Trapped! Stranded! Held hostage! All are terms that have been used to
describe data that likely exists in many places in your plant or
factory today—data that, if made accessible on a continuous, real-time
or near-real-time basis, could potentially help you save money in a
variety of ways. Now, the emergence of new industrial wireless
networking technologies promises some cost-effective ways to free that
locked-up data.

One case in point comes with last year’s release of the WirelessHart standard for use in process measurement and control applications. The first WirelessHart-compliant products are expected this fall. And while the focus of attention may be on new sensors and instruments with built-in WirelessHart capabilities, another major opportunity will involve retrofits of existing field devices using so-called WirelessHart adapters.

These gizmos will attach to any installed Hart instrument to enable access to the diagnostic data that is available on a separate digital channel in every Hart device, in addition to the 4-20 milliamp (mA) analog Hart signal. Most legacy distributed control systems (DCS) are not equipped to understand this digital data, depriving their users of a source of valuable information for improving plant operation and maintenance. WirelessHart adapters will be designed to pick up this “stranded” data and transmit it wirelessly to the user.

This data, if used correctly, could deliver potentially huge benefits to manufacturers, proponents say. “According to some experts, if an industrial plant used Hart data to change only 25 percent of its preventive maintenance to predictive maintenance, it could realize up to a staggering 60 percent reduction in maintenance expenses alone,” says a white paper published by Airsprite Technologies Inc., a Marlborough, Mass., wireless technology provider. For more on WirelessHart adapters see “A New Way to Get Hart Data,”

.

A different kind of “stranded” data is also present today in the hundreds of millions of analog dial gauges that pepper plants and factories throughout the industrialized world. These legacy gauges typically aren’t wired into any network, but give up their information only when a human physically walks up and reads them. Many manufacturers today expend significant labor hours in sending workers around with clipboards or hand-held devices to take regular readings of these gauges. Methods for automating these readings have been available, but until now, have been costly and invasive, often requiring a production shutdown for installation.

But now, there’s a new player in the market that is touting a relatively low cost and noninvasive wireless technology for attacking this problem. Cypress Systems Corp., a San Jose, Calif., spinoff of integrated circuit (IC) supplier Cypress Semiconductor Corp., has come up with a device called a Wireless Gauge Reader that simply clips over the front face of an existing gauge.

Equipped with a tiny, chip-based camera and associated electronics, the Wireless Gauge Reader is designed to read the analog gauge, convert it to a digital readout, and also transmit the reading wirelessly to a central server, using a proprietary, 2.4 gigahertz (GHz) mesh network. The battery-powered Wireless Gauge Readers can be installed in minutes without breaking pressure seals, performing leak checks, running wires or interrupting the underlying process, according to Cypress Systems—all at a cost of less than half that of alternative systems.

“It’s like an electronic eyeball. Just like a human eye would read the needle and gauge, the Wireless Gauge Reader looks at the gauge, interprets it and converts the reading to a wireless transmission, so then you can integrate the data with your existing systems, whether that’s a DCS, or whether it’s a cell phone notification or just a Web browser,” says Harry Sim, Cypress Systems chief executive officer. The wireless range for the device is more than 300 meters, Sim says, and battery life is two to three years under typical sampling rates.

Sim, former vice president of marketing at Phoenix-based automation vendor Honeywell Process Solutions, left that post in September 2006 to become the first CEO of Cypress Systems, and takes credit for the Wireless Gauge Reader concept. The first Wireless Gauge Reader was installed at a customer site in October 2006, Sim says. Cypress Systems has so far installed about 1,000 of the devices at about 20 customer sites.

A follow-on product, a Wireless Transducer Reader, does not use the optical camera technology, but instead connects to standard 4-20 mA, 0-5 volt, or 0-10 volt outputs to read and wirelessly report data from other kinds of “stranded” devices. That product was introduced in the first quarter of 2007.

During his time at Honeywell, Sim notes, “the focus was on ...