register for the event, see the below link:

Automation Fair at Home 2020

You can now support our work on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Learn about the Industrial Applications for Real-Time Locating Systems, which now include Contact Tracing and Social Distancing Alerts, in this episode of The Automation Podcast For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0061.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 61 Show Notes: Special thanks to Nicole Lauther from Siemens for taking the time to review the many industrial applications for Real-Time Locating Systems, including Contact Tracing and Social Distancing Alerts.

To find out more, check out the below links:

Siemens’ Website: Social distancing with RTLS and SIMATIC RTLS Technology Siemens’ SIMATIC RTLS Press release Control Magazine article: Siemens aids 'new normal' workplace distancing Control World article: August Issue (pg. 28-33) SIMATIC RTLS and SieTrace software

You can now support our work on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Learn about air amplification technologies used in blow-off and cooling applications in this episode of The Automation Podcast For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/TheAutomationPodcast-0060.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 60 Show Notes: Special thanks to Les Rapchak for taking the time to review the many air amplification technologies used today in automated systems.

Topic List:

02:12 What is Air Amplification 04:53 Compressed air vs blowers 08:12 Replacing crimped pipes/tubes 11:19 Air Nozzles 17:04 Air Jets 21:47 Air Edgers 26:07 Manifold Systems 27:21 Air Amplifiers/Air Movers 39:50 Air Knives 51:25 Air Blade Ionizers 54:45 Ion Blaster Beam 56:24 Ring Blade Air Wipe

You can now support our work on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, I sit down with Ford Cheeseman to learn about the Siemens Scalance line of Layer 2 Unmanaged Industrial Switches: For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/TheAutomationPodcast-0059.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 59 Show Notes: Special thanks to Ford Cheeseman of Siemens for taking the time to review the Scalance Switche line with us!

To find out more about these products, see the below links:

Industrial Networks Future Ready Networks Scalance X-100 TIA selection tool

You can now support our work on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, I sit down with Yuen Li from IFM Efector to learn what IOLink is, and why you should consider using it on your next project: For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast: Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/TheAutomationPodcast-0058.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 58 Show Notes: Special thanks to Yuen Li from IFM Efector for taking the time to review IOLink with us!

To find out more about these products, see the below links:

Discover IO-Link Product Selector

You can now support our work on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, we take a look at the new SITOP Power Supplies and Selectivity Modules from Siemens: For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/TheAutomationPodcast-0057.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 57 Show Notes: Special thanks to Gregory Kateb from Siemens for taking the time to tell us about the new PSU6200 and SEL1200/1400!

To find out more about these products, see the below links:

How to program the diagnostic feature for Siemens PLC and HMI PSU6200 Power Supply Website PSU6200 Power Supply Brochure PSU6200 YouTube Video SEL1200/1400 YouTube Video SITOP Product Family Overview SITOP Product Family Brochure TIA selection tool

You can now support our work on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, we take a look at the new line of HMI's from Siemens, the Unified Comfort Panels: For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/TheAutomationPodcast-0056.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 56 Show Notes: Special thanks to Ramey Miller from Siemens for taking the time to tell us about the new Unified Comfort Panel line of HMIs!

Find out more about the Unified Comfort Panels at USA.Siemens.com/hmi-unified-systems-ab

You can now support the show on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, we sit down with Bryan Auz and take a look at his new product, Mech-Lock: For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/TheAutomationPodcast-0055.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 55 Show Notes: Special thanks to Bryan Auz for taking the time to demonstrate Mech-Lock to us!

Find out more, visit Mech-Lock.com

You can now support the show on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, Diego Mesen Arguedas from Vester Business provides us with an overview of vNode Automation Industrial IoT Gateway: For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/TheAutomationPodcast-0054.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 54 Show Notes: Special thanks to Diego Mesen Arguedas from Vester Business for taking the time to review vNode with us!

Find out more about vNode at www.vNodeAutomation.com

You can now support the show on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, Thomas Haneder from Siemens provides us with a technical overview of PROFINET: For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video. Watch the Podcast:

Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/TheAutomationPodcast-0053.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 53 Show Notes: Special thanks to Thomas Haneder at Siemens for for taking the time to give us a technical overview of PROFINET!

Product Links:

PROFINET Webpage Siemens Basic HMI Podcast Siemens S7-1200 Podcast Siemens Basic HMI - First Use Video Siemens S7-1200 - First Use Video

You can now support the show on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, Ramey Miller from Siemens provides us with an overview of Siemens Basic HMI line of HMIs: For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video. Watch the Podcast:

Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/TheAutomationPodcast-0052.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 52 Show Notes: Special thanks to Ramey Miller at Siemens for taking the time to review the Siemens Basic HMI line with us!

Product Links:

Siemens HMI Product Page TIA Portal Webpage Siemens S7-1200 Podcast Siemens Basic HMI - First Use Video Siemens S7-1200 - First Use Video

You can now support the show on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, Jeff Brown from Mitsubishi returns to give us an overview of the Mitsubishi line of Variable Frequency Drives: For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video. Watch the Podcast:

Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/TheAutomationPodcast-0051.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 51 Show Notes: Special thanks to Jeff Brown at Mitsubishi for for taking the time to review the Mitsubishi line of Variable Frequency Drives with us!

Product Links:

Link to Mitsubishi VFD Homepage Link to Mitsubishi HMI Podcast Link to Mitsubishi IQ-R PLC Podcast

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In this episode of The Automation Podcast, Luis Narvaez from Siemens provides us with an overview of the S7-1200 line of PLCs: For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video. Watch the Podcast:

Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/TheAutomationPodcast-0050.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 50 Show Notes: Special thanks to Luis Narvaez at Siemens for for taking the time to review the S7-1200 line of PLCs with us!

Product Links:

S7-1200 Product Page PLC Modernization Information TIA Portal Webpage

You can now support the show on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In this week's episode of The Automation Podcast, Jeff Brown from Mitsubishi provides us with an overview of the GOT2000 line of HMIs: For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video. Watch the Podcast:

Listen to Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/TheAutomationPodcast-0049.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 49 Show Notes: Special thanks to Jeff Brown at Mitsubishi for for taking the time to review the Mitsubishi line of HMIs with us!

Related Links - Mitsubishi HMI Product Link

You can now support the show on Patreon.com!

You can now support The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In part two of this week's episode of The Automation Podcast, Jeff Brown from Mitsubishi provides us with an overview of the iQ-R line of PLCs: For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video. Watch the Podcast: Why Mitsubishi @ 1:27, Presentation Start @ 2:14

Listen to Podcast: Why Mitsubishi @ 1:27, Presentation Start @ 2:14 https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/TheAutomationPodcast-0048b.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 48 Part 2 Show Notes: Special thanks to Jeff Brown at Mitsubishi for for taking the time to review the Mitsubishi line of PLCs with us!

Related Links - Mitsubishi PLC Product Link - Part One of Episode 48

Support Shawn's work on Patreon.com!

You can now support Shawn's work on The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In part one of this week's episode of The Automation Podcast, Jeff Brown from Mitsubishi provides us with an overview of the iQ-F line of small PLCs: For more information, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video. Watch the Podcast: Why Mitsubishi @ 1:27, Presentation Start @ 2:14

Listen to Podcast: Why Mitsubishi @ 1:27, Presentation Start @ 2:14 https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/TheAutomationPodcast-0048a.mp3

The Automation Podcast, Episode 48 (part 1) Show Notes: Special thanks to Jeff Brown at Mitsubishi for for taking the time to review the Mitsubishi line of PLCs with us!

Related Links - Mitsubishi PLC Product Link - Part Two of Episode 48 - Coming October 3rd

Support Shawn's work on Patreon.com!

You can now support Shawn's work on The Automation Blog, Podcast, and Show with a small monthly pledge! To become a Patron, visit us at https://Patreon.com/Automation.

Thanks in advanced for your support!

Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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I review the "What's New in FactoryTalk View Site Edition" in Episode 47 of The Automation Podcast.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0047.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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I review the "What's New in Studio 5000" software presentation in Episode 46 of The Automation Podcast.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0046.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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I review the "What's New in Logix and View" hardware presentation in Episode 45 of The Automation Podcast.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0045.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Alain Moisan, President of SkyCADSystems, demo's his product in Episode 44 of The Automation Podcast.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0044.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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NOTE: You can now sponsor our show and site! Contact Us for more information!

Welcome to the The Automation Q & A Podcast from The Automation Blog,

My name is Shawn Tierney, and in this my weekly Q&A podcast I answer several of the week's questions answer that I've received at The Automation Blog, Forums and School.

In today's episode we'll talk about - Logix programming naming conventions - The disappearance of Power Prgramming - Which Programmable Controller language is the most popular - If it is possible to get data from a Micro800 to Excel - If the PanelView Plus 6 supports release 10 - And how to send data from one PLC to Another Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-QA001-1.mp3

Question) One of my ControlLogix students asked where he could find information about naming conventions for Studio 5000?

Answer) I would typically reference Rockwell's "Power Programming" webpage when asked this question but curiosly they have all been taken down, even thoug several of Rockwell's own online PDFs still link to them.

Fortunately after much searching I found that those naming conventions can still be found in Rockwell's Logix5000 Controllers Design Considerations, with you can get to by going to http://TheAutomationBlog.com/LogixDesignMan

Question) One of my PLC Students asked me what is used more in Industry for programming: Ladder Logic or Function Block?

Answer) In my experience Ladder Logic still dominates the installed base of Programmable Controllers. But I've also found that most new systems use a mix of languages based on which language is the most suitable to the task. That said, over the last ten years I'd say Ladder still holds a lead over FDB, with Structured Text coming in third.

Question) A Micro800 student asked me if it was possible to send data from a Micro800 series PLC to Excel?

Answer) While I haven't tried it myself, I do know that the Micro800 is supported in RSLinx Classic, and any licensed version of RSLinx Classic can serve that data to Excel, as I show in my article here. In addition to that, the Micro820 also has built-in data logging, and details about that can be found in the Micro820 manual on page 36 does dataloggigng page 106 in manual which you can find by going to http://TheAutomationBlog.com/Micro820Man

Question) A reader posted a question over at Automation.Locals.com asking is the Panelview Plus 6 supported the new "Automatic Alarm History to CSV" feature in FactoryTalk version 10?

Answer) The PanelView Plus 6 does support version 10 firmware, and the PVP6 v10 release notes do state that feature is supported.

Question) Another reader asked how he could send data from one SLC-500 to another SLC-500.

Answer) Previously on The Automation Minute I covered how to use the MSG instruction with the CompactLogix, which is very similar to the SLC-500. For details about the SLC-500 check out the SLC-500 Instruction Set Reference Manual which I link to at TheAutomationBlog.com/SLC500MAN

And that's all the questions I wanted to share this week, now let's talk about What's New and Coming?

The Automation Minute Seasons and Bundles for just 9.99 on Vimeo! Links to all the collections can be found at TheAutomationMinute.com/videos ViewSE Basics early access sale! New lessons on RSLinx Classic and Enterprise including directly reference as well as importing tags. On Monday Guest Blog by Oleksandr Husiev, the Lead Automation Engineer at Azov Controls on sharing data between S7 PLCs. Wednesday The Automation Podcast Demo Show is featuring a SkyCAD demo by the president of SkyCAD Systems.

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I review the new features of Connected Components Workbench v11 in Episode 43 of The Automation Podcast.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0043.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Today we discuss the new features that come with Studio 5000 Logix Designer version 31, in Episode 42 of The Automation Podcast.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0042.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Today we discuss the new features that come with FactoryTalk View Site Edition 10.0 in Episode 41 of The Automation Podcast.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0041.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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We take a look back at the new features came with FactoryTalk View Site Edition 9.0 in Episode 40 of The Automation Podcast.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0040.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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We take a look at the new features of the recently released FactoryTalk View Machine Edition 10.00.01 in Episode 39 of The Automation Podcast.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0039.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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We take a look back at the new features came with FactoryTalk View Machine Edition 9.0 in Episode 38 of The Automation Podcast.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0038.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Learn how you can view and monitor your ControlLogix Tags on your iPhone and iPad in Episode 37 of The Automation Podcast.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0037.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Watch as I setup a PLC-5, SLC-5/05 & 5/04, MicroLogix 1100 & 1400, ControlLogix L61, L55 & L1, a FlexLogix and COmpactLogix L1 in Episode 36 of The Automation Podcast.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0036.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Learn how to connect your PC to Data Highway Plus using USB and a much lower cost alternative to the 1784-U2DHP, the ANC-120e from Automation Networks, in Episode 35 of The Automation Podcast.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0035.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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I share my thoughts about Automation Fair 2016 including what's new in Logix, Studio, and View in episode 34 of The Automation Podcast. Related: Links to the companion articles below

What's New in Logix, AF 2016 What's New in Studio 5000, AF 2016 What's New in View, AF 2016 Automation Fair's Automation Perspectives

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0034.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Today I share ten lessons I learned in my first year coaching a Lego League team in episode 33 of The Automation Podcast. Related: Read the companion article HERE

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0033.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Learn about the 5580 1756-L85E ControlLogix, 5069 Compact I/O our session picks in our Automation Fair 2015 pre-show in episode 32 of The Automation Podcast.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0032.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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Learn what we think were the top Rockwell news and products releases over the last twelve months, as well as where we've been during the same period, in episode 31 of The Automation Podcast.

Watch the Podcast:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0031.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 30, I discuss my post show thoughts on RSTechED 2014 with a fellow attendee. Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0030.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 29, we discuss Remote Access Options for Control Systems. Note - You'll find more information about control system remote access options in our companion article below:

Blog: Control System Remote Access Options:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0029.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 28, we discuss if Multiple ControlLogix Controllers can Control the Same I/O. Note - You'll find more information about multiple controllers using the same I/O in our companion article below:

Blog: Can Multiple PLC's Control the Same I/O:

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0028.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 27, we discuss data logging options for Compact and ControlLogix Note - You'll find more information about data logging options for Compact and ControlLogix in our companion article below:

Blog: Data Logging Options for Compact and ControlLogix

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0027.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 26, we discuss two different options when choosing a Beginner's PLC. Note - You'll find more information about choosing a Beginner's PLC in our companion article below:

Blog: Beginner's PLC

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0026.mp3 NOTE - Below are the links to products mentioned in this podcast:

Micro800, Free CCW software MicroLogix 1000, Free RSLogix software Micro 24vdc Power Supply Generic MicroLogix Serial Cable Generic USB to Serial Cable Generic USB to MicroLogix Combo Cable Push Button Station 24vdc Pilot Lights, 120vdc Pilot Lights Pilot Light Enclosure 18 Gauge Wire

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 25, we discuss where you find Rockwell downloads and updates. Note - You'll find more information about Rockwell downloads and updates in our companion content below:

Blog: How to find and download Rockwell Allen-Bradley Software Video: Finding Allen-Bradley and Rockwell Automation Product Downloads Video: Getting Allen-Bradley and Rockwell Software Updates

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0025.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 24, we discuss Rockwell Software support for Windows 7, 8 and XP. Note - You'll find more information about Rockwell Software support in our companion content below:

Blog: Allen-Bradley and Rockwell Software support for Windows 7 Video: Using Rockwell Automation's Product Compatibility website

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0024.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 23, we discuss which Allen-Bradley PLC's support adding I/O at runtime. Note: You can read our companion blog article here:

ControlLogix support for adding I/O online

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0023.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 22 - PLC-5 Ethernet Options, we discuss options of adding Ethernet to a PLC-5. Note: You can read our companion blog article here:

How to add Ethernet communications to a PLC-5

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0022.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 21, we discuss where you can watch free Rockwell training videos. Note: You can see our previous Rockwell training video coverage in our companion articles below:

RSLogix 5000 “How To” Start Page Videos from Rockwell Allen-Bradley (A-B) FactoryTalk View Studio Machine Edition Quick Start Videos from Rockwell Allen-Bradley (A-B) FactoryTalk Activation Quick Start Videos from Rockwell Allen-Bradley (A-B)

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0021.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 20, we discuss RSTechED 2014 and what it's all about. Note: You can see our previous RSTechED coverage on our companion sites listed below:

RSTechED 101 Where to find RSTechED Session Downloads

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0020.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 19, we discuss the success of our Kickstarter campaign! Note: You can find out more about our Kickstarter Campaign in the companion articles listed below:

The Automation Podcast, Episode 18: Our New Kickstarter Campaign Our official Kickstarter page (www.LinkToKS.com) Our Kickstarter Launch announcement Video tour of our Kickstarter project page How to make a pledge step-by-step

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0019.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 18, we discuss our new Kickstarter campaign as well as how Kickstarter works. Note: You can find out more about our Kickstarter Campaign on our companion sites listed below:

Our official Kickstarter page Launch announcement Video tour of our Kickstarter project page How to make a pledge step-by-step

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0018.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 17, we discuss how you can get free Allen-Bradley and Rockwell Software hands-on labs and other training documents. Note: You can read more about where to find free A-B and RS training documents in our companion blogs below:

Where to find Automation Fair session materials Where to find PSUG session materials Where to find RAOTM session materials Where to find RSTechED session materials

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0017.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 16, we discuss how you can add DH-485 to your MicroLogix, SLC-5/04, SLC-5/05, and PanelView Plus 6 400 and 600. Note: You can read more about adding DH-485 to a MicroLogix or PanelView Plus in our companion blogs below:

Adding a MicroLogix to a DH-485 network Using DH-485 On The New PanelView Plus 6 400 And 600

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0016.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 15, we discuss how to access the configuration mode of the PanelView Plus. Note: You can read more about accessing the configuration mode of a PanelView Plus in our companion blogs below:

How To Access The PanelView Plus Configuration Mode Why Is The White Box Missing On My PanelView Plus? Why Doesn’t F1 Bring Up Configuration Mode? How To Automatically Run A USB Flash Drive Script On The PanelView Plus

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0015.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 14, we discuss transferring projects to your Allen-Bradley HMI, including the PanelView Plus and Component, using a USB Flash Drive. Note: You can read more about transferring projects to a PanelView Plus using a USB Flash drive in our companion blog HERE. Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0014.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 13, we discuss where you can get free Allen-Bradley and Rockwell software. Note: You can read more about getting free Rockwell and Allen-Bradley software in our companion blogs below:

Free Allen-Bradley (A-B) and Rockwell Automation (RA) Software (part 1) Free Allen-Bradley (A-B) And Rockwell Automation (RA) Software (part 2)

Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0013.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 12, we discuss Allen-Bradley and Rockwell Automation software activation. Note: You can read more about Rockwell activation in our companion blogs below:

What is FactoryTalk Activation? FactoryTalk Activation Quick Start Videos FactoryTalk Activation Grace Period Rockwell Software Temporary Activations

And you can listen to our Podcast about transferring software licenses HERE. Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0012.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast: Episode 11, we discuss how you can find Allen-Bradley and Rockwell Automation manuals and documentation. Note: You can read more about how to find A-B and Rockwell literature in our companion blogs HERE and HERE.

You can also watch a video tutorial on using Rockwell's literature library in our companion video HERE. Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0011.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast, Episode 10, we review what we accomplished in 2013 and discuss our plans for 2014. Note: You can read more about our plans for 2014 in our companion blog article HERE. Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0010.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast, Episode 9, we discuss transferring software registration for Rockwell Automation, Allen-Bradley, and Rockwell Software packages. Note: You can read more about transferring software registration in our companion blog article HERE. Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0009.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast, Episode 8, we discuss the different non-volatile memory load modes used in the CompactLogix and ControlLogix. Note: You can read more about ControlLogix and CompactLogix non-volatile memory in our companion blog article HERE. Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0008.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast, Episode 7, we discuss PLC and PAC non-volatile and volatile memory as used in the PLC-5, SLC-500, CompactLogix and ControlLogix. Note: You can read more about ControlLogix and CompactLogix non-volatile memory in our companion blog article HERE. Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0007.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast, Episode 6, we discuss why your ControlLogix or CompactLogix time may be off by a few hours. Note: You can read more about why your Logix processor time may be off a few hours in our companion blog article HERE. Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0006.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast, Episode 5, we discuss "virtualization." Note: You can read more about the case for virtualization in our companion blog article HERE. You can also watch the first in our video series on VMware HERE. Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0005.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast, Episode 4, we discuss the Micro820 and CCW6 as shown at Automation Fair 2013. Note: You can read more about the Micro820 as shown at Automation Fair in our companion blog article HERE. Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0004.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Sponsor and Advertise: Get your product or service in front of our 70K followers while also supporting independent automation journalism by sponsoring or advertising with us! Learn more in our Media Guide here, or contact us using this form or by calling our office at 413-749-4300.

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In The Automation Podcast, Episode 3, we discuss the 1769-AENTR as shown at Automation Fair 2013. NOTE: You can read more about the 1769-AENTR as shown at Automation Fair in our companion blog article HERE. Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0003.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Editor's note: If you work in the industrial automation field and would like to share your experiences with our audience, please contact us using this form: Contact Us. If we publish your article we'll send you a $30 Amazon gift card (or equivalent via PayPal) in appreciation for your efforts!

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In The Automation Podcast, Episode 2, we discuss what makes version 20.03 of RSLogix 5000 different for all previous minor revisions. NOTE: You can read more about RSLogix 5000 v20.03 in our companion blog HERE. Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0002.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Editor's note: If you work in the industrial automation field and would like to share your experiences with our audience, please contact us using this form: Contact Us. If we publish your article we'll send you a $30 Amazon gift card (or equivalent via PayPal) in appreciation for your efforts!

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The Automation Podcast, Episode 1, is the first episode of The Automation Podcast and introduces the host, Shawn Tierney as well as the "Insights In Automation" family of websites. NOTE: You can read more about www.TheAutomationPodcast.com and www.InsightsInAutomation.com in our "About Us" section HERE. Listen to the Podcast: https://theautomationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/TheAutomationPodcast-0001.mp3

Sincerely, Shawn TierneyAutomation Instructor and Blogger Have a question? Join my community of automation professionals and take part in the discussion! You'll also find my PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com. Editor's note: If you work in the industrial automation field and would like to share your experiences with our audience, please contact us using this form: Contact Us. If we publish your article we'll send you a $30 Amazon gift card (or equivalent via PayPal) in appreciation for your efforts!

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The Automation Podcast: Recent Episodes

Insights In Automation