Emerson Exchange 2009 – Charming

One of the big stories unveiled at Emerson Exchange today was DeltaV electronic marshalling and the introduction of Characterization Modules or CHARMS. You can now bring in a group of IO signals at a very granular level and distribute the signals to different controllers – clouds of IO to clouds of controllers.

Emerson Exchange 2009 Preview

I finished up 3 days of Emerson Sales training yesterday, moved over to the Gaylord Palms today, and begin 5 days of the Emerson Global Users Exchange tomorrow (yes, my wife is a saint – the gift shop better have something really nice).

I don’t want to steal any of the thunder about what folks are going to see tomorrow from Emerson, but I thought I’d a least post the updated DeltaV logo:

More to come from Exchange over the next several days – stay tuned…

Numatics/DeltaV Integration

Back in May, I wrote about the interest we got during our annual user group get together for the Numatics smart manifold/remote IO product. We finally got a unit into our proof of concept area and have been putting it through its paces.

We have it connected up on one of our DeviceNet segments and have one of the solenoids connected up to a Crane Saunders diagram valve with a conventional switchpack. We used our standard valve module template in DeltaV, but instead of the output going directly to the solenoid, it goes to a register input within the Numatics.

We then constructed some logic, using function blocks available in the Numatics, to provide local interlocking based on another discrete input (a make-believe tank high level switch). One more switch allows us to turn the Numatics logic on and off, so comparisons between it and DeltaV can be demonstrated.

This puppy if FAST. I’m in the process of putting together a video I hope to upload to the Process Automation Usability Project website sometime after Emerson Exchange. We also constructed a valve sequence within DeltaV and ran it as fast as we could, simulating the valves around the bowl of a centrifuge. We then put the same logic in the Numatics and using another register, triggered the sequence from DeltaV. We actually had to slow the sequence in the Numatics down just so we could see it!

So I’m trying to “get” this whole Twitter thing, and I’m not sure I’m doing it right. I apologize to the few folks who have decided to follow me – at least they won’t be inundated with posts, at least not for a while.

I have, on the other hand, been following a few folks to try and figure it out and hopefully pick up some useful information – honestly, I’m not just lurking.

Along with my engineering and management responsibilities, I dabble on the sales side of automation and have been introduced to the concept of the “elevator talk”. Either Jim Cahill or Mike Boudreaux, on one of their recent twits (is that what they're called?), provided a link to a blog (which provided another link to another blog) on the topic of the “customer’s elevator rant”, a prequel to the elevator pitch. It’s very enlightening, and a must read in preparing for the upcoming Emerson Exchange.

Hey, good news – in getting the hyperlinks to include in this post, I think I’ve made a small breakthrough in my twitter adventure. Maybe I’m not too old for this stuff after all. Ready to check me out - click here.

Data View Web Part, Part II

So we’ve done some more playing around with the data view web part. I think I’m warming up to it because it does have a lot of capabilities and Drew’s doing the heavy lifting.

So we’ve put together a really good Batch Duration example. It’s a combination of 3 data view web parts, feeding each other in series. The first data view allows the selection of a formula, which populates the second data view with a list of batches that meet the formula criteria. By clicking on a particular batch id then populates the third data view showing durations. We even took advantage of the web part to highlight durations that exceed a fixed amount of time. Great for doing batch to batch comparisons.