DeltaV Version 12 Fun Facts and Features – Part 3

My buddy Klaus Erni, the DeltaV Hardware Product Marketing Manager, has a couple of smaller, but pretty neat projects associated with the V12 release of DeltaV.

The first is a fiber optic connection option for our Wireless IO Card (WIOC) – the Fiber Optic IOP.  With this little gizmo plugged into the WIOC carrier, you’re no longer constrained to the 100m limit of copper CAT5 and can really extend the distance for locating your DeltaV wireless field device access point.

His second project is the new the 24 VDC Power CHARM.  This one’s kind of interesting – the purpose of this CHARM is to supply 24 volts to 4 wire transmitters like a MicroMotion.  It now gives folks a simple alternative for wiring up these 4 wire devices without the need for a lot of extra stuff in rack room panels or field enclosures.

The process variable comes in on a normal, HART input CHARM, and the device is powered by the 24 VDC Power CHARM.  You can install the Power CHARM right next to the HART CHARM or locate a group of Power CHARMs in a separate baseplate.

You don’t have to configure anything in DeltaV for the Power CHARM to work, but you can if you want and reference diagnostic information about the power being supplied to the transmitter.

DeltaV Version 12 Fun Facts and Features – Part 2

One of our projects in Version 12 is our Licensing Revamp.  We’ve made counting IO licenses and managing them much easier.

The first thing we’ve done is gotten consistent in counting Device Signal Tags (DST’s) across all our supported bus technologies.  In previous versions of DeltaV, a single Foundation Fieldbus device counted as a single DST; it didn’t matter how many signals came in on that device, it only counted as one DST.

We’ve extended that methodology to our other supported busses – DeviceNet and Profibus.  Each field device on these bus segments will count as a single DST.  So if you’ve got a drive or motor from an MCC coming in via DeviceNet with multiple signals (start, stop, running, current, etc), it'll only count as a single DST.

Probably the licensing change I’m most excited about is how we’re handling serial IO.  In the past, folks would bring multiple registers from a serial dataset into one module in DeltaV (we called them “landing modules”).  In the landing modules, we’d convert the register IO references into parameters that then got picked up by other modules in the system.  This allowed us to keep the DST count down when dealing with large amounts of serial data.

In Version 12, we’ve eliminated the need to use landing modules by just counting a single DST per serial dataset.  So whether you’re bringing in 50 or 100 integer registers into a single dataset, it will only count as one DST, no matter how many different modules reference the registers from the dataset.

Eliminating the landing modules eliminates a lot of unneeded complexity – your control modules reference serial IO just like they would reference other IO types.  Engineering and troubleshooting are simplified and controller loading is reduced by not having all those landing modules.

And to better help keep track of licensing, we’ve created an I/O License Demand utility.

You’ll be able to see how all your I/O effect your license usage before you ever have to download a controller.  And it won’t matter what type of licensing dongle you have attached to your system, the I/O License Demand utility will still give you the right information.

DeltaV Version 12 Fun Facts and Features – Part 1

One of my New Year’s resolutions (and performance review goals) was to start blogging more frequently, so I thought I’d put together a series of posts about some of the new and enhanced features in the upcoming release of DeltaV, Version 12.  SIS Electronic Marshalling, Virtualization, and Batch Analytics are three big features, but I thought I'd start by covering some of the smaller, but important updates.

We’ve started taking orders for V12 and delivery is expected later this year.  So what can you expect?  Let’s start off with Microsoft OS version support.

In V12, both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 will be supported.  Not only are they both supported, they can coexist on the same DeltaV system.  Now for folks putting in a new V12 system, this isn’t that big a deal – all the workstations and servers will be the 64 bit version of the operating systems.

But customers with V11 systems that are thinking about upgrading to V12 won’t have to worry about including an OS change along with the rest of their upgrade plans.  Their 32 bit OS versions will work just fine with V12.  And down the road, if they need to expand, 64 bit OS machines can be added and will work just fine with their 32 bit cousins.