I attended the WirelessHART seminar presented in Edmonton this week by Chuck Micallef, Jim Cobb, and Eric Olson to learn a bit more about how it all works and was certainly glad I made the effort. If you get a chance to participate in one of these I certainly recommend you do so, especially as the price is right – free (okay well your time is not free).

Most people, in part because the marketing folks tell us so, believe that the addition of wireless to the HART standard is the most important part of the latest version. I beg to disagree.

The most common implementation of Industrial Wireless, especially WirelessHART is to install a “thumb” on the ‘spare’ outlet of a conventional HART transmitter so that the HART information can be accessed wirelessly practically anywhere. In my mind this is a step back because most control systems support HART communications directly via their AI and AO cards. Why therefore would you install a parallel system to access the information available directly from a wired connection you already have?

Here's a capsule update on the wireless standards war.

Siemens has become the latest major field device vendor to release products certified to be WirelessHART (see the press release below). Most of the major field device vendors have now got products that are either in the certification process or in the final release to shipping.

Here is a press release from Liz Patronella at the HART Communication Foundation detailing the outcome of the NAMUR testing at BASF Ludwigshafen:

Far from being an "emerging standard" (which is the way I'd describe ISA100.11a) the WirelessHART and HART 7 "ecosystem" (as we are now told we have to call the vendor supply chain systems) appears to be growing and flourishing at an astonishing rate. There are over 30 companies engaged right now in bringing WirelessHART products to market. Challenges are being met, like bringing down the cost of producing firmware and radios, gateways, and adaptors.

What do I mean?

The WirelessHART Radio Stack 

65C/506A/PAS Project: IEC/PAS 62591 Ed.1 IEC/PAS 62591: Industrial communication networks - Fieldbus spec

Went from Park City, UT (did I mention that there's nothing to do in the summer in Park City) to Austin to meet with the HART Communication Foundation. Control is preparing the annual HART supplement for our September edition.

Ron Helson, Ed Ladd, Wally Pratt and I went over the actual features of HART 7.1 and its wireless subset, WirelessHART.

I was impressed with all the stuff I didn't know about WirelessHART even after participating in ISA100 for the past several years.

P...