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Making Sense of the Next Big Thing
Wireless sensor networks will be the next big productivity and profitability enhancer.
Nothing has generated more print and controversy in the industrial space during the past year than wireless technology - and nothing is probably more misunderstood. The term “wireless” has generated much buzz over the past two years, yet when referring to applications in manufacturing, the term is vague and open to interpretation. I’ve been following the issue closely for more than two years - even traveling to Europe for press events. But only now are engineers beginning to implement wireless technologies.
Not only can the term wireless be vague, it is also accompanied by a huge set of sometimes conflicting and arcane standards - not to mention more acronyms than a good analyst firm can devise in a week. Then add to the mix the competing press releases of different suppliers - each touting its solution and subtly suggesting that the competing ones may produce sub-optimal results. It’s no wonder that there has been some resistance to adoption. The lack of a good and widely adopted industrial standard, such as the one in process at the Instrumentation, Systems and Automation Society (ISA), has also retarded product development from technology providers as they wait to see how the standards tree falls...
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Gather 'Round the Radio -
Wireless is not a new world. But that doesn’t mean it is simple. Fortunately, radio has developed in the context of standards almost since the beginning. Here, we look at some of the nomenclature and high-level thinking required for wireless automation.
Are you broadcasting your automation from a station near you? If you are already using wireless, you have already plunged into the basics. But even if you are not currently a wireless maven, you are at least well aware that the topic is very much in the air - pun intended.
Is the technology new? Short answer: no, this is radio. Radio is a technology that has been in development since the 1890s. Hundreds of thousands of electrical engineers, ordinary people, even composers and movie stars have contributed millions of refinements to radio since its infancy. For example, in August 1942, Hollywood beauty Hedwig Kiesler Markey (Hedy Lamarr) and avant-garde composer George Antheil published an early U.S. patent describing frequency-hopping, spread spectrum technology. And the same basic technology - manipulation and harvesting of electromagnetic waves - is behind our cell phones, microwave ovens, radio controlled toys, radar, television and, of course, AM, FM and digital broadcast radio. Bottom line, regardless of the noise and the proliferation of terminology, wireless automation is radio...
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Wireless Links Railcars into Croda’s Sensor Network -
Wireless instrumentation proved to be the best way to monitor chemicals in remote rail cars.
The nature of many pharmaceutical, home care and personal care intermediates is that they are chemically active. For many years, Croda Inc.’s Mill Hall, Pa., facility faced a worrisome possibility: liquids arriving in rail tank cars were capable of reacting with residue from previous contents. Should contamination be present, any exothermic reaction would be signaled by temperature rises. Temperature rises are easily monitored with sensors, but the cars could be positioned anywhere along a 1,400 foot rail stub, and they could be moved at any time, so maintaining a continuous view on a car’s internal temperatures was problematic.
“We simply could not wire to the cars,” says Croda Instrument and Electrical Designer Denny Fetter. “You can’t make slip rings that long, and you can’t run wires across an active yard. As a result, we had to send a guy regularly around to the cars with a temperature probe and a clipboard, and hope that the instrument stayed on calibration, and that the sampling methodology was followed - and that the temperatures were recorded accurately.”
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