Nivis, www.nivis.com announced that they are now providing the source code for their ISA100.11a and WirelessHART software platforms which will certainly encourage the development of products of both protocols. Reading the press release http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Nivis-Announces-Open-Source-Avai... further of which I have passed the relevant part below, it appears the business model they plan to follow is a combination of the one used by many Linux providers, such as Red Hat.

WINA are sponsoring a Webinar: “A Winning Strategy for the Global Industrial Wireless Trifecta” Tuesday, February 26 at 10:00 ET that might help you better understand the challenges and benefits of mixing wireless field sensor networks.  The presenters are Robert Assimiti, and Rares Ivan, of Nivis developers of several radio chip sets used in field level networks.

A number of manufacturers make field sensor networks that use protocols other than WirelessHART or ISA100.11a and in fact have been on the market for a number of years and in a wide range of form factors. One such series of devices are the newly released OMEGA® zSeries wireless sensor/transmitter systems manufactured in Santa Ana, California, U.S.A. that provide Web-based monitoring of Temperature, Humidity, and Barometric Pressure, as well as thermocouples and any transducer with analog voltage or current output.

This post originally appeared in "The Process Automation Usability Project" forum. It was posted by the user ctruempi.

Can anyone share a guideline for planning, specifying, and purchasing a wireless transmitter system? How about a watch list? When should we consider not using a wireless system?

The ISA Edmonton Section has just finished hosting the 9th annual Oil Sands Automation conference in Fort McMurray and as the tag line on the program states – still the only oil sands focused conference hosted in the oil sands. The event continues to grow passing the century mark in attendance and this year there was greater participation both as speakers and participants from the SAGD (Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage) companies, which is the fastest growing part of this industry.

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?