PLCopen September 2000 News

This years ISA show, August 21 - 24 in New Orleans, was under the signs of 100's: 100 degrees Fahrenheit and 100% humidity. It certainly was not for 100% attendees - on the last day the floor was really empty. No wonder that ISA does not have the figures for attendants published on their website. So they figured out it is time for a change: ISA formerly the Instrumentation Society of America will from now on be known as: ISA-The Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society. And this name suits better their current activities. As expected, it was too early in the year for major releases and new products. So ISA showed an evolutionary path: faster processors, larger LCD screens, more memory, etc. Some interesting new form the plcopen members is at the bottom of this email

Crossbow Technology, unknown to me, showed some real innovation: a wireless sensor architecture. It creates wireless data connections to the internet using the emerging Bluetooth wireless communication standard. Ideal for sensors in areas that are hard to wire. The sensor transmit data via a node to a computer or personal digital assistant (PDA) 10, or even 100 meters away. Different sensors can self-identify themselves by transmitting their IEEE 1451 defined Transducer Electronic Datasheet (TEDS) to a node.

CJ International, France, the creators of the ISaGRAF IEC 61131-3 compliant software environment, agreed to be bought by the Montreal based Altersys. Before this take over, the largest investor in CJ Intl. was a German Bank. In addition, Komatsu, Japan, has a minor part of the shares. CJ's U.S. based operation was handled by Transys, a full daughter company of CJ. With this acquisition a foundation and infrastructure for addressing large-scale support network capability for the whole company is created. Altersys is a Montreal-based developer of PC-based control since 1984. They supply a product called Virgo, aimed to the automation and process control applications. It claims to have sold over 130,000 licenses throughout the world and claims now to be the clear leader in open control software. AlterSys will carry two product lines. The ISaGRAF line will meet the needs for embedded automation components. The second one being the current AlterSys' Virgo Automation Suite Altersys global headquarters will remain in Montreal, while its U.S. arm, based in Charlotte, N.C., will manage the North American operations. Transysoft, the distributor for CJ International in the U.S., will become part of Altersys Corp., U.S. and will be in charge of global training and support. CJ Intl., based in Grenoble, France, will be in charge of the European market. With these kind of mergers over the last couple of years, the real IEC 61131-3 ISV's, independent software vendors, are decreasing in number - the ones remaining are (in alphabetical order, please) ActWin, infoteam software, kirchner soft, 3S-Smart Software Solutions, and Softing (now at the stock exchange in Germany). Gone are Wizdom, now part of Intellution/Emerson, Taylor Industrial Software, incorporated in GE Fanuc, KW Software, as part of AGE, and ASAP, as part of Xycom, and Object Automation unfortunately just vanished.

6. "Engineering of Distributed Control Systems" by René Simon, Ifak e.V. Today, the large number of different device types and suppliers within a control system project makes the configuration task difficult and time-consuming. Different tools must be mastered and data must be exchanged between these tools. The data exchange is not standardized, therefore data conversions are often necessary, requiring detailed specialist knowledge. In the end the consistency of data, documentation and configurations can only be guaranteed by an intensive system test. The central workplace for service and diagnostic tasks in the control system does not fully cover the functional capabilities of the fieldbus devices. Furthermore, the different device-specific tools cannot be integrated into the system's software tools. Typically, device-specific tools can only be connected directly to a fieldbus line or directly to the field device. In order to maintain the continuity and operational reliability of process control technology, it is necessary to fully integrate fieldbus devices as a sub-component of process automation.

7. Two new certificates for Base Level Matsushita Electric Works has successfully certified their product "NAiS Control FPWIN Pro" of June 2000 for Base Level Instruction List. Also, Ingelectric-Team has succesfully passed the certification test for Base Level Structured Text with their product "SISTEAM SERVICER (IEC 1131-3)" of July 2000. We congratulate both companies with this result - the list of certified products is of respectable size nowadays.

8. The automation market may be slow - but Microsoft beat it all ! Long, long time ago, Microsoft announced Windows CE 3.0., as the existing version was not meeting the needs of the industrial market. So since over two years you have seen product announcements based on this version by nearly all players in our industry. They all jumped on this virtual bandwagon. Virtual, because until July this year, the product was not delivered as official product by Microsoft. This process of market confusion is new to the industrial market - normally when a company announces a new product it was either deliverable at the announcement, or would be delivered within 6 months, well in accordance with the

information provided. Microsoft originally announced the product to be shipped within 6 months (or was it originally 9 months..? - remember, this was 1998!) This 'mañana' time frame they nearly kept alive for two years. (fortunately, consecutive years !). Since nearly the whole bandwagon in industrial control somehow and somewhere showed products complying to CE 3.0, I just wonder how they satisfied their customers during these two years. Also I wonder how it hurt the industry, or at least the potential users who could not access the final released product (and do not want to work for such a long time on alpha or beta products which were certainly to change). Also, how did it effect the open control architectures - on one hand to adopt to live with very short product life cycle times and on the other hand still waiting for a tool that might help to solve the software problems. In the end it certainly did effect negatively the suppliers of other real-time kernels - they suddenly had to compete with a 'ghost', which looked different every time they wanted to nail it down. And their potential customers just folded hands and believed the product would arrive in time and conform to their specification. This just does not read as fair competition, does it? And the competition should have been hard here - the Microsoft CE team is about 150 people, so others certainly can create very competitive products and marketing techniques. So competitive that Microsoft had to reduce their pricing for CE with about 50%. Well overall the damage seems to be low - otherwise I expect the Microsoft clients in this area to start yet another legal trial. Just keep me informed if you start claiming.

How do the clothes of the emperor look like?. some words to the product itself. It must be said that the product, as seems to be shipped now, certainly complies to the original specification, and even outperforms in certain areas. Yes there is a one milli-second timer tick, and yes it has 256 priority levels, and now supports multiple tasks (processes & threads). Microsoft dares to position it now as a preemptive multi-tasking kernel with priority-based thread handling. Also, and that's another good news, they included DCOM, as well as DirectX and TCP/IP support. Also new are the HTTP Server functionality, making it usable as webserver, and even support for dynamic pages, based on a subset of the Active Server Pages.

Too little, too late??
With the PDA market out of Microsoft's control and the merge of the PDA with mobile telephones, is there still a place for Windows CE? Nice topic of course is the fact that Microsoft introduced their .NET (dot-net, dot com was clearly no a favourable name with the activities of Sun), as discussed in a separate article. Key for this is XML (extended Markup Language), as defined by W3C, the web consortium. XML separates clearly the content with the representation, providing an excellent basis to share information across platforms and applications. With all information stored in the standardized XML format, as announced by Microsoft, you easily can do the same what you do know with smaller systems. No need for Windows 2000 with the oversized Office suite to do word processing, some calculations and some internet browsing and emailing. Any CE based device will be able to do it, and at much lower cost. Does not make sense - does it? So how will Microsoft keeps its stock value at the premium price? With all the nasty tricks they did in the past? Not adopting standard, but creating their own. Like they did with Java? The first signs are there: Microsoft proposed an new XML layer,. So check the news before you believe it - you got still sufficient time : the development tools will not be available before the end of this year, so complying applications will take another year - and than still we have to see how it is accepted in the overall market.

News from Rockwell Software: Version of RSLogix 5000 Provides One Programming Software Control Solution for all Plant Floor Applications Rockwell Automation released version 6.0 of the Rockwell Software RSLogix 5000 programming software for the Logix family of programmable controllers. The new version includes function block programming capabilities, providing customers with the ability to use a single controller and programming package to perform all control applications on a plant floor, including sequential, motion, process and drives control. With the function block graphical language, users can program loop controls for process and drive applications that share the same tag database as ladder routines. Routines programmed in different languages share data, status and diagnostics without the need for additional programming or data transfers. Function block is most useful in those applications involving a high degree of information/data flow between control components, such as process control or drive systems. The function block programming function adds new features to RSLogix 5000, including process and drive control functions and Active X faceplates. Like its predecessor, the newest version is also designed for the Microsoft® Windows environment and incorporates superior diagnostics, reliable communications, an intuitive user interface and enhanced reporting options to help maximize performance and reduce development time.

News from Siemens: New version of STEP 7 supports export-oriented OEMs The new version V5.1 of STEP 7, the basic software for configuring and programming the PLC- and PC-based SIMATIC controllers brings significant improvements for export oriented OEMs. For managing multilingual projects it now offers the possibility of selecting different languages within the same project. The OEM user can export text that has been created in one language and translate it outside of the environment with any kind of text-editing tool. After re-importing the translated file it will display user texts (e.g. block titles, comments, etc.) in the language of choice. This facilitates creating the project documentation in different languages. Another new function allows to store project data on the CPU. The complete project data including comments and symbol information can be downloaded into the PLC memory card. This allows the user to access all project data even if the project is not available on the programming device. This feature is currently available for CPUs of the S7-400 series. These new functions are included in the STEP 7 Professional Edition 08/2000, containing all IEC61131-3 languages.

News from CTC Parker Automation: MachineLogic, Industry's First PCLC, Combines PC Openness with PLC Reliability and Economy CTC Parker Automation invents a practical, best-of-both-worlds solution to soft control - industry's first PC Logic Controller (PCLC). Its MachineLogic PCLC combines PC-based open design with the reliability and cost-effectiveness of PLCs. As such it gives OEM and machine users a low risk way to migrate from PLCs to PCs. It looks, feels and works like a PLC, but uses an economical, compact PC platform built around rugged, reliable solid-state flash technology. It is the first PC-based control to deliver deterministic, true real time performance - just like a PLC - while doing multi-tasking like a PC. A preemptive, multi-tasking kernel gives highest priority to control in performing up to 16 simultaneous tasks. . "A simplified run-time operating system, adopted from PLCs, rather than based on Windows NT or CE platforms, provides significant economies and compatibility with PLC systems, while avoiding performance compromises in trying to "shoe-horn" real-time factory floor requirements into an information-rich "top floor" environment" Virtually transition-free for field service and shop-floor personnel, Machine Logic uses an OS structure and proven PLC software engine running on thousands of PLCs today. IEC 61131-3 compliant, it provides five different shop floor programming languages, including ladder logic, for application versatility, while avoiding demands for IS assistance On the PC-side, the MachineLogic controller provides an open architecture, an integrated development environment, shared networking and shop floor-to-top floor communication. Flexible and scaleable, it can run standalone, be used on any PC, or integrated with CTC's Interact HMI software and PowerStation industrial workstations for single-source control solution. The PCLC is cost-competitive with PLCs, and so outperforms Windows NT-based system with an industrially hardened, high-performance PC and applications software.

News from Beckhoff: New release of TwinCAT 2.7 with almost unlimited PLC functionality The new version of this software solution include improved PLC functionality through the removal of all the memory restrictions in programming, more clarity in complex programs through a free graphical sequential function chart (SFC) editor, and extension of the OPC server to the new OPC 2.0 standard. It contains the IEC 61131-3-PLC and the NC axis controllers -with the additions that users can program their PLC functions without restrictions on memory: the 64 kB limit has been lifted, thus permitting unrestricted access to up to 2 GByte of memory to the data and code of future applications. This is useful to the PLC programmer, who can now write function blocks without restriction. The new freestyle graphical sequential function chart editor (SFC) in TwinCAT is an innovation with which the blocks can be freely placed on the sequential function block diagram. This assists clarity, particularly in complex programs. The sequence in which the blocks are processed can be freely specified, creating a clearly organised network of function blocks. In this connection, a non-standard extension of the PLC increases the benefit: programmers design simple sub-functions for optimization. The sub-functions, known as "methods", are assigned to function blocks, and are an exceptionally helpful means of program structuring and object oriented programming.

More news from Beckhoff : Software temperature controller for TwinCAT software PLC/NC This software temperature controller is programmed as a function block in the IEC 61131-3 PLC. As such, the user can employ multiple instances of this controller in one PLC program. The controller code only exists once, but there are multiple sets of data. This means that any number of control loops may be implemented. The temperature controller can run on any Industrial PC that is running TwinCAT. There are no special requirements for the PC. The temperature controller requires neither physical space nor extensive wiring in contrast to comparable hardware assemblies - this plus point is doubly valuable whenever space is at a premium. It operates independently of whichever fieldbus and sensor/actuator system is installed. The flexible structure of the controller in the PLC allows any possible sensors and actuators to be connected to it. All controller parameters can be observed directly in the software PLC for diagnostic purposes. These parameters can, moreover, be displayed in the visualization system, and linked to other function blocks in the PLC. The OPC Server facilitates communication with almost any SCADA systems.