Fieldbus fizzles; SP100=SP50 x 2

After years of squabbling, the selection of not one but EIGHT "standards" was nothing short of funny. It couldn't be described in anything but poetry. You might wish to take a look at some of my Fieldbus poems - weblinks below.

My friend Dick Caro is an acknowledged automation networks guru, with several books and countless papers and speeches on the subject. His article on where Fieldbus now stands was published in the April 2007 issue of ISA's InTech.

Dick Caro's opinion is clear:

• There's an overlap between fieldbuses and sensor networks.
• The debate on the virtues of field control vs. distributed control means nothing if the system is well designed.
• Many control loops are far too complex for field control.

My intent is not to dwell on past poetry, but to utilize past experience to raise the flag on the new Wireless standards now being debated by the SP-100 committee. One frustrated committee member says SP100 = SP50 x 2. This standard too is doomed to being talked into nothing.

Here's the problem: Everyone major company wants their own proprietary products to become the standard. As soon as any one camp seems to be in a good position, competitors start to bring up impossible objections. And the merry-go-round goes round and round.

One wonders why no one at these meetings sees this point. Actually, many people recognize it - and some have resigned in disgust. But there are always others who continue the interminable committee posturing.

Jim Pinto Fieldbus poetry

Dick Caro - Fieldbus: Where do we stand?

The 8-Part Fieldbus Voting Fiasco

The dichotomy of open standards

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Google keeps growing

Vint Cerf joined Google in 2005, as their "Chief Internet Evangelist. His discussion was entertaining, stimulating and challenging.

Google continues its growth, a new-century phenomenon. First quarter 2007 profit jumped 69%, blowing past predictions. Quarterly revenue reached a new high of $3.66 billion, 63% over last year. Google has has now beat analysts' estimates in all but one of 11 quarters since its IPO August 2004. The company has established itself as the most profitable and most powerful business on the Internet.

Google "owns" Internet advertising. You'll notice Google advertising on many of the JimPinto.com webpages. Hey, I just sit back and collect my fees, which keep growing consistently.

What can Google do next? After the recent acquisition of YouTube, last week display advertising company DoubleClick was acquired for $3.1B, just a small fraction of Google's $150 billion market cap. Google's next move will inevitably be to compete with Microsoft Office with web-based versions.

With a policy of hiring only the brightest and the best everywhere in the world, what can Google NOT do? Google Maps are already being used for a variety of things that were unthinkable just a couple of years ago. The company plays to its own strengths, freely giving away what it does best.

What next? Google will allow sharing of genetic information via the web, leading to new medicines and cures.

Forbes - Google's Only Foe: High Expectations

Grading The Next Wave Of Search

Next Up: Google Office?

MIT Tech Review - What's Next for Google

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Microsoft Robotics Operating System

The robotics market seems to mirror the PC days of the late 1970s. Everyone was developing with proprietary software on different microprocessor platforms. Then came the IBM PC with Microsoft's DOS (which could just as easily have been Digital Research's C/PM). The rest is history.

With robotics today, the hardware is fragmented, with little standardization. There are lots of companies that want to develop products, but just don't have the tools. Microsoft is hoping that they'll use their Robotics Studio.

Building a robot these days is as much a programming exercise as a nuts-and-bolts hardware project. The problem is that every new robot, even those built by industrial robot manufacturers, requires its own specialized software and programming tools. If there were a single, widely used tool for robot programming, code could be reused on different robots, and robot builders could concentrate on advanced features rather than re-inventing infrastructure.

Microsoft's Robotics Studio runs on Windows XP and includes several components: a programming environment for writing and debugging software that's similar to Visual Studio, the main tool for writing Windows software; a "runtime" environment that functions as a mini-operating system for robots, executing code people write using the programming tool; and a simulator that allows users to build virtual models of robots and test how their software behaves without having to build actual hardware.

If you're into robots, you need to play with (free) Robotics Studio.

Microsoft's latest - a Windows program for creating robot software

Robots of the Future

Scientific American: A Robot in Every Home

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A short history of Automation

Industrial instrumentation and controls has always been a hotbed of new products - improved sensors, amplifiers, displays, recorders, control elements, valves, actuators and other widgets and gismos.

Automation has a few key segments. In the 1970's, the original DCS was developed by a team of engineers at Honeywell. Also in the '70s the first PLC was the brainchild of inventor Dick Morley. These two industry segments alone represent several billion dollars in annual revenue. Several innovative startups developed HMI PC software. Innovative sensors and actuators came from several key companies.

In a fragmented business, most innovators get stuck at growth plateaus and get bought out. But some continue to generate independent growth and success. My new article in Automation.com traces the history of key growth segments in industrial automation markets.

Extrapolating automation history forward is an interesting challenge. In the past, growth inflection points have developed from new products and leadership (DCS, PLC, sensors, software). Today, growth is coming from global expansion and services, but that's only incremental.

A new surge of growth will come through new technology (perhaps nanotech sensors, or wireless), production at the lowest cost for global distribution, and fast time-to-market (not impeded by standards committees and antiquated management conservatism). The managers, innovators and visionaries who recognize the possibilities will become the new leaders of tomorrow.

A short history of Automation growth

Roots of Automation Innovation

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TED - videos of world-class speakers

Here are some of my favorite speakers and their subjects:

• Jeff Bezos, Amazon - On the next web innovation
• Dean Kamen - Inventing and Giving
• Ray Kurzweil - How Technology will transform us
• Jimmy Wales - the birth of Wikipedia
• Al Gore - Averting the Climate crisis
• Jane Goodall - what separates us from the apes
• Tony Robbins - why we do what we do
• E.O.Wilson - on saving the Earth
• Craig Venter - DNA and the sea
• Nicholas Negroponte - One laptop per child

More than 100 talks are available, with more added each week. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted.

Jeff Bezos' motivation was infectious when he stood in front of me on my 23" screen and talked to me for 18 minutes. I've seen Ray Kurzweil talking in person, and on a stage - this was better. Have you been to a Tony Robbins sales seminar? Here he is - in your face! And Dean Kamen and Craig Venter and many others.

TED website - go visit

TED Conference on Wikipedia

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eFeedback

"I have some background in education (teacher, school board member) and my wife is retiring this year after 35 years as an elementary teacher. We've seen huge changes.

"While far too many administrators are simply clueless about management, the biggest change has undoubtedly been the lack of student motivation coupled with (maybe because of) lack of parental will to work with and motivate their children. Every teacher I talk with bemoans that lack of parental support. Parents are quick to criticize, but are absent when it counts.

"The last thing to consider is that when comparing US to other countries, we use statistics for every child in the country; many other countries don't. Children who drop out are not counted in all countries' statistics. As in all comparisons, it pays to dive beneath the well-publicized generalities."

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Jim Van de Wetering [jvan@blairmartin.com] also discusses the problems of "Asymmetric Motivation":

"You are so right about short term profit requirements of Wall Street. This point is so obvious but Wall Street is not there for the betterment of the nation as a whole but to line the pockets of the few.

"The redistribution of wealth among fewer and fewer Americans is not smart in the long term because the wider the gap between the haves and the have-nots, the closer you come to becoming a second-rate society.

"When you squeeze out the middle class all you have is a Third World Nation. The removal of the middle class is a security breach for the wealthiest Americans. They need to maintain the middle class as their safety buffer, if for no other reason.

"The solution to this will not come from politicians but true statesmen. Where do you find one of those these days? The silent majority needs to stop being silent.

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Mike Hakes [Hakes.Mike@colteng.com] discusses the problem of Earth's resources going too fast:

"Beyond global warming, we must take into account natural catastrophes and diseases that will also deplete human populations.

"Already in our 20th to 21st century cultures we've flattened most of the Population growths throughout Europe; American birth rates are down; China will have an excess of 70MM men in a short while, plus all the pollutants and the 'other known causes' including cigarette smoking will start to show an effect.

"One of the reasons China and many other countries are in their situation is that they are working to create industry without conservancy. In the 1990s we were spending close to 1 penny on every dollar of profit to clean or service the 'conservancy stream' (which literally means keeping bad materials out of the waste stream and out of land fills.

"If you want an example of waste streams, look at the NE quadrant of N. America (Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston, New York City, Baltimore, etc.) and answer two questions:

How many people lived here in 1980?
How many people lived here in 2005?

"Not many people know that New York City almost drained a complete lake which had been it's water reservoir. China is currently rerouting rivers to major metros like Beijing.

"If over 95% of the peoples of the world living in cities, who will be servicing and protecting the areas that will provide the food, water and fuels? In the end that's what it will become, an 'allocation' stream.

"If we start now and divest ourselves of both wasted resources (moving into a path for conservancy) and nonrenewable resources, then we'll have a different path for the whole world.

"My comment to everyone who reads this: There is too much beauty in our world, to not care; there is too rich a story from our world to not nourish and build in this conservancy direction, for the children, as our legacy to the future."

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