For the past several years I have been running surveys on user preferences for wireless field sensor networks.

Here are the latest numbers. This survey was for tank level measurement devices. The question was, "Which wireless standard are you using or will you be using?"

Control's 2010 HART Supplement is ready for you.

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).

ISA announced a couple of days ago that a whole group of Honeywell and Yokogawa instruments and devices had completed WCI-compliance testing and were now certified ISA100.11a devices. That's cool.

Or is it?

Which ISA100.11a were these devices certified against?

ISA100.11a-2009, which was withdrawn from the ANSI approval process?

ISA100.11a-2010, which is being re-written with some significant changes from the 2009 model year and hasn't been approved yet?

The primary message being delivered by the champions of wireless is that it will enable full access to the rich information contained in today’s smart instruments and in particular the diagnostic information thus providing you the benefits of complete predictive maintenance. Of course it is never quite this easy.

 From the press release from HART Communication Foundation:

Convergence—or not, that’s the question...

Much has been made of the “end-user revolt” early this year at the ISA100 meeting held jointly with the ARC Forum in Orlando. The group of large end-users (in the sincere and correct belief that they were also representing the views of smaller end-users in general) told the major automation vendors that they were tired of wireless wars and they wanted a sincere convergence effort between WirelessHART, now IEC62591, and ISA100.11a-2009. This revitalized the ISA100.12 committee, which had been established to explore convergence.

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?

I reported yesterday about the fantastic performance of the NIVIS gateway and the Software Technology Group field device and the MACtek Bullet WirelessHART Adaptor on Monday evening.

Our fearless, intrepid reporter, Jim Montague, has gone into the scary lair of that most dangerous of crime fighters, James Bond, and come back with a report. First important piece of news. James Bond is really Jason Urso of Honeywell. And he has the goods on your process automation problems--or at least some of them.

Don't miss the next exciting episode.