Podcasts about Ethernet

This week, Adam and Dan dive into a mix of holiday gig stories, parenting wins, and gear talk. From the "Star Wars fans of bass guitar" to the unexpected joys of “Runaround Sue”, the guys cover it all.Episode Highlights: Hot Water Saga Continues: Dan gives an update on his broken water heater and the glorious shower he finally took at a friend's house. Plus, chimney repairs hit a snag. Adam's Sabbatical: Adam shares news about his upcoming 5-week work hiatus and the release of his latest video projects. Proud Dad Moment: Dan recaps his child's "spectacular" performance as Scar in The Lion King Jr. Savannah Shenanigans: Adam and Amber visit a burlesque show in Savannah that felt suspiciously like "adult show choir." Live Band Karaoke Report: Tech Upgrades: The band successfully tested the new "Band Leader" signup app (shoutout to Patron Ando!) and the "AbleSet" automated lyrics system. Hardwired is Better: A lesson learned about trusting WiFi for live lyrics—Ethernet cables to the rescue. The "Audibles": How the band handled on-the-spot requests for "Family Tradition," "Redneck Woman," and even "Baby Got Back." The Mechanical Reindeer: A wild story about a bespoke gingerbread house mechanical bull at a corporate holiday party. Gear Review & Parenting: Adam reviews a Vangoa pedalboard with built-in power and sound-reactive lights. He discusses setting up a rig for his son, who is getting serious about bass, and the potential for a future father-son rhythm section. Mentioned in this Episode: Band Leader App: The new signup system developed by patron Ando. AbleSet: The tool used for automated scrolling lyrics with Ableton Live. Vangoa: The pedalboard brand Adam is reviewing. Call to Action: Are you in a band with your kids? We want to hear your "Partridge Family" stories! Email us at coverbandconfidential@gmail.com.MaestroDMX (10% off discount link): https://maestrodmx.com/discount/DISCOUNT4CBC?redirect=%2Fproducts%2FmaestrodmxBlank Contracts & Riders: https://www.coverbandconfidential.com/store/performance-contractsBacking Track Resources: https://www.coverbandconfidential.com/store/backing-track-resourcesThank you so much for tuning in!  If you want to help be sure to like, subscribe and share with your friends!  Linktree: linktr.ee/adampatrickjohnson                linktr.ee/coverbandconfidentialFollow us on Instagram!@coverbandconfidential@adampatrickjohnson@danraymusicianIf you have any questions please email at:Coverbandconfidential@gmail.comConsider supporting us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/coverbandconfidentialOr buy us a cup of coffee!paypal.me/cbconfidential

The end of November brings a fresh crop of your questions, this month addressing subjects like getting lost in a corporation's Kafka-esque support infrastructure, video game voice chatting with Internet celebrities, how often to change your CPU paste, consumer tech that we think has plateaued, trenching Ethernet cable for an intra-yard network, the very cool concept of all-sky cameras, the glory of text expansion, and a bunch of other topics! Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, a monthly bonus episode, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod

In this episode, we sit down with Solution Architect Robert Alvarez to discuss the technology behind Pure Key-Value Accelerator (KVA) and its role in accelerating AI inference. Pure KVA is a protocol-agnostic, key-value caching solution that, when combined with FlashBlade data storage, dramatically improves GPU efficiency and consistency in AI environments. Robert—whose background includes time as a Santa Clara University professor, NASA Solution Architect, and work at CERN—explains how this innovation is essential for serving an entire fleet of AI workloads, including modern agentic or chatbot interfaces. Robert dives into the massive growth of the AI Inference market, driven by the need for near real-time processing and low-latency AI applications. This trend makes the need for a solution like Pure KVA critical. He details how KVA removes the bottleneck of GPU memory and shares compelling benchmark results: up to twenty times faster inference with NFS and six times faster with S3, all over standard Ethernet. These performance gains are key to helping enterprises scale more efficiently and reduce overall GPU costs. Beyond the technical deep dive, the episode explores the origin of the KVA idea, the unique Pure IP that enables it, and future integrations like Dynamo and the partnership with Comet for LLM observability. In the popular “Hot Takes” segment, Robert offers his perspective on blind spots IT leaders might have in managing AI data and shares advice for his younger self on the future of the data management space. To learn more about Pure KVA, visit purestorage.com/launch. Check out the new Pure Storage digital customer community to join the conversation with peers and Pure experts: https://purecommunity.purestorage.com/ 00:00 Intro and Welcome 02:21 Background on Our Guest 06:57 Stat of the Episode on AI Inferencing Spend 09:10 Why AI Inference is Difficult at Scale 11:00 How KV Cache Acceleration Works 14:50 Key Partnerships Using KVA 20:28 Hot Takes Segment

New Open Indiana Release, Understanding Storage Performance, a Unix OS for the TI99, FreeBSD Tribal knowledge, and more... NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/bsdnow) and the BSDNow Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/bsdnow) Headlines Signifier flotation devices (https://davidyat.es/2025/09/27/signifier-flotation-devices) Open Indiana Hipster Announcement (https://openindiana.org/announcements/openindiana-hipster-2025-10-announcement/) Understanding Storage Performance Metrics (https://klarasystems.com/articles/understanding-storage-performance-metrics?utm_source=BSD%20Now&utm_medium=Podcast) News Roundup UNIX99, a UNIX-like OS for the TI-99/4A (https://forums.atariage.com/topic/380883-unix99-a-unix-like-os-for-the-ti-994a) Making the veb(4) virtual Ethernet bridge VLAN aware (https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20251029114507) FreeBSD tribal knowledge: minor version upgrades (https://vulcanridr.mataroa.blog/blog/freebsd-tribal-knowledge-minor-version-upgrades) It's been 10 years since ZFS's 10th aniversary its integration into Solaris - A Reflection (https://blogs.oracle.com/oracle-systems/post/happy-10th-birthday-zfs) Tarsnap This weeks episode of BSDNow was sponsored by our friends at Tarsnap, the only secure online backup you can trust your data to. Even paranoids need backups. Feedback/Questions Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) Join us and other BSD Fans in our BSD Now Telegram channel (https://t.me/bsdnow)

How do networks keep our society running? This week, Technology Now continues with the third episode in its miniseries with a further three objects: the A52 WiFi 7, and Juniper access points. We dive into the birth of modern networking, the security and technology required for “bring your own device” connections, and the unexpected things a modern day WiFi router can detect. Stuart Strickland, Wireless Chief Technology Officer and HPE Fellow tells us more.This is Technology Now, a weekly show from Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Every week, hosts Michael Bird and Aubrey Lovell look at a story that's been making headlines, take a look at the technology behind it, and explain why it matters to organizations.About Stuart Strickland: https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a00118725enw

Take a Network Break! Red Hat Samba server has a remote command execution vulnerability, and we cover some follow-up on fusion as a viable energy source (still a work in progress). On the news front, we search for signs in SoftBank’s sale of its Nividia stake, Mplify debuts a new certificate on carrier Ethernet for... Read more »

Take a Network Break! Red Hat Samba server has a remote command execution vulnerability, and we cover some follow-up on fusion as a viable energy source (still a work in progress). On the news front, we search for signs in SoftBank’s sale of its Nividia stake, Mplify debuts a new certificate on carrier Ethernet for... Read more »

Take a Network Break! Red Hat Samba server has a remote command execution vulnerability, and we cover some follow-up on fusion as a viable energy source (still a work in progress). On the news front, we search for signs in SoftBank’s sale of its Nividia stake, Mplify debuts a new certificate on carrier Ethernet for... Read more »

In this week's episode of Hands-On Tech, Lance asks Mikah Sargent about the pros and cons of using powerline ethernet adapters, and Mikah shares his strong thoughts on these devices. Don't forget to send in your questions for Mikah to answer during the show! hot@twit.tv Host: Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to Hands-On Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-tech Want access to the ad-free video and exclusive features? Become a member of Club TWiT today! https://twit.tv/clubtwit Club TWiT members can discuss this episode and leave feedback in the Club TWiT Discord.

In this week's episode of Hands-On Tech, Lance asks Mikah Sargent about the pros and cons of using powerline ethernet adapters, and Mikah shares his strong thoughts on these devices. Don't forget to send in your questions for Mikah to answer during the show! hot@twit.tv Host: Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to Hands-On Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-tech Want access to the ad-free video and exclusive features? Become a member of Club TWiT today! https://twit.tv/clubtwit Club TWiT members can discuss this episode and leave feedback in the Club TWiT Discord.

In this week's episode of Hands-On Tech, Lance asks Mikah Sargent about the pros and cons of using powerline ethernet adapters, and Mikah shares his strong thoughts on these devices. Don't forget to send in your questions for Mikah to answer during the show! hot@twit.tv Host: Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to Hands-On Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-tech Want access to the ad-free video and exclusive features? Become a member of Club TWiT today! https://twit.tv/clubtwit Club TWiT members can discuss this episode and leave feedback in the Club TWiT Discord.

In this week's episode of Hands-On Tech, Lance asks Mikah Sargent about the pros and cons of using powerline ethernet adapters, and Mikah shares his strong thoughts on these devices. Don't forget to send in your questions for Mikah to answer during the show! hot@twit.tv Host: Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to Hands-On Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-tech Want access to the ad-free video and exclusive features? Become a member of Club TWiT today! https://twit.tv/clubtwit Club TWiT members can discuss this episode and leave feedback in the Club TWiT Discord.

Shawn Tierney meets up with Mark Berger of Siemens to learn how Siemens integrates SIRIUS ACT devices (push buttons, selector switches, pilot lights) with PROFINET in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 253 Show Notes: Special thanks to Mark Berger of Siemens for coming on the show and sending us a sample! Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated) Shawn Tierney (Host): Thank you for tuning back in to the automation podcast. My name is Shawn Tierney from Insights. And today on the show, we have a special treat. We have Mark Berger back on from Siemens to bring us up to speed on serious act. He’s gonna tell us all about the product, and then we’re even gonna do a small demo and take a look at it working live. So with that said, let’s go ahead and jump into this episode with Mark Burger from Siemens and learn all about their push buttons on PROFINET. Mark, it’s been a while since you’ve been on the show. Thank you for coming back on and agreeing to talk about this. Mark Berger (Siemens): Oh, thank you so much. I truly appreciate you letting me be on. I appreciate your channel, and I enjoy watching it. And I’m excited to show you some of this great technology. So I’ve got, the PowerPoint up here. We’ll just do a simple PowerPoint to kinda give you an overview, and then we’ll dive into the hardware. Shawn Tierney (Host): Appreciate it. Thank you. Mark Berger (Siemens): No problem. So as we stated, the Sirius X over PROFINET, let me emphasize that, the, actuators, the push buttons, the estops, the selector switches, they are all standard, when you use these. So if you have those on the shelf, the only thing that PROFINET does is that it adds, removes the normal contact blocks and adds the PROFINET, terminal blocks on the back. So every all the actuators that we’re showing are just standard actuators for the 22 millimeter push button line. So easy to use, modern design, performance and action, and extremely rugged and flexible. The, 22 millimeter is out of the box IP 69 k, which for those who are maybe in the food and beverage, verticals would understand what that is. And that’s for direct hose down, wash down, able to handle a high pressure washing and not able to leak past the actuator into the panel. So IP 69 k is a a great place for dust and wash down and hosing and where you’re having rain and so forth, to be able to protect for a keep of any, water passing into the panel. So introduction wise, it’s, the PROFINET push buttons for us. It it is, again, the same actuators, the same, connections, and so forth, but what we’re going to exchange is the terminal blocks, for it. So on there, I stated it’s, IP 69 k is standard. You don’t need any, extra covers forward or anything to fulfill that requirement, But it’s, it’s insensitive to dust and oil and caustic solutions, you know, like citric acid where you’re hosing down some stainless steel parts and so forth. Now what we have here is, changing out the terminal blocks that have wiring. So usually on a push button, you have two wires coming in, and then you have, for illuminated, you have two wires coming in and so forth and going out. And after you have 20 or 30 push buttons or 10 or 15 push buttons, you’ve got a substantial little bit of wiring or cabling that will be passing from the door over into the main cabinet of your control cabinet. What we’re going to do with PROFINET push buttons is we’re going to eliminate all that wiring. And then in addition, eliminate the input and output cards that you will need for your PLC and take it down to a pro, Ethernet cable, an r j r j 45 cable, and then down to a 24 volts. And that’s all that will pass from the cabinet onto the door where you’re mounting your push buttons. So, huge, safe and cost of wires. We’re reducing all the wire outlay. And, you know, back in the day when I build panels, it was an art how you got all the wires all nice and pretty and got them laid out and wire tied them down and so forth and just made the a piece of art on the backside. And then, it it was all done. You got it all wired. And then, of course, there was somebody that said, hey. We forgot to add another selector switch. So you had to go back and cut all that stuff and redo the whole layout and so forth. So with PROFINET, it’s extremely flexible and easily, to adapt to if you need something, more because you’re not taking all that wiring back to the panel, passing it across the hinge of the door and so forth. It is also with a safety PLC. You do have PROFIsafe, so we can do estops on the door as you can see here in the picture, but then we can do non safe applications also. So today, we’ll be just doing some non safe applications. And then the communications again is PROFINET. But then also just to touch real quick, we do have it on IO Link and on Aussie with our push buttons. So what is SiriusACT with PROFINET? There we go. So what you have is the first, block or interface module that you put on the back of your push button, that’s where the, Ethernet is plugged into and your 24 volts is plugged into. And then after that, subsequently, then the push buttons that you have is that you have what we call a terminal module. And in between the, the interface module to a terminal module or from terminal module to terminal module, you can go up to one meter of cabling, and it’s a ribbon cable. And we’ll show that here shortly. And then if you have up to we can do up to 20 push buttons, terminal modules, with a total of 21 push buttons. And then so from the first interface module all the way to the last push button, you can go up to 10 meters. And then it gives, again, 24 volt power supply for it. And we have, again, as I stated, as nonsafe, talking just PROFINET, and then the safety version, talking PROFISAFE on PROFINET. So serious act, we can go up on the the safety up to seal three and performance level e as an echo. We have, again, the the standard interface module without safety. You have the PLC, the interface module, and then the subsequent terminal modules for it. And then the cabling that goes from the interface module to out to the terminal modules is a simple ribbon cable that comes into the back of the terminal modules. The only tool that you need is simply it’s just a screwdriver, and, you, push it into the terminal module, push down. It uses, vampire connections, insulation displacement, vampire connections, and you push it down in. There’s no stripping of the wires. There’s no mix up. The indicator you can see on the wires here in a minute will show you that there’s a little red line that shows you, which way it, enters into the terminal, and then that’s it. It’s very straightforward. It’s, very simple with tools. And, as I stated, it’s, just like a normal push button that you’d put on, but then we’re gonna add, remove the contact block and add the terminal module or the interface module in the place of the contact block. Just to emphasize again, we can do PROFISAFE on, with a safety PLC and a safety controller, and we can give you all the safety, requirements for the either the ISO or the IEC specifications for safety out there in the field. Here’s some of the part numbers. First one, of course, is the interface module, and that has the ability to do PROFIsafe. It has also, additionally, four digital inputs, one digital output, and then one analog input. And we’ll talk about that a little bit more just in a few minutes. And then the non safe version, 24 volts. You have a, two versions of this one, one with just with just a standard, 24 volts input, but then there’s an additional one that has the four digital in, one digital out, and one analog in. So there’s two different part numbers. One where you don’t need the additional, digital inputs and outputs and analog, and then the and then the part number with the the additional inputs and outputs. But the safety one comes there’s no other version, just the one. Then you have what we call the terminal modules, and there’s three versions. One terminal module is just the command module only. It’s mounted with two mechanical signaling blocks to signal. So you have two contact blocks built in. Then you have one that’s a terminal module with the command, the terminal blocks, and then also an integrated LED. And then you can put what color you want the LED to be, and you can see there the the part number changed for red, blue, amber, so on. And then you have a just an LED module to where it’s no contactors. It’s just LED. And, I think with our demo we’re gonna show today, we’re just gonna show the contact block and LED module and only the LED module today. There’s some other, accessories with the safety. There’s a memory module to where that you, is all the configurations are put into the memory module, and something happens to that interface module. Everything’s put in there, the IP address, the configuration, and everything. If something gets broke and so forth or you have to replace it, you pull the memory module out, put the new terminal or interface module in, plug in the memory module, cycle the power, and it’s up and running. All the configurations, the IP address, everything’s already there. And then on the interface module, it does not come with an LED, so you’re required to buy this this, LED right here if you need it for it, and that’s what you use for the interface module. And then, of course, the ribbon cable that goes between the interface module to the terminal block or terminal module and terminal module and so forth come in five meter length and 10 meter length. K. So what’s it provide for you? Well, the benefits are, I’ll I’ll be very blunt. If it’s just one or two buttons on a panel, it won’t be that cost effective. Yes. We’re reducing the IO, the IO inputs and outputs, but for the savings, it’s not the best. Now when you get up to about three or four push buttons, then that cost saving is, very realized. Now when you go up to 20 push buttons, yes, you’re saving a lot of money, especially in the IO cards that you’re not gonna be required to have. And then, of course, all the wiring and the labor, getting it all wired up and doing all the loop checks to make sure that when you push this button, it’s wired into the right terminal block on the IO card, so on and so forth. So about, the break is about two to three push buttons to where it will become very cost effective for you to use it. But like I said yesterday, without PROFINET push buttons, it was all the wiring you brought across and putting them into all your IO cards and so forth. And now with PROFINET push buttons, all that goes away, and all you’re bringing across is an Ethernet cable and 24 volts positive and 24 volts negative across that hinge into the door. And that’s it. K. And then emphasizing again, we can do PROFIsafe and those, push buttons and estops. The estop can be part of your safety circuit and give you the, safety levels that you’re required from either sill and or performance level safeties depending on the specification, IEC, or ISO that you’re following within your plant. K? And then hardware configuration. Now this is where we step into reduction of engineering and helping you guys get going, quicker and making sure engineering is done properly. You know, back in the day, we’d wire up all the wires, coming from the push buttons, you know, a selector switch, a start button, stop button, indicator lights, and so forth. And and all those wires sometimes just, you know, the what we’re working with, all the wires look the same. You’ve put labels on them. You may have labeled it wrong, and you wired into an input card or an output card. So there’s some time where you’re over there doing some loop checks where you’re trying to say, yes. That’s coming into input byte dot bit, and that should be the selector switch. Well, with the PROFINET push buttons, we’re able to not have to worry about that, and we’re gonna demonstrate that just here in a minute. But you also have a full lineup of the push buttons coming into portal so that you can see the lineup and verify that it is the parts that you want. In TI portal, you can see that, of course, the first, button is the interface module, and then sequentially is the terminal modules that have either just contactors, LED and contactors, or just LEDs. And we’ll we’ll show that just here momentarily. But it’s all integrated into TIA portal. It has a visual representation of all the push buttons, and it’s simple and fast, to, configure. We’ll show you that here in just a moment. And there’s no addressing, for it. So some of the stuff that you have out there, you have addressing, making sure what the address is right, and so on. This is a standardized data management, and it’s extremely time saving and engineering saving for, the user. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, let me ask you a question about that. If the snow addressing, do the items show up, in the order that they’re wired? In other words, you know, you’re daisy chasing the you’re you’re going cable to cable from device to device. Is that the order that they show up? Mark Berger (Siemens): That’s exactly right. Shawn Tierney (Host): Okay. Mark Berger (Siemens): So if you don’t know which ones are what, you just literally put run your hand from the interface module, follow that cable, and the next one that will be visually saw in portal will be the one that it lands on first. Perfect. And then there’s a cable that leaves that one and goes into the next one, daisy chained, and then that’s what’ll be represented in that lineup. And here in just a minute, we’ll we’ll show that. Alright. Thank you for that question. Okay. Now once I got it wired up, how do I know that I got it wired properly? And we’re gonna show that here in just a minute. But just graphically wise, you have the ability to see if it is all wired up. You do not need to plug it into the PLC. This all it needs is 24 volts. The PLC can come later and plugging it in later and so forth. There’s no programming. This all comes out of the box. So once you plug it in, if all on the backside looking at the terminal blocks and the daisy chain ribbon cable, if it’s all green, you wired it up properly, and it’s working properly. But then if you see a red light flashing either at the terminal module because that will that will bubble up to the terminal module. So if you have a problem somewhere pardon me, the interface module. If you have some problem with the terminal modules, a push button like number two or three or four, it will bubble up into the, interface module to let it know, hey. We got a problem. Can you look to see where it’s at? And as you see here, we have maybe a device that’s defective. And so it bubbles up into the interface module to let you know, and a red light lets you know that we have maybe a defective module. You know, something hammered it pretty hard, or, it may have been miswired. Then the second one down below, we’ve got a wiring error to where you don’t have the green lights on the back and everybody else’s there’s no green light shown. That means you have a wiring error. Or if everything works great, it’s green lights across, but then the next level of this is is my push button working? So then we you’ll push or actuate the push button or actuate the selector switch, and the green light will flash to let you know that that terminal module or interface module is working properly. And we’ve done our our, loop checks right there before we’ve even plugged it into the PLC or your programmer has come out and sat down and worked with it. We can prove that that panel is ready to roll and ready to go, and you can set it aside. And if you got four or five of the same panel, you can build them all up, power it up, verify that it’s all green lights across the board. It is. Great. Set it down. Build up another one and go on from there. So it shows you fast fault detection without any additional equipment or additional people to come in and help you show you that. When we used to do loop checks, usually had somebody push the button, then yell at the programmer, hey. Is this coming in at I zero dot zero? Yeah. I see it. Okay. Or then he pushed another one. Hey. Is this coming in on I 0.one? No. It’s coming in on i0. Three. So there was that two people and then more time to do that loop check or the ring out as some people have called it. So in this case, you don’t need to do that, and you’ll see why here in just a minute. And then, again, if we do have an interface module that, maybe it got short circuited or something hit it, it you just pull the ePROM out, plug it into the new one, bring in the ribbon cable, and cycle the power, and you’re up and running. Alright. And then this is just some of the handling options of how it handles the data, with the projects and so forth, with basic setups, options that you can be handling with this, filling bottles. What we wanna make sure to understand is that if maybe push buttons, you can pick push buttons to work with whatever project you want it to do. So if you have six push buttons out there, two of them are working on one, bottle filling, and then the rest of them are working on the labeling, you can separate those push buttons. Even though that they’re all tied together via PROFINET, you can use them in different applications across your machine. Shawn Tierney (Host): You’re saying if I have multiple CPUs, I could have some buttons in light work with CPU one, PLC one, and some work with PLC two? Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. There’s handling there. There’s programming in the backside that needs to be done, but, yes, that can happen. Yep. Oh, alright. So conclusion, integrated into TI portal. We’re gonna show that here in a minute. So universal system, high flexibility with your digital in, digital outs, analogs, quick and easy installation, one man, one hand, no special tooling, and then substantially reducing the wiring and labor to get it going. And then, again, integrated safety if, required for the your time. So with that, let’s, switch over to TI portal. So I’ve already got a project started. I just called it project three. I’ve already got a PLC. I’ve got our, new g, s seven twelve hundred g two already in. And then what I’m gonna do is I’ve, already built up the panel. And, Shawn, if you wanna show your panel right here. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Let me go ahead and switch the camera over to mine. And so now everybody’s seeing my overhead. Now do you want me to turn it on at this point? It’s off. Yeah. Yeah. Mark Berger (Siemens): Let’s do it. Shawn Tierney (Host): Gonna turn it on, and all the lights came on. So we have some push buttons and pilot lights here, but the push buttons are illuminated, and now they’ve all gone off. Do you want me to show the back now? Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. So what we did there is that we just showed that the LEDs are all working, and that’s at the initial powering up of the 24 volts. Now we’re gonna switch over and, you know, open up the cabinet and look inside, and now we’re looking on the backside. And if you remember in the PowerPoint, I said that we’d have all green lights, the everything’s wired properly. And as you look, all the terminal modules all have green lights, and so that means that’s all been wired properly. If you notice, you see a little red stripe on the ribbon cable. That’s a indication. Yep. To show you that. And then if you look on the on the out on the, the interface module, Shawn, there’s it says out right there at the bottom. Yeah. There’s a little dot, and that dot means that’s where the red stripe goes, coming out. So that little dot means that’s where the red stripe comes. Yep. Right there. And that’s how it comes out. And then if you look just to the left a little bit, there’s another, in, and there’d be a red dot underneath that ribbon cable showing you how the red the the red goes into it. Notice that everything’s clear, so you can see that the wire gets engaged properly all the way in. And then all you do is take a screwdriver and push down, and then the vent, comes in. The insulation displacement comes in and, and, makes the connections for you. So there’s no strip tie cable stripping tools or anything special for doing that. Another item, just while we’re looking, if you look in the bottom left hand corner of that terminal module, you see kind of a a t and then a circle and then another t. That’s an indicator to let you know that that’s two contactors and an LED that you have on the backside. Shawn Tierney (Host): We’re talking about right here? Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. Yep. Right there. Shawn Tierney (Host): Okay. Mark Berger (Siemens): So that’s an indicator to tell you what type of terminal block it is a terminal, block that it is. That’s two contactors and LED. And then if you look at one in the bottom left hand corner, there’s just a circle. That means you just have an LED. So you have some indicators to show you what you’re looking at and so forth. So today, we’re just using the two, LED only, and then we’re doing the contactor and LED combination. I I don’t have one there on your demo that’s just the contactor. So Shawn Tierney (Host): Now you were telling me about these earlier. Yeah. Mark Berger (Siemens): So yeah. The so if you look there on that second row of the terminal blocks, you have a UV and an AI, and I’ll show that in the schematic here in just a little bit, but there, that is a 10 volt output. If you put a 250 ohm or 250 k ohm, potentiometer and then bring that signal back into AI, you have an analog set point that comes in for it that will automatically be scaled zero to 1,000 count or zero to 10 volts. Mhmm. And then you can use that for a speed reference for a VFD. And it’s already there. All you have to do, you don’t have to scale it or anything. You can put it towards, you know, okay. Zero to 1,000 count means zero to 500 PSI or or zero to 100 feet per second on a conveyor belt, and I’m I’m just pulling numbers out. But that’s the only real scalability scaling you have to do. So it’ll be a zero to 1,000 count is what you’ll see instead of, like, yep. Then you got four digital ins that you can use and then a one digital out. Now the four, I, kinda inquired wife just four, but let’s say that you have a four position joystick. You could wire all four positions into that interface module, and then the output could be something else for a local horn that you want or something to that case with it. So you in addition to the, push buttons, you also have a small, distribution IO block right there in the in your panel. Shawn Tierney (Host): Which is cool. Yeah. I mean, maybe yeah. Like you said, maybe you have something else on the panel that doesn’t fit in with, you know, this line of push buttons and pilot lights like a joystick. Right? And that makes a lot of sense. You were saying too, if I push the button, I can test to see if it’s working. Mark Berger (Siemens): Correct. So if you yep. Go right ahead. Shawn Tierney (Host): I’m pushing that middle one right there. You can see it blinking now. Mark Berger (Siemens): And that tells you that the contacts have been made, and it’s telling you that the contacts work properly. Shawn Tierney (Host): And now I’m pushing the one below it. So that shows me that everything’s working. The contacts are working, and we’re good to go. Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. Everything’s done. We’ve done the loop checks. We know that this is ready to be plugged into the PLC and handed off to whomever is going to be, programming the PLC and bring it in, in which means that we’ll go to the next step in the TI portal. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Let me switch back to you, and we’re seeing your TI portal now. Mark Berger (Siemens): Awesome. Okay. So I’ve got the PLC. I’ve plugged it in to if if I needed an Ethernet switch or I’ve plugged it directly into the PLC. Now I have just built up that panel. I haven’t had anything, done with it for an IP address because it is a TCP IP protocol. So we need to do a IP address, but it’s on PROFINET. And then I’m gonna come here to online access, and I wanna see that I can see it out there that I’m talking to it. So I’m gonna do update accessible devices. It’s gonna reach out via my, Ethernet port on my laptop. And then there’s our g two PLC and its IP address. So that’s that guy right here. Mhmm. And then I have something out there called accessible devices, and then this is its MAC address. So what I and I just have those two items on the network, but, you know, you could have multiples as, you know, with GI portal. We can put an entire machine in one project. So I come here and drop that down, and I go to online diagnostics. I I go online with it, but I don’t have really a lot here to tell me what’s going on or anything yet. But I come here, and I say assign IP address. And I call one ninety two, one sixty eight, zero zero zero, and zero ten zero, and then our usual 255, two fifty five, two fifty five, and then I say assign IP address. Give it a second. It’s gonna go out and tell it, okay. You’re it. Now I wanna see if it took, and you look right there, it took. And I’m I’m kinda anal, so I kinda do it again just to verify. Yep. Everything’s done. It’s got an IP address. Now I’m gonna come up, and I’m going to go to my project, and I’m gonna switch this to new network view. Here’s my PLC. I’m gonna highlight my project. Now there’s two ways I can go about it, and I’m sure, Shawn, you’ve learned that Siemens allows you to kinda do it multiple ways. I could come in here and go into my field devices, and I could come into my commanding and interface modules, and I’d start building my push button station. But we’re gonna be a little oh and ah today. We’re gonna highlight the project. I’m gonna go to online, and I’m gonna come down here to hardware detection and do PROFINET devices from network. Brings up the screen to say, hey. I want you to go out and search for PROFINET industrial Ethernet. Come out via my, NIC card from my laptop, and I want you to start search. Shawn Tierney (Host): For those of you who watched my previous episodes doing the e t 200 I o, this is exactly the same process we used for that. Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. And I found something out there that I know I gave the IP address, but it doesn’t have a PROFINET name yet. So that’s okay. I’ve I got the IP address. We’ll worry about the PROFINET name. So we’ll hide check mark this, and this could be multiple items. Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm. Mark Berger (Siemens): K. So now add device. Shawn Tierney (Host): And this is the sweet part. Mark Berger (Siemens): And right here, it’s done. It went out, interrogated the interface module, and said, okay. Are you there? Yep. I’m here. Here’s my IP address. And it also shared with it all of come in here, double click on it now. Shawn Tierney (Host): The real time saver. Yep. Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. And then now here’s all the push buttons in your thing. And let me zoom that out. It’s at 200%. Let’s go out to a 100. And now it already interrogated the interface module and all the terminal modules to tell me what’s in my demo. Yep. And again, as you stated in your questions, how do I know which one’s the next one? You just saw the ribbon cable Mhmm. And then it brings you so forth and so on. So that’s done. We’re good. I’m gonna go back to my network view, and I’m gonna say, hey. I want you to communicate via PROFINET to there, which I’m done. And then it also gives you here’s the PLC that you’re gonna do because, you know, if we have a big project, we may have four or five of these stations, and you wanna know which PLC is the primary PLC on it. And then we’ve done that. I’m going to quickly just do a quick compile. And next, I’m gonna come here. I’m gonna click here. Now I could just do download and and let the PROFINET name, which is here, go into it. But I’m gonna right click, and I’m gonna say assign device name and say update list. It’s gonna go interrogate the network. Takes a second. No device name assigned. No PROFINET name. So this is how we do that time determinism with PROFINET. So I’m gonna highlight it, and I say assign the name, and it’s done. Close. So now it has a PROFINET name and IP address. So now I’m able to go in here and hit download and load. And we’re going to stop because we are adding hardware, so we are putting the CPU in stop and hit finish. Now I always make sure I’m starting the CPU back up and then hit finish. And then I’m gonna go online, go over here and show network view, and go online. And I got green balls and green check marks all over the board, so I’m excited. This works out. Everything’s done. But now what about the IO? So now your programmer is already talking to it, but now I need to know what the inputs and outputs are. So go back offline, double click here, and then I’m gonna just quickly look at a couple things. The interface modules IO tags are in a different spot than the terminal modules. So just a little note. It’s right here. If you double click on integrated I LED, you click here and then go to properties and say IO tags. There it lists all of the inputs and outputs. So it comes here. But if I do a terminal module, click here, then once you just click on it in general oops. Sorry. In general, it’s right here in the IO addressing. There’s where it starts start the bytes, but then I come here to tags, and then here’s the listing. So the the the programs automatically already allocated the byte and the bit for each of these guys. So if I click there, there, click there, there’s it there, onward and upward. Now notice that the byte so if I click on position four, it is three. So it’s one one less because the base zero versus here, it’s five. Just give me a little bit of a so if you look in here, all that starts at I four dot zero. I four dot zero. So k. So that’s there. So I’m gonna come here. I’m gonna go to the selector switch for this, and I’ve called it s s one, and that’s input two dot zero. Then I’m gonna click here, and I’m gonna call this green push button. Notice there’s two inputs because I have one contactor here, one contactor there, and 30 and 31. So then what I’m gonna do is that I’m going to go over here to the PLC, and I’m gonna go to and it’s updated my PLC tag table. There you go. It’s in there. So then I’m gonna grab that guy. I’m gonna because portal pushes you to use two monitors. I’m gonna come here, go to the main OB, and then I’m gonna just grab a normally open contact, drag it on, drop it, put it in there we go. And then I’m gonna grab selector switch and drop that right there, and grab green LED and drop that right there, and then close that out and compile. And everybody’s happy. I’m gonna download and say yes. Okay. And then I’m gonna go online. Alright. So it’s waiting in for me to switch that, and there you go. And if you wanna see my screen there, Shawn, that’s the green light is turned on. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Let me switch over to Okay. Bring up your, alright. And could you switch it back off now? Mark Berger (Siemens): Yeah. No problem. Yep. So there we go. We switch it off. We switch it on. Now I wanna show you something kinda cool. If I turn that off and I come back here and I go offline Mhmm. I have a indicator light that needs to flash to let the operator know that there’s something here I need you to attend to. So we used to put in some type of timer. Right? Mhmm. Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm. Mark Berger (Siemens): And so what we would do here instead of that, I’m gonna come back down here to my tab and go to the hardware config. I’m gonna double click here. I’m gonna go to module parameters, and I’m gonna drop this down, and I’m gonna put it at two hertz. Also, just to point out, I can also do a normally open contact and a normally closed contact and switch them. You see right here. Cool. And I can control the brightness of the LED if it has an LED, and it’s all hard coded into it. So once I’ve done that, do a quick compile. I’m I mean, you know, I’ve always compile and then do download. Mhmm. Mhmm. So we’re gonna download that and hit load and finish. K. Here we go. Turn that on, and now it’s flashing. Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s great. So you have a timer built in. If you need to flash, you don’t have to go get a clock bit or create your own timer. Plus, if it’s a button, you can change the contacts from normally open to normally closed. That is very cool. Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. And that is PROFINET push buttons. As I stated let me quickly pull that up. Remember, you pointed out just a few minutes ago, here is the wiring diagram for that. So here’s the back of that with the terminal blocks. And you come down here, and it shows you that you just wire in that, variable resistor or a potentiometer. And you see m and you there’s the 10 volts, and then the signal comes into a. And then that guy is right here. Excellent. So if you come here, you go to properties and IO tags, and it comes in on I 60 fours and input and IO tags, and then I could call that a pot. Yeah. And now you have a potentiometer that you can use as a a speed reference for your VFD. That is very cool. Engineering efficiency, we reduced wiring. We don’t have all the IO cards that is required, and we have the diagnostics. Emphasize that each of these here, their names, you can change those if you would like because this is your diagnostic string. So if something goes wrong here, then it would come up and say commanding. So you double click here, and we go here to general, and it’ll say commanding and underscore LED module two, or you can you can call that start conveyor p b. And then that would change this. Now see this changed it. This would be your diagnostic string to let you know if if that button got damaged or is not working properly. Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, I wanted to ask you too. If I had, let’s say I needed two potentiometers on the front of the enclosure, could I put another interface module in the system? Even if it didn’t have any push buttons on it or pilots on it, could I just put it in there to grab, some more IO? Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. Yes, sir. I have a customer that he uses these as small little IO blocks. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. I mean, if you just needed a second pot, it might make sense to buy another interface module and bring it into that than buying an analog card. Right? Assuming the resolution and everything was app you know, correct for your application, but that’s very cool. I you know, it it really goes in line with all the videos we’ve done recently looking at e t 200 I o, all the different flavors and types. And when you walk through here, you know, I’m just so especially, thankful that it reads in all the push buttons and their positions and pilot lights. Because if you have this on your desk, you’re doing your first project, you can save a lot of dragging and dropping and searching through the hardware catalog just by reading it in just like we can read in a rack of, like, e t 200 SPIO. Mark Berger (Siemens): Yep. Engineering efficiency, reducing wiring, reducing time in front of the PC to get things up and running. You saw how quickly just a simple push button and a and, you know, again, a simple start and turn that on and off the races we went. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, Mark, I really wanna thank you. Was there anything else that we wanted to cover before we close out the show? Mark Berger (Siemens): Nope. That’s just about it. I think, we got a little bit to have your your viewers, think about for it. So I appreciate the time, and I really appreciate you allowing me to show this. I think this is a a really engineering efficiency way of going about using our push buttons and and, making everybody’s projects in a timely manner and getting everything done and having cost savings with it. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, and I wanna thank you for taking the time out of your busy day, not only to put together a little demo like you have for me to use here in the school, but also to come on and show our audience how to use this. And I wanna thank our audience. This was actually prompted from one of you guys out there at calling in or writing in. I think it was on YouTube somewhere and saying, hey. Could you cover the PROFINET push buttons from Siemens? I didn’t even know they had them. So thanks to the viewers out there for your feedback that helps guide me on what you wanna see. And, Mark, this would not be possible if it wasn’t for your expertise. Thank you for coming back on the show. I really appreciate it. Mark Berger (Siemens): Thank you, Shawn. All the best. Thank you. Shawn Tierney (Host): I hope you enjoyed that episode. And I wanna thank Mark for taking time out of his busy schedule to put together that demo and presentation for us and really bring us up to speed on Sirius X. And I wanna thank the user out there who put a comment on one of my previous videos that said, hey. Did you know Siemens has this? Because I wouldn’t have known that unless you said that. So thank you to all you. I try to read the comments every day or at least every two days, and so I appreciate you all wherever you are, whether you’re on YouTube, the automation blog, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, and wherever you’re listening to this, I just wanna thank you for tuning in. And now with next week being Thanksgiving, we’ll have a pause in the automation show, then we have some more shows in December, and we’re already filming episodes for next year. So I’m looking forward to, releasing all those for you. And if you didn’t know, I also do another podcast called the History of Automation. Right now, it’s only available on video platforms, so YouTube, LinkedIn, and the automation blog. Hopefully, someday we’ll also do it on, audio as well. But, we’re meeting with some of the really legends in automation who worked on some of the really, you know, just really original PLCs, original HMIs, up and through, like, more modern day systems. So it’s just been a blast having these folks on to talk about the history of automation. And so if you need something to listen to during Thanksgiving week or maybe during the holidays, check out the history of automation. Again, right now, it’s only available on YouTube, the automation blog, and LinkedIn, but I think you guys will enjoy that. And I wanna wish you guys, since I won’t be back next week, a very happy Thanksgiving. I wanna thank you always for tuning in and listening, and I also wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace. Until next time, Peace ✌️  If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

In this week's episode of Hands-On Tech, Lance asks Mikah Sargent about the pros and cons of using powerline ethernet adapters, and Mikah shares his strong thoughts on these devices. Don't forget to send in your questions for Mikah to answer during the show! hot@twit.tv Host: Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to Hands-On Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/hands-on-tech Want access to the ad-free video and exclusive features? Become a member of Club TWiT today! https://twit.tv/clubtwit Club TWiT members can discuss this episode and leave feedback in the Club TWiT Discord.

Linktree: ⁠https://linktr.ee/Analytic⁠Join The Normandy For Additional Bonus Audio And Visual Content For All Things Nme+! Join Here: ⁠https://ow.ly/msoH50WCu0K⁠Analytic Dreamz delivers a detailed, concise analysis of Valve's November 2025 Steam Machine reveal, alongside the Steam Controller and Steam Frame VR headset, all launching early 2026. Steam Machine Specs: Compact 6-inch cube (2.6kg), AMD Zen 4 6-core/12-thread CPU (up to 4.8GHz, 30W TDP), RDNA3 GPU (28 CUs, 2.45GHz, 110W TDP, 8GB GDDR6), 16GB DDR5 RAM, 512GB/2TB NVMe SSD + microSD. Delivers 6x Steam Deck power for 4K/60FPS gaming with FSR; handles Cyberpunk 2077 medium settings. SteamOS 3 optimized for couch play, full Steam library, Proton Windows support, desktop mode. Connectivity: 2x USB-A 3.2, USB-C, DP 1.4 (4K@240Hz), HDMI 2.0 (4K@120Hz, HDR/FreeSync), Wi-Fi 6E, Ethernet, internal PSU.Steam Controller: Deck-inspired with TMR joysticks, dual trackpads, gyro, 36-hour battery, customizable profiles; compatible across Steam devices. Steam Frame: Streaming VR (2160x2160/eye, 110° FOV), capacitive controllers, Wi-Fi 6, full Steam integration. Valve challenges consoles with PC flexibility at estimated $449-$599. Analytic Dreamz breaks down performance, features, and 2026 impact. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/analytic-dreamz-notorious-mass-effect/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Shawn Tierney meets up with Henrik Pedersen and Jacob Abel to learn about OTee Virtual PLCs in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 252 Show Notes: Special thanks to Henrik Pedersen and Jacob Abel for coming on the show, and to OTee for sponsoring this episode so we could release it “ad free!” To learn about the topics discussed in this episode, checkout the below links: OTee Virtual PLCs website Schedule an OTee demo Connect with Henrik Pedersen Connect with Jacob Abel Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated) Shawn Tierney (Host): Thank you for tuning back into the automation podcast. Shawn Tierney here from Insights. And this week on the show, I meet up with Henrik Pedersen and Jacob Abel to learn all about virtual PLCs from OTee. That’s o t e e. And, I just thought it was very interesting. So if you guys have ever thought about maybe running virtual PLCs to test some processes out, I think you’ll really enjoy this. With that said, I wanna welcome to the show for the very first time, Hendrik and Jacob. Guys, before we jump into your presentation and learn more about what you do, could you first introduce yourself to our audience? Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. Sweetly. So my name is Hendrik. I am the cofounder, COO, OT, a new industrial automation company, that, we’re really glad to present here today. I have a background from ABB. I worked eleven years at ABB. In terms of education, I have an engineering degree and a master degree in industrial economics. And, yeah, I’m I’m excited to be here. Thanks, Rom. And I’ll pass it over to Jake. Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): I’m, Jacob Abel. I’m the principal automation engineer at Edgnot. EdgeNaught is a systems integrator focusing on edge computing and virtual PLCs. My background is in mechanical engineering, and I’m a professional control systems engineer, and I have thirteen years experience in the machine building side of industrial automation, specifically in oil and gas making flow separators. And I’ll hand it back to Henrik here. Henrik Pedersen (OTee): K. Great. So OT, we are a a new industrial automation company, the new kid on the block, if you will. We’re a start up. So, we only started, about three years ago now. And, we focus solely on virtual PLCs and and the data architectures allow you to integrate virtual PLCs in in operations. And, you know, some of the listeners will be very familiar with this first, thing I’m gonna say, but I think it’s valuable to just take a take a little bit step back and and remember what has happened in in history when when it comes to to IT and OT and, and and what really what really happened with that split. Right? So it was probably around the ‘9 you know, around nineteen nineties where the the the domain computer science were really split into these two domains here, the IT and OT. And, and that, that was, that was kind of natural that that happened because we got on the, on the IT side of things, we got Internet, we got open protocols and, you know, we had the personal computers and innovation could truly flourish on the IT side. But whereas on the OT side, we were we were kind of stuck still in the proprietary, hardware software lock in situation. And and that has that has really not been solved. Right? That that that is still kind of the the situation today. And it this is what this is obviously what also, brought me personally to to really got really super motivated to solve this problem and and really dive deep into it. And I experienced this firsthand with with my role in NAD and, how how extremely locked we are at creating new solutions and new innovation on the OT side. So so we’re basically a company that wants to to truly open up the the the innovation in this space and and make it possible to adopt anything new and new solutions, that that sits above the PLC and and, you know, that integrate effectively to to the controller. So I I have this this, you know, this slide that kind of illustrates this point with with some some, you know, historical events or or at least some some some big shifts that has happened. And, Aurene mentioned a shift in nineteen nineties. And it wasn’t actually until ’20, 2006 that Gartner coined this term OT, to explain the difference really what what has happened. And and, you know, as we know, IT has just boomed with innovation since since the nineties and OT is, is, is slowly, slowly incrementally getting better, but it’s still, it’s still the innovation pace is really not, not fast. So, this is also, of course, illustrated with all the new developments in in GenAI and AgenTic AI, MCP, and things like that that is kinda booming on on the IT side of things. And and and yeah. So, but we do believe that there is actually something happening right now. And and we have data that they’re gonna show for for that. Like, the the large incumbents are now working on this as well, like virtual PLCs, software defined automation and all kinds of exciting things going on on the OT side. So we do believe that that we will see, we will see a shift, a true big shift on the OT side in terms of innovation, really the speed in which we can, we can improve and adopt new solutions on the OT side. And this is kind of exemplified by, like, what what is the endgame here? Like, you could say that the endgame could be that IT and OT once once again becomes the same high paced innovation domain. Right. But then we need to solve those underlying problems, the infrastructural problems that are still so persistent on the OT side of things. The fine point of this slide is to just illustrate what’s happening right now. It’s like cloud solutions for control is actually happening. Virtual PLC, software based automation, AI is happening all at once. And we see it with the big suppliers and and also the exciting startups that’s coming into this space. So I think there’s there’s lots of great excitement now that we can we can expect from the OT side, in in next few years. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, I wanna just, just for those listening, add a little, context here. If we look at 1980, why was that so important? Why is this on the chart? And if you think about it, right, we got networks like Modbus and, Data Highway in nineteen seventy eight, seventy nine, eighty. We also got Ethernet at that time as well. And so we had on the plant floor field buses for our controls, but in the offices, people were going to Ethernet. And then when we started seeing the birth of the public Internet, right, we’re talking about in the nineties, people who are working on the plant floor, they were like, no. Don’t let the whole world access by plant floor network. And so I think that’s where we saw the initial the the divide, you know, was 1980. It was a physical divide, just physically different topologies. Right? Different needs. Right? And then and and as the Internet came out in the early nineties, it was it was now like, hey. We need to keep us safe. We know there’s something called hackers on the Internet. And and I think that’s why, as you’re saying in 2006, when Gartner, you know, coined OT, we were seeing that there was this hesitant to bring the two together because of the different viewpoints and the the different needs of both systems. So I think it’s very interesting. I know you listeners, you can’t see this, but I kinda want to go back through that and kinda give some context to those early years. And and, you know, like Henrik says, you know, now that we’re past all that, now that we’re using Ethernet on the plant floor everywhere, right, almost everywhere, on all new systems, definitely, that that becomes the right now on this on the today on the, on the chart. And I’ll turn it back to you, Henrik. Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. I’ll search that. I just wanna echo that as I think that there are really good reasons for why this has happened. Like, the there has you could argue that innovation could flourish on the IT side because there was less critical systems, right, less, more, you know, you can do to fail fast and you can do, you can test out things on a different level. And so so there’s really lots of good reasons for why this has happened. We do believe that right now there is some really excitement around innovation, the OT side of things and and this pent up kind of, I wouldn’t call it frustration, but this pent up potential, I think is the right word, is is can be kind of unleashed in our industry for for the next, next decade. So so we are like this is really one of the key motivators for me personally. It’s, like, I truly believe there’s something truly big going on right now. And and I I do I do encourage everyone, everyone listening, like, get in get in on this. Like, this is happening. And, you know, be an entrepreneur as well. Like, build your company, build and, you know, create something new and exciting in this space. I think I think this is this is a time that there hasn’t been a better time to create a new new technology company or a new service company in this space. So this this, this is something at least that motivates me personally a lot. So let me move over to kind of what we do. I mentioned I mentioned that we focus solely on the virtual PLC. This this is now presented in the slide for those that are listening as a as a box inside a open hardware. We can deploy a virtual PLC on any, ARM thirty two thirty two and and sixty four bit processor and x eighty six sixty four bit with the Linux kernel. So so there are lots of great, options to choose from on the hardware side. And and, and yeah. So you can obviously when you have a Virtual PLC you can think of it new in terms of your system architecture. You could for instance, you know deploy multiple Virtual PLCs on this on the same hardware and you can also, think about it like you can use a virtual PLC in combination with your existing PLCs and could work as a master PLC or some kind of optimization deterministic controller. So it’s it’s really just opening up that, you know, that architectural aspect of things. Like you can think new in terms of your system architecture, and you have a wide range of hardware to choose from. And, and yeah, So the the flexibility is really the key here, flexibility in how you architect your system. That CPU that you deploy on will will obviously be need to be connected to to the field somehow, and that’s that’s true, classical remote IO, connections. So we currently support, Modbus TCP and Ethernet IP, which is kind of deployed to to, our production environment, as it’s called. So moving on to the next slide. Like, this is kind of the summary of our solution. We have built a cloud native IDE. So meaning anyone can can basically go to our website and log in to into the solution and and give it a spin. And, we’ll show you that afterwards with with Jake. And the system interacts through a PubSub data framework. We use a specific technology called NUTS, for the PubSub communication bus. And you can add MQTT or OPC UA to the PubSub framework, according to your needs. So, and from that, you can integrate with, whatever whatever other, software you might have, in your system. So we have these value points that we always like to bring up. Like, this obviously breaks some kind of vendor lock in in terms of the hardware and the software. But it’s also, our virtual PLC is based on on the six eleven thirty one. So it’s not a lock in to any kind of proprietary programming language or anything like that. There is, there’s obviously the cost, element to this that you can potentially save a lot of cost. We have, we have verified with with with some of our customers that they estimate to save up to 60% in total cost of ownership. This is there is obviously one part is the capex side and the other part is is the opex. And and is this data framework, as I mentioned, is in in in which itself is is future proof to some extent. You can you can integrate whatever comes comes in in a year or or in a few years down the line. And, there’s environmental footprint argument for this as you can save a lot on the on the infrastructure side. We have one specific customer that estimates to save a lot on and this this particular point is really important for them. And then final two points is essentially that we have built in a zero trust based security, principle into this solution. So we have role based access control. Everything is encrypted end to end, automatic certification, and things like that. The final point is, is that this is the infrastructure that allows you to bring AI and the classical, DevOps, the the thing that we’re very used to in the IT side of things. Like, you you commit and merge and release, instead of, instead of the traditional, way of working with your automation systems. So I know this is like, this is pro pretty much, like, the boring, sales pitch slide, but, but, yeah, I just wanted to throw this this out there for for the guys that there is some there is some, intrinsic values underneath here. The way the system works, you will you will see this very soon, through the demo, but it’s basically you just go to a website, you log in, you create a project. In there, you would create your your PLC program, test, you code, you simulate. You would onboard a device. So onboard that Linux device that you you want to deploy on. This can be as simple as a Raspberry Pi, or it can be something much more industrial grade. This depends on on on the use case. And then you would deploy services like, as I mentioned, MQTT and OPC UA, and then you would manage your your your system from from the interface. And, I have this nice quote that we got to use from one of the customers we had. This is a global, automotive manufacturer that, basically tells us that it’s, they they highlighted the speed in which you can set this up, as as one of the biggest values for them, saving them a lot of hours and setting setting up the system. So I also wanted to show you a real you know, this is a actual real deployment. It was it was deployed about a year ago, and this is a pump station, or a water and wastewater operator with around 200 pump stations. They had a mix of of Rockwell and Schneider PLCs, and they had a very high upkeep, and they were losing a lot of data from these stations because they were connected over four g. When the Internet was a bit poor, they lost a bit of data in their SCADA systems, so they had these data gaps and things like that. So pretty pretty, you know, standard legacy setup to be to be honest. Quite outdated PLCs as well. So what they what they did for the first, pump station was they they, you know, removed the PLC. They put in a Raspberry Pi for for, like, €60 or, like, $70, connected it to to a to a remote IO Ethernet IP module they had, in in the storage, and deploy this data framework as I’m showing on the screen now. So so they that was that was the first station they put online, and they they chose a Raspberry Pi because they thought, okay, this is interesting, but will it work? And then they chose a pump station, which was was really just poor from before. So they had very little to to to lose to to deploy on this station. So so, yeah, this has been running for a year now without any any problems on a Raspberry Pi. We have obviously advised against using a Raspberry Pi in a critical environment, but they just insisted that that what that’s what they wanted to do for this first case. Shawn Tierney (Host): And I’ll back that up too. Your generic off the shelf Raspberry Pi is just like a generic off the shelf computer. It’s not rated for these type of environments. Not that all pump houses are really bad, but they’re not air conditioned. And I think we’ve all had that situation when it’s a 120, 130 out that, you know, off the shelf computer components can act wonky as well as when they get below freezing. So just wanted to chime in there and agree with you on that. For testing, it’s great. But if you’re gonna leave it in there, if you were in my town and you say you’re gonna leave that in there permanently, I would ask to have you, assigned somewhere else for the town. Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. No. So and and that point is also illustrated with the second station they brought online. So there they chose a much more industrial grade CPU, that, that, was much, you know, cost cost a bit more, but it’s more suited for the environment. And, and yeah. So this was, I can disclose it was a Bayer Electronics, CPU. So so yeah. And, and they reported, some good, good metrics in terms of, like, the results. They they said around 50 on the hardware, 75% on the management of the PLC system. So this relates more to that they have very a lot of, you know, driving out with the car to these stations and doing changes to their systems and, and updates. They no longer have any, any data loss. It’s local buffer on the data framework. They’ve increased tag capacity with 15 x, resulting in in four fifty five x better data resolution and a faster scan frequency. And this is actually on the Raspberry Pi. So so just just think of it as as the the even the even the, kind of the lowest quality IT off the shelf, computers, are are able to to, to execute really fast in in in, or fast enough for for, for these cases. So, Shawn, that was actually what I wanted to say. And, and also, you know, yeah, we are we are a start up, but we do have, fifth users now in 57 different countries across the world. And it’s it’s really cool to see our our our, our technology being deployed around the world. And, and yeah. I’m really, really excited to to, to get more, users in and and hear what they what they, think of the solution. So so yeah. I’ll I’ll with that, I don’t know if, Shawn, you wanna you shoot any questions or if we should hand it over to Jake for for for a demo. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Just before we go to Jake, if somebody who’s listening is interested, this might be a good time. It said that, you already talked about being cloud based. It’s, o t e e. So Oscar Tom, Edward Edward for the the name of the company. Where would they go if if they like what Jake’s gonna show us next? Where will they go to find out more? Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. So I would honestly propose that they just, reach out to to me or Jake, on on one of the QR codes that we have on the presentation. But they can also obviously go to our website, 0t.io,0tee.io, and just, either just, log in and test the product, or they could reach out to us, through our website, through the contact form. So yeah. Shawn Tierney (Host): Perfect. Perfect. Alright, Jake. I’ll turn it over to you. Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): Thanks, Shawn. Fantastic stuff, Henrik. I wanna take a second too to kinda emphasize some of the technical points that you, presented on. Now first, the the fact that you have the built in zero trust cybersecurity is so huge. So, I mean, the OT cybersecurity is blowing up right now. So many certifications, you know, lots of, consulting and buzz on LinkedIn. I mean, it’s a very real concern. It’s for a good reason. Right? But with this, zero trust built in to the system, I I mean, you can completely close-up the firewall except for one outgoing port. And you have all the virtual PLCs connected together and it’s all done. You know, there’s no incoming ports to open up on the firewall to worry about, you know, that security concern. You know, it’s basically like, you know, you’ve already set up a VPN server, if you will. It’s it’s not the same, but similar and, you know, taking care of that connection already. So there’s an immense value in that, I think. Shawn Tierney (Host): And I wanted to add to the zero trust. We’ve covered it on the show. And just for people, maybe you’ve missed it. You know, with zero trust is you’re not trusting anyone. You authorize connections. Okay? So by default, nobody’s laptop or cell phone or tablet can talk to anything. You authorize, hey. I want this SCADA system to talk to this PLC. I want this PLC to talk to this IO. I want this historian to talk to this PLC. Every connection has to be implicitly I’m sorry. Explicitly, enabled and trusted. And so by default, you know, an an integrator comes into the plant, he can’t do anything because in a zero trust system, somebody has to give him and his laptop access and access to specific things. Maybe he only gets access to the PLC, and that makes sense. Think about it. Who knows whether his laptop has been? I mean, we’ve heard about people plug in to the USB ports of the airport and getting viruses. So it’s important that person’s device or a SCADA system or a historian only has access to exactly what it needs access to. Just like you don’t let the secretary walk on the plant floor and start running the machine. Right? So it’s a it’s an important concept. We’ve covered it a lot. And and, Jake, I really appreciate you bringing that up because zero trust is so huge, and I think it’s huge for OT to have it built into their system. Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): I wanted to highlight too the Henrik mentioned that the the backbone of the system is running on a technology called NATS. That’s spelled n a t s. And why that’s important is this is a a lightweight messaging, service, and it’s designed to send millions of messages per second. You know, that’s opposed to, you know, probably the best Modbus TCP device that you can find. You might get a couple 100 messages through per second. It’s millions of messages per second. It’s, you know, especially with, you know, we’re dealing with AI machine learning, you know, training models. I mean, we’re data hungry. Right? So this gives you the backbone too. You know, it’s like it can push an immense amount of tag data, you know, with ease. I think that’s another really important point. With that, though, I’ll I’ll get on to the demo. Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Oh, that’s great. We do we do see that, Jay, that most of our customers report on that, you know, 400 or 700 x better data resolution. And so it’s it’s a step change for for for the data resolution there. Yeah. Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): Excellent. So one of the things that I personally love about OT is how quickly you can get into the PLC once everything’s set up. So this is OT’s website, obviously, ot.io. So once you’re here, you just go to log in. And that brings in the login screen. Now I’m are I’m using my Google account for single sign on, so I can just click continue with Google. And this brings me into the main interface. And another thing that I love is that, you know, it is very simple and straightforward, you know, and simple is not a bad thing. Simple is a good thing. I mean, the way that things should be is that it should be, it should be easy and the finer details are taken care of for you. So right here, we have our main project list. I just have this one benchmarking program that I’ve imported in here. And you also have device lists, just a a test device that I’ve installed the runtime on. Just real quick. You know, you have a Martha, the AI assistant in the corner here. And, the documentation guides is up here. So you can get help or look into reference material very easily. It’s all right there for you. So I’m gonna open up this program here. So just a quick tour here. Right up here in the top left is basically where where most everything’s done. So if you click on this little down arrow, you can choose what virtual PLC runtime to attach it to. I’ve already attached it to the device. I installed the runtime on. You can add, you know, a new program, driver, function blocks, custom data types real quick here. Compile your program, download it to the device. Check the release history, which is really, really great. As you can, you can go into release history and you can revert to a prior version very easily. We got built in, version control, which is another, great feature. Henrik Pedersen (OTee): I can also just comment on that, Jake, that we do have we do have, in the quite short term roadmap to also expand on that with Git integration, that, a lot of our customers are are asking for. So yeah. Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): Awesome. Yeah. I mean, that’s that’s another, very hot topic right now. It’s, you know, getting getting the revision control systems, as part of, you know, at least the textual, programming languages. See, so, you know, we have a few, like, housekeeping things here. I mean, you can delete the program, export it. It’s a good good point here is that, OT complies with the PLC open, XML specification. So you can import or export programs, in this XML format, and it should work with solid majority of other automation software out there. You know, if you need to, you want to transition over to OT, you know, you can export it from your other software and import it rather easily. Got your program list here and, you know, just the basic configuration of, you know, you can add global variables that you wanna share between the different programs and POUs or, you know, change the, cycle rate of the periodic tasks, add more tasks. Let’s just get jump into this program here. Both the system uses the IEC sixty one one thirty one dash three standard structured text. So here’s just a little, quick benchmark program that I’ve been using to do some performance testing. Like you, you have the, the code right here, obviously. And on our, our right, the variable list, very easy to add a new variable and pick out the type. You can set a set of default value, add some notes to it. Super easy. So let’s go online. So if you have these little glasses up here in the top, right, you display live tag values. And so it’s grabbing from the runtime that’s running and plopping it right in here in the editor, which I I love the way it’s displayed. It makes it. And, you know, it’s one of the question marks is if you’re doing structured text instead of letter logic, like how it’s gonna show up and how readable is it gonna be. I think the, the text, like the color contrast here helps a lot. It’s very, very readable and intuitive. And we also have the tag browser on the right hand side. Everything is, organized into, you know, different groups. There’s the the resources and instances that you’ve set up in the configuration tab. So the by default, the tag the tags are all listed under there. And here too, you know, you can set tag values doing some performance testing, as I said. So this is, recording some some jitter and task time metrics. And that’s that’s really it. That’s the that’s the cloud IV in a nutshell. Super easy, very intuitive. I mean, it’s there there’s zero learning curve here. Shawn Tierney (Host): For the, audio audience, just a little comment here. First of all, structured text to me seems to be, like, the most compatible between all PLCs. So, you know, everybody does ladder a little bit differently. Everybody does function blocks a little bit differently. But structured text and, again, I could be wrong if you guys think out there in the in listening, think I’m wrong about that. But when I’ve seen structured text and compared it between multiple different vendors, it always seems to be the closest from vendor to vendor to vendor. So I can see this makes a great a great place to start for OT to have a virtual PLC that supports that because you’re gonna be able to import or export to your maybe your physical PLCs. The other thing is I wanted to comment on what we’re seeing here. So, many of you who are familiar with structured text, you know, you may have an if then else, or an if then. And and you may have, like, tag x, equals, you know, either some kind of calculation, you know, maybe, you know, z times y or just maybe a a constant. But what we’re seeing here is as we’re running, they have inserted at a in a different color the actual value of, let’s say, tag x. So in between you know, right next to tag x, we see the actual value changing and updating a few times a second. And so it makes it very easy to kinda monitor this thing while it’s running and see how everything’s working, and I know that’s that’s huge. And I know a lot of vendors also do this as well, but I love the integration here, how it’s so easy to see what the current values are for each of these variables. And, I’ll turn it over to you, Hendrick. I think I interrupted you. Go ahead. Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. No. I was just gonna comment on that. Jake said, like, this is the this is the POC editor, and the next the next big feature that we’re releasing very soon is essentially the service, manager, which is the, which is the feature that will allow our users to deploy any kind of service very efficiently, like another runtime or OPC UA server or an entity server or or or whatever other, software components that that, you want to deploy, like a Knox server or things like that. So and that’s that’s, we were really excited about that because, that will kind of allow for a step change in how you kind of orchestrate and manage your system and your, your system and your, your, you have a very good overview of what’s going on with versions of, of the different software components running in your, your infrastructure and your devices and things like that. So we’re really excited about that, that it’s coming out. And it might be that actually when when this, episode airs, who knows if it’s if it’s done or or not, but we’re very close to release the first version of that. So excited about that. Shawn Tierney (Host): Now I have a question for you guys, and maybe this is off topic a little bit. So let’s say I’m up here in the cloud. I’m working on a program, and I have some IO on my desk I wanna connect it to. Is that something I can do? Is there a connector I can download and install my PC to allow the cloud to talk to my IO? Or is that something where I have to get a a, you know, a local, you know, like we talked about those industrial Linux boxes and and test it here with that? Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. So I think you what you what you’re you’re after is, like, the IO configuration of, if you wanna deploy a driver, right, or, like, a modbus driver and how you figure out the system. Right? Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Because this is in the cloud. It’s not on my desk. The IO is on my desk. So how would I connect the two of them? How would I is is that something that can be done? Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yep. Yeah. Exactly. That’s that’s actually the you know, I I think, Jake, you might just wanna show why you deploy a driver. Right? Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): Sure. Sure. And I just wanna take a second to, clarify. You know, it’s something that kinda comes up often, and I I don’t I don’t think it gets it’s it’s cleared up enough is that so, you know, we have this cloud ID here. So, you know, you can open this from anywhere in the world. But the virtual PLC run times get installed on computers preferably very locally, you know, on the machine, on the factory floor, something like that. I I’ve got, an edge computer right here. Just as an example. I mean, this is something you would just pop in the control panel and you can install OT on this. So to answer your question better, Shawn, you know, to get to, you know, the remote IO that you need essentially, or actually in the, in the case of this, this has onboard IO. You know, you’re looking at connecting with MOBAs, PCP, Ethernet IP. I I know that a lot more protocols are coming. Profinet. So how you would do that is that you have that plus sign up here and add a driver config. We’re just gonna do, Modbus real quick. Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Mhmm. Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): And we wanna add a TCP client. So you can name the client, tell it how fast to pull, you know, any delays, put in the IP address. Just an example. Do the port number if you need and then add your requests. You know, you have support for, all the main function codes and mod bus right here, you know, read holding, read input, you know, write multiple coils, all that good stuff, you know, tell address how many registers you wanna do, timeouts, slave ID. And then, you know, once you’ve done that, so let’s say, you know, I’m gonna read, and holding registers here, the table on the right auto updates. You can do aliases for each one of these. You can just do register one Mhmm. As an example Shawn Tierney (Host): It’s showing just for the audio audience, it’s showing the absolute address for all these modbus, variables and then, has the symbols, and he’s putting in his own symbol name. It has a default symbol name of symbol dash something, and he’s putting his own in, like, register one, which makes it easier. Yeah. Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): Good point. Yeah. Good point. Thanks, Shawn. So, yeah, once once you put in your request and you can throw in some aliases, for the different registers, you know, you can go back to your program and here’s this, sample variable that I just added from earlier. You know, you can the registers are 16 bits. I’m gonna select, an int. And what you can do here now is select those modbus requests that you just set up. So it automatically maps these to those variables for you. So that that way you don’t have to do anything anything manual, like have a separate program to say, you know, this tag equals, you know, register 40,001. You know, it’s already mapped for you. So that’s that’s essentially how you would connect to remote IO is, just add a client in the driver configs and, fill in all your info and be off and running. Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s excellent. I really liked how you were able to easily map the register to the modbus value you’re reading in or writing to to your, variable so you can use that in your program. That was very easy to do. Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): Oh, yeah. Yeah. It’s that it’s like I said, that’s one of the things that I love about this interface is that everything is just very straightforward. You know, it’s it’s super easy to just stumble upon whatever it is you need and figure it out. Henrik Pedersen (OTee): And just just, to add to to kinda your your processors, like, once you have created that connection between the IO and and and the program, you basically just, compile it and download it to the to the runtime again, and and it executes locally the based on the yeah. Nice. Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): Oh, right. Good point. Yeah. Of of course, after we add something, we do have to redownload. So Shawn Tierney (Host): Very interesting. Well, that answers my question. Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): I think that’s that’s about it for the the demo. I mean, unless, Shawn, you have any more questions about the interface here. Shawn Tierney (Host): No. It looked pretty straightforward to me, Hendrik. I don’t know. Did you have anything else you wanted to discuss while we have the demo up? Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Nope. Not nothing related to this except for that, you know, this is probably something that’s quite new in the OT space is that this is a software service, meaning that there are continuous development going on and releases, and improvements to the software all the time. Like literally every week we deploy new improvements. And, and what, I typically say is that like, the, you know, if you if you if you sign up with OT, what you what you will experience is that the actual software keeps on becoming better over time and not is not going to become outdated. It’s going to be just better over time. And I think that’s part of what I really loved about the innovation space, innovation happening around IT is that that, that has become the new de facto standard in how you develop software and great software. And I think we in, in, in the OT space, we need to adopt that same methodology of developing software, something that continuously becomes better over time. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And I would just say, you know, if you’re if you’re on the OT side of things, you wanna be in six eleven thirty one dash three languages, because these are things that your staff, you know, what you know, your electricians and technicians and even engineers, you know, should know, should be getting up to speed. I don’t know. We’re at the automation school. We’re teaching, structured text. And so, easier. I look at this, and I’m like, this is a lot easier than trying to learn c plus or or JavaScript. So in any case, I think, you know, if it’s an OT side real IO control, real control system or data collection, you know, you know, very important, you know, mission critical data collection, then, you know, I’d rather have this than somebody trying to write some custom code for me and, you know, use some kind of computer language who doesn’t understand, you know, the OT side of things. So, I could definitely see the advantage of your system, Henrik. Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yep. I I I also wanted to say to that, Stike, the I I do not believe the EIC standards in general will disappear. They exist for a very good reason. Right. Exists to standardise to to ensure safety and determinists, determinism in this. So I don’t think they will disappear. But there are obviously advances now with AI and things like that that can can help us create these things much faster and much more efficient and things like that. So, so but, but the EIC standards, I think, will be there for a very long time. Obviously, the 06/4099 standard is is really exciting, and and we believe that that can be, yeah, that that can clearly be there, but it’s still a new EIC standard. So, Shawn Tierney (Host): it’s not think what we’re gonna see is we’re gonna see a lot more libraries fleshed out. There’ll be a lot less writing from scratch. We’ve interviewed on the History of Automation podcast. We’ve interviewed some big integrators, and they’re at a point now, you know, twenty, thirty years on that they have libraries for everything. And I think that’s where we’ll see, you know, much like the DCS, I think, vendors went two years ago. But I still think that the there’s a reason for these languages. There’s a reason to be able to edit things while they run. There’s a reason for different languages for different applications and different, people maintaining them. So I agree with you on that. I don’t I don’t think we’re we’re gonna see the end of these, these standard languages that have done us very well since the, you know, nineteen seventies. Jacob Abel (Edgenaut): I just wanna add a bit on there about, Shawn, you mentioned, you know, doing less code. I I did show earlier in the bottom right hand corner here, we have our our little AI assistant, Martha. I don’t believe the feature, it has been released yet. You know, Henrik, correct me if I’m wrong, but I know one of the things that’s coming is, AI code generation, you know, similar to that of cloud or chat GPT. So it’s going to, you know, you can open this guy up here. You know, right right now, I think it’s just for, help topics, but you’ll be able to talk to Martha and she’s gonna generate code for you in your program there all built in. Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s coming really fast now. So, it’s it’s not been implemented yet, but it’s, it’s right around the corner. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And it’s it’s not gonna be able to it’s you’re not gonna be able to hook a camera up to it and, like, take pictures of your machine and say, okay. Write the control code for this. But, you know, if you had a, you know, process that had 12 steps in it, the AI could definitely help you generate that code and and other code. And we’ll have to have Henrik and Jake back on to talk about that when it comes out, but, you know, it’s gonna be able to save you, reduce the tedious part of the the coding. You know, if you need an array of so many tags and so many dimensions or, you know, the stuff that, you know, it would just be the typing intensive, it’s gonna be able to help you with that, and then you can actually put the context in there. Just like, you can pull up a template in Word for a letter, and then you can fill in the blanks. You know? And and, of course, AI is helping make that easier too. But, in any case, Henrik, maybe you can come back on when that feature launches. Henrik Pedersen (OTee): Yeah. Absolutely. And I’m also excited about just a simple a use case of of translating something. Right? Translating your existing let’s say if it’s a proprietary code or something like that, like, getting it getting it standardized and translating it to the ESE six eleven thirty one standard, for instance, or, so so the obviously AI is, like, perfect for this space. It’s there is no doubt, And and it’s, like, that’s also why I’m so excited about, like, what’s going on at the moment. It’s like there’s so much innovation potential, in the on the OT side now that, they are with all these new technologies. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, gentlemen, was there anything else you wanted to cover? Henrik Pedersen (OTee): I think just just one final thing from from me is, like, we thought a lot about it, like, before this this episode, and we thought, like, let’s offer let’s offer the listeners something something of of true value. So so we thought, the, you know, after this after this episode launched, we want to want to offer anyone out there that’s listening a free, completely hands on trial of our technology, in their in their in their environment or on their Raspberry Pi or whatever. So just just reach out to us if you wanna do that. And, and I yeah. We’ll get you set up for for for testing this, and it’s not gonna cost you anything. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, that’s great. And, guys, if you’re listening, if you do take advantage of that free trial, please let me know what you thought about it. But, Henrik, thank you so much for, that offer to our listening audience. Guys, don’t be bashful. Reach out to him. Reach out to Jake. Jake, thank you for doing the demo as well. Really appreciate it. My pleasure. Any final words, Henrik, before we close out? Henrik Pedersen (OTee): No. It’s been great. Great, being here, Shawn, and thanks for for helping us. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode. I wanna thank Hendrik and Jacob for coming on the show, telling us all about OT virtual PLCs, and then giving us a demo. I thought it was really cool. Now if any of you guys take them up on their free trial, please let me know what you think. I’d love to hear from you. And, with that, I do wanna thank OT for sponsoring this episode so we could release it completely ad free. And I also wanna thank you for tuning back in this week. We have another podcast coming out next week. It’ll be early because I will be traveling and doing an event with a vendor. And so expect that instead of coming out on Wednesday to come out on Monday if all goes as planned. And then we will be skipping the Thanksgiving, week, and then we’ll be back in the in the, in December, and then we have shows lined up for the new year already as well. So thank you for being a listener, a viewer, and, please, wherever you’re consuming the show, whether it’s on YouTube or on the automation blog or at iTunes or Spotify or Google Podcasts or anywhere, please give us a thumbs up and a like or a five star review because that really helps us expand our audience and find new vendors to come on the show. And with that, I’m gonna end by wishing you good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace. Until next time, Peace ✌️  If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

URGREEN have recently launched the NASync DH2300 and the NASync DH4300 Plus for the UK and Irish market. We reviewed the NASync DH4300 Plus here, but today we are looking at the more budget-friendly NASync DH2300. The NASync DH2300 is a 2-Bay device which is really easy to set up and use and is aimed at the beginner market. Even so, it doesn't skimp on features, and the unit is very well spec'd for its price. What's in the Box Inside the box, the NASync DH2300 comes with a power supply, Ethernet cable, an instruction manual, a set of screws for fastening drives into the carriers for each bay, and a small screwdriver. Specs Initial Setup The setup of the NASync DH2300 is very straightforward, even for a beginner. The included manual will step you through each step if it's your first time, and for anyone else who has any experience with PCs, you will be up and running in no time. The two drive bays are accessed from a cover at the top of the device. Once removed it reveals two hard driver carriers which can be removed by squeezing two tabs together and pulling up. The carriers can accept both 2.5" and 3.5" hard drives or SSDs. UGREEN include the screws and a small screwdriver to help you secure your chosen drives in the carriers. We went with two 4TB, 3.5" drives from Seagate to test out how the unit will perform. It is best practice with NAS to use matching drives to avoid any performance or storage issues. We fitted both drives and then connected the power supply and Ethernet cable to a free port on a router in the office, and we were ready to power the device up for the first time. Time to Boot! We powered up the device and checked the manual to see how we could find the device on our network. To find your device, you open a browser on your PC and navigate to find.ugnas.com. From there, you are presented with a UGOS Pro operating system and UI, which will guide you through the setup. The UI guides you through creating an Admin account, linking an email address, and once that is done, it configures the system for a few minutes and then presents you with the UI of the operating system. In total, from pressing the button on the front of the device to turn it on, to the initial setup being complete, and the OS being available to use, took 8 minutes. The next thing you need to do is to create a Volume using the storage pool available and select the RAID option you require. As this is a 2-bay device, there are fewer RAID options than there are with the larger 4-bay NASync DH4300 Plus. We went with RAID 1, which is the recommended choice for a two-drive system. This allows for your data to be stored and backed up on each of the drives, so if one drive fails, your data will still be safe. The steps to set this up are easy and explained to you along the way. Once you have selected what you want, the system creates the storage pool. As we used large capacity spinning disks, this took about 20 hours to complete. The system is usable during this time, so you can get busy adding users, installing apps and setting up remote access. NASync DH2300 Features The NASync DH2300, while more budget-friendly, is still feature-packed and includes everything you need to a device like that. Multiple Users It is possible to add multiple users to the NAS and allocate certain access rights and storage quotas, all of which is easily managed from the Control Panel. Remote Access Remote access to the UI is available either through an intermediary server or through port forwarding if you choose to set it up this way. Ports The NASync DH2300 comes with three high-speed USB ports (2 x Type A & 1 x Type C) as well as a 1GbE port and an HDMI port that supports 4K/ 60Hz. File Services There is support for common file transfer services such as SMB, FTP and NFS, making it really easy to map/access the device's storage from your PC's file explorer. The range of services ensures support for just about any of the main PC operating systems. Security The sys...

Online game design veteran Raph Koster recently posted a new piece about how he thinks about game design, which got us talking about the history of online multiplayer, so then we figured, why not talk about that subject in a (slightly) more comprehensive way on this podcast? So that's what we did this week, dipping into topics like pre-TCP/IP network gaming, the early video game consoles' various half-baked online solutions, how Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies were both way ahead of their time, how much the infrastructure has evolved for facilitating multiplayer -- and how expected it is as a feature these days -- and plenty more.Koster's new piece: https://www.raphkoster.com/2025/11/03/game-design-is-simple-actually/PC Gamer's Everquest history: https://www.pcgamer.com/breaking-the-internet-the-story-of-everquest-the-mmo-that-changed-everything/Dreamcast online functionality and Sega.net history (with links to similar pages for PS2, GameCube etc. at the bottom): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcast_online_functionality Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, a monthly bonus episode, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod

MACsec is a protocol for encrypting Ethernet frames on a local (though not always local) network. Ethan Banks and Holly Metlitzky have an ELI5 (explain like I’m 5) discussion as to what exactly is MACsec and how it differs from IPsec. They talk about when and whether you need to implement MACsec with all the... Read more »

MACsec is a protocol for encrypting Ethernet frames on a local (though not always local) network. Ethan Banks and Holly Metlitzky have an ELI5 (explain like I’m 5) discussion as to what exactly is MACsec and how it differs from IPsec. They talk about when and whether you need to implement MACsec with all the... Read more »

Before Angry Audio, Michael “Catfish” Dosch helped redefine how audio moves through radio stations. In this episode, Catfish joins Kirk to revisit the early 2000s when he, Steve Church, and a small development team in Riga, Latvia, built the world’s first practical Audio over IP system — Livewire. From his PR&E console-design roots to creating the Telos SmartSurface and the first Livewire mixing engine, Catfish shares behind-the-scenes stories, engineering breakthroughs, and lessons that changed broadcast infrastructure forever. It’s a fascinating trip back to the dawn of AoIP — where analog met Ethernet and radio changed for good. Guest:Michael “Catfish” Dosch - Product Creator and Owner at Angry Audio Show Notes:Introduction to Livewire+ - web article & link to PDF book on LivewireInformation about Steve Church, who led the development of Livewire Audio over IP Host:Kirk Harnack, The Telos Alliance, Delta Radio, Star94.3, South Seas, & Akamai BroadcastingFollow TWiRT on Twitter and on Facebook - and see all the videos on YouTube.TWiRT is brought to you by:Broadcasters General Store, with outstanding service, saving, and support. Online at BGS.cc. Broadcast Bionics - making radio smarter with Bionic Studio, visual radio, and social media tools at Bionic.radio.Aiir, providing PlayoutONE radio automation, and other advanced solutions for audience engagement.Angry Audio and the new Rave analog audio mixing console. The new MaxxKonnect Broadcast U.192 MPX USB Soundcard - The first purpose-built broadcast-quality USB sound card with native MPX output. Subscribe to Audio:iTunesRSSStitcherTuneInSubscribe to Video:iTunesRSSYouTube

Before Angry Audio, Michael “Catfish” Dosch helped redefine how audio moves through radio stations. In this episode, Catfish joins Kirk to revisit the early 2000s when he, Steve Church, and a small development team in Riga, Latvia, built the world's first practical Audio over IP system — Livewire. From his PR&E console-design roots to creating the Telos SmartSurface and the first Livewire mixing engine, Catfish shares behind-the-scenes stories, engineering breakthroughs, and lessons that changed broadcast infrastructure forever. It's a fascinating trip back to the dawn of AoIP — where analog met Ethernet and radio changed for good.

Take a Network Break! Companies spying on…I mean, monitoring…their employees via software called WorkExaminer should be aware of a login bypass that needs to be locked down. On the news front, we opine on whether it’s worth trying to design your way around AWS outages, and speculate on the prospects of a new Ethernet switch... Read more »

Take a Network Break! Companies spying on…I mean, monitoring…their employees via software called WorkExaminer should be aware of a login bypass that needs to be locked down. On the news front, we opine on whether it’s worth trying to design your way around AWS outages, and speculate on the prospects of a new Ethernet switch... Read more »

Take a Network Break! Companies spying on…I mean, monitoring…their employees via software called WorkExaminer should be aware of a login bypass that needs to be locked down. On the news front, we opine on whether it’s worth trying to design your way around AWS outages, and speculate on the prospects of a new Ethernet switch... Read more »

A wireless-first office is a sensible goal these days when most laptops don’t have an Ethernet port and lots of devices use Wi-Fi. Wireless and network architect Phil Sosaya led the transition to wireless-first offices at sites across the globe. He details his design approach, including why he doesn’t bother with site survey software. He... Read more »

A wireless-first office is a sensible goal these days when most laptops don’t have an Ethernet port and lots of devices use Wi-Fi. Wireless and network architect Phil Sosaya led the transition to wireless-first offices at sites across the globe. He details his design approach, including why he doesn’t bother with site survey software. He... Read more »

In this episode of Cisco Champion Radio, we dive into the future of meeting room technology and the innovations reshaping hybrid collaboration. From the shift to AV over IP and the power of Cisco Vision PTZ to the AI-driven features in RoomOS 26, Cisco is redefining what's possible in modern meeting spaces. Discover how AI enhances audio and video experiences, how Control Hub provides actionable insights into device health and workspace usage, and how advancements like Power over Ethernet and auto camera modes make meetings more seamless and immersive. We'll also explore how simplifying installation, improving interoperability, and enabling smarter device discoverability are transforming large-scale meeting room deployments. Whether you're building smarter environments or optimizing hybrid work experiences, this conversation highlights the breakthroughs driving clarity, flexibility, and impact in every meeting. Resources https://www.webex.com https://www.webex.com/us/en/devices/room-devices.html Cisco guest Rich Bayes, Sr. Director of Product Management, Cisco Cisco Champion hosts Amr Nasher, Founder/CEO, Twaasol Jason Dave, Infrastructure and Security Director, AbelsonTaylor Rickey Keith, Vertical Systems Engineer, World Wide Technology Sijbren Beukenkamp, Director/Owner, 3Corners Moderator Danielle Carter, Customer Voices and Cisco Champion Program

Check out last week's video on ANET, AVGO, & Nvidia: https://youtu.be/FYBaX9tqWAAAstera Labs and its peer Credo Technology Group is pulling back substantially from recent all-time highs. We dive into the narrative about what's causing the drop—including new product announcements from competitors like Broadcom and Nvidia—and explain the more fundamental reason for the recent volatility: statistics and a hefty valuation.Astera Labs is a fabless chip designer. Its original product was the PCIe re-timer (a chip that recovers and retransmits degraded data signals in a data center) but has since expanded into fabric switches, memory controllers, and Ethernet smart cable modules.Despite incredible triple-digit year-over-year revenue increases and a flip to profitability with a massive 69% free cash flow margin in Q2 2025, the market expects growth and margins to moderate. Learn why a current 60× Price-to-Sales ratio for a hardware business is a "hefty valuation" and what this means for investors.Join us on Discord with Semiconductor Insider, sign up on our website: www.chipstockinvestor.com/membershipSupercharge your analysis with AI! Get 15% of your membership with our special link here: https://fiscal.ai/csi/Sign Up For Our Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/b1228c12f284/sign-up-landing-page-short-formIf you found this video useful, please make sure to like and subscribe!*********************************************************Affiliate links that are sprinkled in throughout this video. If something catches your eye and you decide to buy it, we might earn a little coffee money. Thanks for helping us (Kasey) fuel our caffeine addiction!Content in this video is for general information or entertainment only and is not specific or individual investment advice. Forecasts and information presented may not develop as predicted and there is no guarantee any strategies presented will be successful. All investing involves risk, and you could lose some or all of your principal.Timestamps:[00:00] Introduction: Astera Labs Stock is Crashing[01:36] What Astera Labs Does (PCIE Re-timers & More)[03:15] Astera's Competitors: Broadcom, Nvidia, and the 'Narrative'[04:08] The Fundamental Reason for the Crash: Statistics and Volatility[04:47] A Growth and Profitability Story: Triple-Digit Revenue & Free Cash Flow[06:40] Why Growth Will Moderate in H2 2025 and 2026[07:07] The Valuation Problem: High Price-to-Sales for a Cyclical Business[08:58] Final Thoughts: Should You Panic? #asteralabs #ALABstock #dataenters #aidatacenter #semiconductors #chips #investing #stocks #finance #financeeducation #silicon #artificialintelligence #ai #financeeducation #chipstocks #finance #stocks #investing #investor #financeeducation #stockmarket #chipstockinvestor #fablesschipdesign #chipmanufacturing #semiconductorstocks Nick and Kasey own shares of Credo, Broadcom, Nvidia

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I received an email from Frank K4FMH asking me about an idea I'd worked on some time ago, namely the notion that I might monitor solar flux at home using a software defined radio. At the time I was attempting to get some software running on my PlutoSDR and got nowhere fast. Before I continue, a PlutoSDR, or more formally an ADALM Pluto Active Learning Module by Analog Devices, is both a computer and a software defined radio receiver and transmitter in a cute little blue box. I've talked about this device before. It's an open design, which means that both the software and hardware are documented and available straight from the manufacturer. Out of the box it covers 325 MHz to 3.8 GHz. You can connect to a PlutoSDR using USB or via the network, wireless or Ethernet, though I will mention that neither of those last two is currently working for me, but more on that later. Encouraged by Frank's email, I set out to explore further and came across a 2019 European GNU Radio days workshop, which discussed some of the tools that are available for the PlutoSDR, accompanied by two PDF documents walking you through the experience. One comment around why the PlutoSDR uses networking as one of the connectivity options spoke to me. From a usability perspective, networking makes it easier to access the PlutoSDR from a virtual machine, since most of the time that already has network connectivity, whereas USB often requires drivers. As you might recall, network connectivity is one of the many things that I'm trying to achieve with a project that I'm calling Bald Yak, since by the time we're done, there's not going to be much hair left from all the Yak Shaving. The Bald Yak project aims to create a modular, bidirectional and distributed signal processing and control system that leverages GNU Radio. As a result, I set about trying to actually walk myself through those PDF tutorials .. and got stuck on the first sentence on the first page, which helpfully states: "The necessary prerequisites have been installed on the local lab machine." It went on to supply a link to a page with instructions on how to acquire those very same prerequisites. Two days later, after much trial and error, I can now report that I too have these installed and because I cannot help myself, I made it into a Docker container and published this on my VK6FLAB GitHub page. To put it mildly, there's a few moving parts and plenty of gotchas. As an aside, if you think that installing Docker is harder than installing these tools, I have some news for you .. trust me .. by a long shot .. it's not. Right now I'm working on writing the documentation that accompanies this project such that you can actually use it without needing to bang your head against the desk in frustration. Mind you, the documentation part of this is non-trivial. For reasons I don't yet understand, my Pluto does not want to talk to the network directly over either WiFi or Ethernet, and connecting over USB through a virtual machine inside a Docker container is giving me headaches, so right now I'm connected across the network to a Raspberry Pi that's physically connected to the Pluto. As a result, I can now use the tools inside my Docker container, connected to the Pluto through the Pi and if you're curious, 'iiod' is the tool to make that happen .. more documentation. At this point you might well ask, why bother? This is a fair question. Let me see if I can give you an answer that will satisfy. Monitoring solar flux typically occurs at 2.8 GHz, which is outside the range of RTL-SDR dongles which top out at about 1.7 GHz. For the PlutoSDR however, it's almost perfectly within the standard frequency range. One of the tools that is introduced by the talk is an application called 'iio-scope', which as the name suggests, is an oscilloscope for 'iio' or Industrial I/O devices, of which the PlutoSDR is one. As an aside, the accelerometer in your laptop, the battery voltage, the CPU temperatures, fans, and plenty of others, are all 'iio' devices that you can look at with various tools. So, once I've finished the tutorials, I suspect that I will understand a little better how some of the various parts of the PlutoSDR hang together, and I can set it up to monitor 2.8 GHz. Of course, that's only step one, the next step is to make a Raspberry Pi record the power levels over time, better still, record it on the PlutoSDR itself, and see if we can actually notice any change .. without requiring anything fancy like a special antenna, some massive filters, a special mount and all the other fun and games that no doubt will reveal themselves in good time. It also means that, if I got this right, I have the beginnings of the bits needed to get the PlutoSDR to talk to GNU Radio. Why? Because I can, and because Frank asked, also Yak Shaving. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

The announcement that NVIDIA's Spectrum X Ethernet is being used by Meta and Oracle has caused concern to investors regarding other networking companies. But should investors really freak out about this new competition? We break down what Spectrum X is—NVIDIA's open-standards Ethernet system that competes with companies like Arista Networks. We also differentiate it from NVIDIA's proprietary AI training technology, Quantum X InfiniBand.Discover the powerful counter-narrative: the strong partnership between Arista and Broadcom. They are working together on Ethernet-based XPU systems for hyperscalers. Broadcom has secured a massive $110 billion backlog and added new customers, including OpenAI, for these XPU-based computing racks.With the market for AI networking and inference growing into a tidal wave, we explore whether there is plenty of new business to go around for Arista and Broadcom.Join us on Discord with Semiconductor Insider, sign up on our website: www.chipstockinvestor.com/membershipSupercharge your analysis with AI! Get 15% of your membership with our special link here: https://fiscal.ai/csi/Sign Up For Our Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/b1228c12f284/sign-up-landing-page-short-formIf you found this video useful, please make sure to like and subscribe!*********************************************************Affiliate links that are sprinkled in throughout this video. If something catches your eye and you decide to buy it, we might earn a little coffee money. Thanks for helping us (Kasey) fuel our caffeine addiction!Content in this video is for general information or entertainment only and is not specific or individual investment advice. Forecasts and information presented may not develop as predicted and there is no guarantee any strategies presented will be successful. All investing involves risk, and you could lose some or all of your principal.#Nvidia #AristaNetworks #Broadcom #NVDA #ANET #AVGO #Meta #Oracle #OpenAI #SpectrumX #InfiniBand #QuantumX #Ethernet #Networking #AIInference #XPU #Tomahawk#AINetworking #DataCenter #Hyperscaler #AINick and Kasey own shares of Nvidia, Broadcom, and Arista Networks

professorjrod@gmail.comWhat if your “all-in-one” router is doing too much—and your Wi‑Fi “speed” isn't the real bottleneck? We pull back the rack door and trace the digital bloodstream from SOHO setups to enterprise backbones, translating jargon into choices you can actually make. Starting with LANs, WANs, WLANs, and SANs, we map how scope changes design, cost, and risk, then contrast the convenience of a home gateway with the clarity of dedicated roles—routers, switches, firewalls, and load balancers—working like a well-tuned orchestra.We get tactile with the gear: NICs and their 48‑bit MAC addresses, patch panels that keep closets sane, and switches that forward with CAM tables instead of shouting like hubs. You'll hear where managed switches earn their IP address (management only), why VLANs and QoS matter, and how Power over Ethernet (802.3af/at/bt) cuts clutter while powering VoIP phones, APs, and cameras with fewer failure points. From copper categories (Cat6/6A) and clean terminations to testers, toners, and taps, we highlight the unglamorous steps that prevent the worst outages.Then we cut the cord. We chart Wi‑Fi's arc—802.11a/b/g to n, ac, and 6/6E—clarifying bands, channels, MIMO, and OFDMA so your network stops fighting itself. We talk survey tools, interference traps, and when to steer clients to the right lanes. Fiber gets its due as the distance champion—single‑mode for long haul, multi‑mode for shorter runs—with connector gotchas that can burn hours. And because connectivity is more than Wi‑Fi, we touch Bluetooth peripherals, RFID access, NFC payments, and long‑range links that fill gaps where cables can't go.To anchor the learning, we run quick cert‑style questions—switches and MACs, routers and IPs, PoE's true advantage, and Wi‑Fi 5's 5 GHz focus—so you can test yourself in real time. Whether you're building a home lab, prepping for CompTIA, or planning an upgrade at work, you'll leave with practical mental models and checklists you can use today. If this helped you think a layer deeper, follow, share with a friend who's studying, and drop a review with your biggest networking win or question—what should we unpack next?Support the showIf you want to help me with my research please e-mail me.Professorjrod@gmail.comIf you want to join my question/answer zoom class e-mail me at Professorjrod@gmail.comArt By Sarah/DesmondMusic by Joakim KarudLittle chacha ProductionsJuan Rodriguez can be reached atTikTok @ProfessorJrodProfessorJRod@gmail.com@Prof_JRodInstagram ProfessorJRod

Summary In Episode 390 of In Touch With iOS, host Dave Ginsburg is joined by Jill McKinley, Marty Jencius, Jeff Gamet, Eric Bolden, and Ben Roethig to tackle Apple's latest updates with a mix of analysis and humor. The panel begins with VisionOS 26.1 beta 2, highlighting improved game controller responsiveness and Apple's new immersive films—from Hawaii's volcanoes to Maine's autumn colors. Marty jokes Apple just used the Photos app's magic wand to turn summer into fall, while the group teases about running out of U.S. states to film. They also discuss the quirky Hover strap accessory that “flips up like old-man sunglasses” with ad copy quoting “When a problem comes along, you must flip it.” iOS 26.1 beta 2 gets attention for bigger alarm buttons, a snooze/stop redesign, and expanded Apple Intelligence languages. On iPad, the return of Slide Over sparks relief, while microphone gain control earns praise for podcasters. Apple's Fitness app adds custom workouts, and AirPods Pro 3 receive a firmware update. Marty shares a hilarious inflight story: the new seal was so tight his ears went “poppity, poppity, poppity” during descent. The crew explores iPhone 17's USB-C capabilities—charging AirPods, external displays, Ethernet, even other iPhones. Jeff jokes about using USB-C mics for bird-watching apps, while Eric tests charging his Apple Watch directly from the iPhone. Other highlights: Amazon Prime splurges (camera arms, Stream Decks, car jumpers, and audio gear). Tag Heuer's $1,600 Connected E5 smartwatch, now iPhone-certified—“a $1,600 dongle for your wrist.” Apple's Colorado outdoor influencer event (hiking + AirPods demos). Cosmic Orange skins from Dbrand, prompting jokes about spray-tanning MacBooks or eating Cheetos near your iPhone. Liquid Glass design spreading to more Apple apps. CarPlay tensions: Rivian's refusal, Aston Martin as the lone CarPlay Ultra supporter, and frustration over automakers backtracking. Jeff warns CarPlay Ultra might never gain widespread adoption unless Apple compromises. The panel closes with laughs about hidden iPhone call history (“your spouse's attorney already knows”), cosmic orange hunting gear, and CarPlay Ultra being more elusive than a lottery win. Topics and Links In Touch With Vision Pro this week.  visionOS 26.1 Beta 2 Release Notes | Apple Developer Documentation Dave's review. Apple releases new ‘Elevated' episode for Apple Vision Pro - 9to5Mac Marty found a new headset extension call the Hover headset. https://hoverheadset.com/?country=US Beta this week.  iOS 26.1 Beta 2 was released this week. iOS 26.1 beta 2 now available iPadOS 26.1 beta 2 available now, here's what to expect iPadOS 26.1 Beta 2 Reintroduces Slide Over Multitasking watchOS 26.1 beta 2 rolling out now for Apple Watch users tvOS 26.1 beta 2 now available for Apple TV 4K  Apple Seeds Second Betas of iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1, macOS Tahoe 26.1 and More Apple Seeds Second Public Betas of iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1 and macOS Tahoe 26.1 Everything New in iOS 26.1 Beta 2 Apple Fixes Alarms in iOS 26.1 5+ New Features Your iPhone Will Get in iOS 26.1 Apple Releases New Firmware for AirPods Pro 3, AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4 What can I plug into my iPhone 17 USB-C port? AirPods Pro 3 Experience on Plane - Marty

Send us a textWe explore how field innovation keeps outrunning the standards, why extended copper links beyond 100 meters are gaining momentum, and what TIA's new TSB could mean for testing, warranties, and contracts. We share practical steps for techs, PMs, and designers to push the edge without getting burned.• standards lag and field innovation tension • permanent link versus channel clarified • certification vs qualification and warranty conflict • extended-distance solutions and GameChanger disruption • TIA TR-42.7 call for interest for TSB 5073 • tester configuration for beyond-100m evaluations • documentation and manufacturer sign-off practices • PM risk, contracts, and stakeholder education • designer estimating, thermal and alien crosstalk margins • getting involved in committees and sharing empirical dataIf you're watching this show on YouTube, would you mind hitting the subscribe button and that bell button to be notified when new content is being produced? If you're listening to us on one of the audio podcast platforms, would you mind leaving us a five-star rating? While this show is free and will always remain free, if you find value in this content, would you mind clicking on that QR button right there? You can buy me a cup of coffee. You can even become a monthly contributor to this podcast. Just all and you can even buy Let's Talk Cabling t-shirts. Join the community today at LowVoltagenation.com or jump into the conversation at our Facebook group. Email Chuck at advertising at letstalkcabling.com and let's connect your brand to the right audience today. Visit GoFar on LinkedIn or click on the link in the description below. Go subscribe to Cable Installation and Maintenance Magazine right now before you forget.Support the showKnowledge is power! Make sure to stop by the webpage to buy me a cup of coffee or support the show at https://linktr.ee/letstalkcabling . Also if you would like to be a guest on the show or have a topic for discussion send me an email at chuck@letstalkcabling.com Chuck Bowser RCDD TECH#CBRCDD #RCDD

The network plays a key role in AI model and inference training. On today's Tech Bytes podcast, sponsored by Nokia, we talk about why you need a high-performance network for AI training workloads, essential technologies such as RoCE v2 and others that make Ethernet suitable for scale-out networking, the role of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium... Read more »

The network plays a key role in AI model and inference training. On today's Tech Bytes podcast, sponsored by Nokia, we talk about why you need a high-performance network for AI training workloads, essential technologies such as RoCE v2 and others that make Ethernet suitable for scale-out networking, the role of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium... Read more »

Netzwerkkameras haben ein Grundstück im Blick und melden Auffälligkeiten per App – so die Theorie. Doch hilft Videoüberwachung wirklich gegen Einbrecher? Es gibt WLAN-Kameras für drinnen oder draußen, mit oder ohne Stromanschluss und mit Cloud-Anbindung oder Speicherung auf Micro-SD-Karte, in unauffällig oder abschreckend: Das Angebot an Videoüberwachungssystemen für den Heimbedarf ist groß. Menschen wollen sich mit Kameras gegen Einbrüche schützen, doch das richtige System für den eigenen Fall zu finden, ist nicht leicht. Für Ausgabe 21/2025 haben c't-Redakteur Christof Windeck und c't-Autor Berti Kolbow-Lehradt gemeinsam mit weiteren Kolleginnen und Kollegen einen Leitfaden zum Thema zusammengetragen. Im c't uplink sprechen sie darüber, was Videoüberwachung bringen und was dabei schieflaufen kann, sie umreißen, wozu die Polizei rät und was rechtlich überhaupt erlaubt ist. Außerdem geben sie Tipps, wie man die richtige Kamera für sich findet. ► Die besprochene Artikelstrecke zum Thema Videoüberwachung gegen Einbrecher in c't 21/2025 (Paywall): https://www.heise.de/select/ct/2025/21/2515714333394918039

Send us a textWe pick up the live stream after a rough month and dive straight into the most asked questions on getting into limited energy: tools, licenses, certifications, first-day tactics, site safety, career ladders, and the real work behind the title. Along the way, we flag code changes for 2026, unravel myths about sprinklers, and share practical tips to stand out from day one.• limited energy rebrand, PBB acronym, upcoming episodes on 2026 code and extended Ethernet• what counts as low voltage across structured cabling, access control, DAS, fire alarm, fiber• PoE beyond access points, smart buildings, IoT as growth paths• licensing differences for workers vs companies, union considerations• when to buy tools, buy once buy right, what basics to expect• BICSI Tech prep, FiberU.org, test-only pitfalls, cost reality• certifications vs on-the-job learning, signaling commitment• entry roles, quality checks, documenting and communicating• daily life: early starts, PPE, lifts, crawlspaces, teamwork with other trades• career ladder from helper to PM to leadership, specialization options• construction site rules and culture, safety orientations, logistics• mistakes to avoid: not listening, rushing, poor labeling, cable protection• sprinkler pipe code reminder: nothing touches, compliance first• first-day playbook: arrive early, ask questions, write notes, quality before speedSupport the showKnowledge is power! Make sure to stop by the webpage to buy me a cup of coffee or support the show at https://linktr.ee/letstalkcabling . Also if you would like to be a guest on the show or have a topic for discussion send me an email at chuck@letstalkcabling.com Chuck Bowser RCDD TECH#CBRCDD #RCDD

On this episode of the Rewind show we go back to September 30th 2011 where we read your emails, look at a news story or two, and review an HDMI over ethernet extender.  

The group discussed various aspects of the music and entertainment industry, including recent performances, technical challenges, and historical experiences working with famous musicians. They explored topics such as audio equipment, mixing techniques, and the evolution of live sound production, while sharing personal anecdotes and industry insights. The conversation concluded with discussions about upcoming events, the changing landscape of audio technology, and the logistics of large-scale music productions.Next stepsThe next steps section is empty, so there are no action items to summarize and rank.SummaryMusicians' Experiences and PerformancesThe group discussed various topics, including Wayne Sims's recent work with the Blues Roadshow, which involved eight guitar players performing simultaneously. They also talked about Barry Manilow's ongoing career at age 82 and his energetic performances. The conversation shifted to past experiences working with famous musicians, with Bruce and Wayne sharing stories about difficult encounters with drummers like Buddy Rich. The group also briefly discussed a fundraising event they had worked on together in the past.Challenges of Celebrity and MediaThe group discussed the challenges faced by celebrities, particularly child stars, and how fame can affect their demeanor and careers. They also talked about audio setup issues and technical adjustments for a live stream. The conversation briefly touched on the situation with Jimmy Kimmel and the role of politics in late-night talk shows, but Jan stopped the discussion before it could become too political. The conversation ended with a brief discussion about the shift towards streaming media and its impact on traditional broadcast ratings.Music Industry and Concert TrendsThe group discussed various topics including concert ticket prices, the changing music industry, and upcoming tours. Ken shared his experience attending Paul McCartney's concert in Las Vegas, while Curt explained his involvement in setting up equipment for The Who's tour. The conversation touched on the high costs of concert productions and the shift in the music industry from album sales to live performances for revenue. Jan mentioned a TikTok prediction of the world ending by September, which led to some lighthearted banter. Fred announced he would be away for a few weeks due to travel. The group also briefly discussed a potential concert by a band named Hotel California in Canada, which David Dansky clarified was not his band.Music Copyright and Tech UpdatesThe group discussed copyright issues, particularly regarding the Eagles' strict enforcement of their music rights, with Jan sharing a story about a company that could only use "Hotel California" in Japan due to licensing restrictions. Christopher explained the concept of fair use, noting that news outlets can use up to 7-8 seconds of music without permission, while Ken inquired about the rules for live performances. The conversation then shifted to technical matters, with Curt seeking advice about digital whiteboards for his shop, and Jan recommending Office Hours Global as a resource. The conversation ended with Christopher providing an update on the Pacific Palisades fire situation, noting that the permit process was taking longer than usual and land prices had dropped by 25-30% in the area.Cedar vs. Waves Noise ReductionThe group discussed noise reduction equipment, comparing the Waves WNS plugin to Cedar audio devices. Wayne explained that while the WNS is less expensive at $35, it doesn't work as well as the Cedar units, which are more expensive but offer better customization with 6 frequency bands. Bruce shared that a 2-channel Cedar unit cost around $4,000 several years ago, while Denis noted that a 2-channel 5045 unit currently costs $2,000. The discussion concluded with Denis sharing information about a DNS 8-channel Cedar unit priced at around $7,000 Canadian.Audio Technology Evolution and SolutionsThe group discussed the evolution of audio technology, with Bruce sharing his experience transitioning from analog to digital consoles and the challenges of managing multiple audio sources in corporate events. Wayne demonstrated a more cost-effective alternative to the Cedar audio noise suppressor unit, and the conversation touched on the practicalities of using EtherCon connectors and Ethernet cables in live sound applications. The discussion concluded with recommendations for adapter solutions to handle different cable types and connector standards in various audio systems.Digital vs Analog Mixing InsightsThe group discussed the differences between analog and digital mixers, with Wayne emphasizing the need for proactive thinking in digital mixing rather than reactive adjustments. Bruce shared his technique of using "home buttons" on digital consoles to navigate back to familiar settings, while Denis recounted a humorous story about a water incident at the Montreal Jazz Festival that highlighted the complexity of digital mixing. The conversation concluded with Bruce and Wayne exchanging stories about their experiences with digital consoles, including a water damage incident at a Phoenix event where Bruce was able to recover the setup using a saved configuration on a thumb drive.LCR Audio Mixing TechniquesThe group discussed mixing techniques for left-center-right (LCR) audio systems in theaters. Bruce inquired about optimal ways to pan vocals and instruments, leading to a discussion about placing vocals in the center and panning band members to the stereo sides. Denis explained the use of a "divergence" feature on LCR consoles to control how much of the center signal goes to the left and right channels. The conversation also covered the challenges of using center clusters, including coverage issues and the need for proper mixing techniques. Wayne Sims shared an experience using a matrixed LCR setup in a theater in Port Macquarie, which resulted in a seamless audio experience during a spoken word performance.Isolation Transformers in Audio SystemsThe group discussed the importance of isolation transformers in audio systems, particularly during the transition from analog to digital in the late 90s. Wayne Sims shared his experience with creating audio loops and the challenges of working without isolation transformers, while Bruce and Wayne Pierce highlighted the effectiveness of carrying heavy isolation transformers to ensure clean power for audio and lighting systems. Denis inquired about transformers with variable R or Q factors, which Wayne and Wayne Pierce researched, finding that these factors relate to insulation and impedance, though the exact details were unclear. The conversation concluded with a lighthearted mention of the Pink Panther movies and a brief discussion about transformer taps and their function in adjusting output voltage.Music Production and Event PlanningThe meeting participants discussed various topics, including WORLD Dream Day, upcoming events, and personal updates. Jan mentioned speaking with Sean, who expressed interest in participating in an unspecified activity and will follow up with Kurt. The group also talked about the logistics and scale of large music productions, with Joshua sharing experiences from recent concerts and events. Wayne Sims shared his thoughts on the increasing complexity and technology involved in modern live sound productions.Musicians' Tech Evolution and ChallengesJoshua shared his experience working with various bands and venues, highlighting how technology has changed the industry, making it easier for musicians to travel with minimal equipment. He discussed his recent show setup, including challenges with lighting and sound equipment, and how he managed to deliver a successful performance despite some technical issues. The conversation...

Shawn Tierney meets up with Lauton Rushford of Endress+Hauser to learn about new innovations in Coriolis Flowmeter Technology in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 247 Show Notes: Special thanks to Endress+Hauser for sponsoring this episode so we could release it “ad free!” To learn about Endress+Hauser, and Coriolis Flowmeters, checkout the below links: Learn more about Endress+Hauser Learn more about flowmeter products Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated) Shawn Tierney (Host): Welcome back to the automation podcast. Shawn Tierney here from Insights and Automation, and I wanna thank you for tuning back in. This week on the show, I meet up with Lawton Rushford from Endress and Hauser to learn all about the latest innovations in Coriolis flow meters. And I also wanna thank Endress and Hauser for sponsoring this episode so I could bring it to you completely ad free. With that said, if you’re interested in learning about what’s the latest in technology used in Coriolis flow meters, I think you’ll enjoy this episode. I know I did. And with that, let’s go ahead and jump right into this week’s show. I wanna welcome to the show, Lawton from Endress and Hauser. Lawton, it’s great to have you on. This is the first time you’re on the show. We plus, we’ve had your company on before. But, Lawton, if you don’t mind, could you, before we jump into Coriolis flow meters, which is an extremely important technology in our industry, could you first introduce yourself to our audience? Lauton Rushford (E+H): Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. My name is Lawton Rushford. I am the flow product marketing manager here at Anderson Hauser, based in Greenwood, Indiana, which is about twenty minutes south of Indianapolis, Indiana at our, national headquarters, for Anderson Hauser. I’ve been with Anderson Hauser for seven years now, a whole bunch of different roles, but, for the last three years, I’ve been in this role, a flow marketing manager. Today, I I really wanted to highlight a couple of awesome innovations that we’ve had in Coriolis flow technology, over the last, we’ll see, about year or so, because I think there’s a lot of, use cases and a lot of awesome, insights we can get from from our Coriolis flow meters. And, yeah. So I guess we can we can kick it off. I did wanna highlight Anderson Hauser as the the manufacturer that I work for, and we have a history, a long history of, of innovation. And so I’m gonna kinda highlight that, initially, talk about what sort of portfolio we have currently with our Coriolis flow meters, and then talk about a couple of new cool things that that we have released over the last couple of couple of months. And then finish off with, what we call heartbeat technology. It’s our advanced diagnostic system in all of our flow meters and all of our products across the board. It started with flow. So I think there’s a lot of you cool use cases, and I’ll I’ll highlight a couple of those as well. And then, of course, Shawn is the the audience here. Anytime there’s questions or anything, please feel free to to let me know, and I can I can try and address them as they come up? Shawn Tierney (Host): Sounds good. Yeah. Lauton Rushford (E+H): Awesome. Great. So I guess our first Coriolis meter that we introduced into the market was back in, 1986. So it’s been some time. As you can tell by the the slide here, there’s a lot of different designs of Coriolis flowmeters. There isn’t one right way to do it, but I think that the way that Anderson Houser has approached innovation is is pretty pretty awesome and pretty impressive. Everything from a single tube, design to a dual tube design, dual straight tube design versus a dual bent tube design. There are a lot of different types of Coriolis meters out on the market, and we’ll talk about a couple of, differentiators that we that, Anderson Hauser has on, on some products that we’ve recently released. Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, just by looking at the, the slide here, the one that, like, really attracts my eye is the ProMASS. That’s the one that I I think I’ve seen the most in the field. Lauton Rushford (E+H): Yep. Yep. Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, walking around the different plants, and, that was launched in 1998. So that’s been out for quite some time. So just wanted to throw that out there for those listening. That may be the one you’ve seen the most of as in your in your travels. Lauton Rushford (E+H): Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. There’s a lot of a lot of ProMasses out there. Our endpoint was the first one, but, shortly after that, we released our ProMasses. And we’ve just been you know, we’ve we’ve had a lot of iterations, which I think is also part of the impressive thing in terms of innovation that Anderson Hauser continues to to to, do in terms of research and development on that. And the one that I always think about is is the the one that kinda looks like a UFO. That is our ProMASS X. It’s a high capacity, large diameter, Coriolis meter with four tubes in there. So it’s kind of bent two separate sys systems and then put together in one, large device, and I always I always think that one’s cool because it kinda looks like a like something out of Star Wars or something. Yep. Yep. So, yep, so I I think that’s that’s really, really cool. There’s a lot of new things that we’ve released, and this is, I mean, this is a short timeline of of some of the innovations that we have. But, you know, over the last year or so, we’ve we’ve definitely invested a little bit more, into specific applications, and that kind of leads us into our entire portfolio of Coriolis flow meters. We have 17 different sensors. So that is not a normal thing in the industry. I I think that to some people, it it can be confusing if you’re looking at them all at the same time, a little overwhelming. But I I think it’s really important that I that I kind of talk about this in terms of every application that we look at. We’re not trying to put one flow meter into that application. We’re taking the application and the requirements of that application and designing a device that’s meant for it. So, in certain applications, you may not have to choose between 17 different sensors. You really have probably two or three that you’re trying to to decide between and weigh, both pressure drop, accuracy, density specifications, things like that that that will ultimately give you the the best meter for that application. But we we don’t wanna take a an approach of trying to, cram a a sensor into an application. We would prefer to design the sensor in and meant for certain applications. So it does I guess there’s two questions on here. Why so many sensors? Well, because we wanna design our our sensors for specific applications. There’s a lot of different applications out there. Doesn’t that make it confusing? Well, of course, it makes it a little confusing if you’re looking at it from from the high level 17 different sensors. But, every application that we look at, we’re we’re trying to, there’s a lot of different requirements of of applications in oil and gas versus life sciences, and we wanted to design sensors that fit the market and fit the application that they’re supposed to go into. And in general, all of them work the exact same way. As a as a general rule of thumb, your Coriolis flow meter measurements are mass flow, density, and temperature as a as a starting point. We’ll talk about a couple of features that we’ve started adding to some of our flow meters that that, create more of a multivariable device. Instead of just measuring those three things, we can add viscosity or, we can do other things or concentration, things like that, with the meters. But in general, the mass flow is is using, the phase shift between your inlet and outlet pickup coils and taking that into account to relate it directly to the amount of mass that’s within those tubes. And then similarly, as the tubes are oscillating, a more dense fluid is going to have a lower resonant frequency. And based around resonant frequencies, we can understand how dense the fluid is inside of the, inside of those flow tubes. And then we also have on every single one of our Coriolis flow meters, PT 1,000, temperature probe that’s attached directly to the inside of the, the outside of the tube within the secondary containment, for additional values, additional multivariable, use uses. I mean, for for example, on a on a concentration measurement, really what you’re using is density and temperature in conjunction, to relate that to a concentration. So that’s something that that we would that that would add to the use cases for for a a Coriolis flow meter. And one of the the current biggest innovations that we’ve had recently is with our our ProMaths queue. The ProMaths queue is a a little bit of a different design than some of the other ProMasses that you may have seen on on some previous slides. We actually, have a little bit, longer tube that’s, has a more harsher bend in it. Mhmm. The reason for that is because what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to oscillate these two sensors or these two flow tubes at two at the same frequency, but in two different modes. So in multiple frequencies, at the same time. So, essentially, what we’re doing is our our historic use of a a pro mass meter is kind of in that that top visual where we’re oscillating in one frequency, and one one specific frequency depending on the fluid that’s going through it. And then on the at the bottom, we show an additional mode of oscillation, so an additional frequency that we’re oscillating at that gives us additional information for, specifically challenging applications. So in in in a lot of these cases, what we what we see in most of these applications is, a lot of whipped products, purposeful entrainment of of air into into, applications. So cement in general, let’s say, as an example, we can start there. Well cement, you’re it’s aerated all the time. So as you are are moving that cement around, air pockets can be filled in inside of that cement and can cause challenges as most things with air cause challenges, especially as as you’re moving into a multiphase fluid. Anytime you have one or more than one fluid phase within the the the meter, the meter can is it’s it’s almost like, the meter is kind of confused. It it’s not really sure what it’s supposed to be reading and what it is reading and why it’s reading that. So with with multi frequency technology, we can actually compensate internally compensate because we’re oscillating in two modes. We can compensate for the air that’s present and give a, a corrected mass flow and a corrected, density. So Right. A lot of milk milk applications, cream cheese, well cement, anything like that. Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s awesome. Could you back up one slide for a second? Sure. Lauton Rushford (E+H): Sure. Shawn Tierney (Host): I just I find this so interesting, but I I know that the audience, not everybody’s on the same page. So I think this would be a great slide. Could you just, like, vary what the basic the basic operation of a Coriolis flow meter is? Okay. We know we’re trying to measure typically the flow rate, the flow rate. Right? And, you know, there’s all these variables that go into it. But could you really just, you know, give us the the introductory, you know, how does this thing work? Lauton Rushford (E+H): Sure. So there are exciters, if if you will, or vibrating electronics that’s going to oscillate those flow tubes. Shawn Tierney (Host): Okay. Lauton Rushford (E+H): And they’re gonna if there’s no flow in it, the oscillation is going to basically be, very in line, in sync. Your tubes are going to move out and then move in. And, again, it’s these are a little exaggerated in terms of videos, but the actual tubes will will start vibrating, almost like a tuning fork or you hit a wine glass on the side of a table and you get the vibration out of the wine glass. That’s kind of the same vibration that’s happening. And now as we start flowing product through those flow tubes, we get these these waves that are created. And the inlet and outlet pickup coil are now not in sync, meaning that we’re using the Coriolis force or we’re essentially looking at a phase shift as those tubes start to create those waves, where where there’s a time difference between the inlet and the outlet pickup coil. And that time difference is ultimately what’s related to phase shift, which is ultimately what’s related to that mass flow that’s inside the tubes. Similarly, as we’re oscillating those tubes, if we have water going through that, those tubes, well, we know what the resonant frequency should be of water. We also know what the resonant frequency is of a more dense or a lighter, less dense fluid. So now we can start understanding what the density is specifically as well. So that’s where kind of the multivariable, measurements happen within the flow tube. But, essentially, all of it’s based around a time measurement. It’s all based around when does this, this pickup coil pick up this tube, and when does this pickup, outlet pickup coil pick up the the tube coming back. Yep. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And so we talked about the ProMASQ having two modes because when the liquids or, you know, like, the substance, like cement or dairy, you know, cream or whatnot, have a lot of ear in it, that could be a challenge. So you have this other mode. We also talked about having a, the temperature sensor thermocouple built in. Mhmm. Is is temperature always and I know I’m asking a lot of crazy questions here, but is temperature always a factor? Because I can see definitely products operate very differently than based on the temperature. Is temperature always a factor in, coming up with the calculation? Lauton Rushford (E+H): So, typically, temperature is going to affect not only the fluid. It’s also going to affect the properties of the tubes themselves. So that’s something that’s often overlooked. And and when when we’re when we’re looking at applications, yes, we care about what the the the temperature of the fluid is because, the density of that fluid may change. There may be more or less mass flow depending, on, how close a pump is. There’s a lot of installation effects as well. But, ultimately, the the as those tubes are oscillating, if you’re if the temperature is low enough or the temperature is high enough, those tubes are have the potential to move more or less Yeah. As you’re oscillating them. So that’s where temperature plays a really big factor, not only in in measuring temperature, that’s a great added value, but also in the, the thermal, properties of the actual tube’s material themselves. Shawn Tierney (Host): Thank you for taking my questions. I just find this interesting. Lauton Rushford (E+H): Yeah. Oh, that’s that’s great. That’s a great question. That is something that that isn’t really thought about, but, we always we always have to take that into account. And and that’s part of, ensuring that the the stated accuracy, their specifications of the device are met throughout the entire, temperature range of the meter’s specification. So if we know that we’re gonna be operating, this meter is rated for negative 40 degrees f to 300 degrees f, well, we have to make sure that we understand how the tubes will react throughout that entire range. And that’s that again goes back to that innovation that goes back to the research and development that goes into the design of these sensors. So, a lot of important things there. So with that, I guess there’s there’s another added value that that comes into play when, we talk about oscillating that Pro Mask Q at a, at two modes. There’s actually an additional effect that happens to the tubes, And as those tubes because of how long those tubes are, as the tubes start oscillating, at the end of their oscillation, at their maximum amplitude of oscillation, you get a slight twisting motion in the tubes themselves. And so we have a device that is called our ProMass I that directly measures, viscosity directly out of the meter. And that is using a similar, a similar technology in a torsional oscillation mode. Whereas the ProMAS Q, just by nature of design, actually has some slight twisting motions. So, you know, our our r and d g experts and geniuses over, over over overseas, they they came up with this idea. Well, why couldn’t we do a similar thing with our ProMask Q? Why couldn’t we look at how much shear we’re placing on the fluid or how much twisting we’re placing on the on the fluid and understand maybe a little bit more about the individual properties of that fluid that’s going through the meter? And that’s where the oscillation the the torsional oscillation or the rotational oscillation, of that that flow tube can give us a little bit more insight into the viscosity of the fluid itself. And so this is where kind of another innovation, which is on the ProMascue, the hydrocarbon viscosity monitoring. We do what’s called we stated it’s for hydrocarbon viscosity, and the reason for that is because hydrocarbons have a very known, viscosity profile across all different pressures and and temperatures. And so we can we can verify on water and ensure that the meter is going to react properly, and and maintain the accuracy that we stated it’s going to have. And, again, this is a monitoring point. It’s not necessarily a calibrated point. It is plus or minus 10% accuracy, which isn’t very high, but it’s it’s enough to where you can start seeing when you have the difference between a very heavy crude oil and water or a very light crude oil or, like, light hydrocarbon. And the repeatability is ultimately where where the the use case comes in. So this is one of the highlights that I wanted to to point out because I think not only on the monitoring side, it gives us more values, it gives us more information on on what’s happening inside the meter, without us having to open up the meter, and and or open up the the pipe and and look at it. So a couple of applications, typically you’re gonna see them both, in all parts of oil and gas, which is upstream, midstream, and downstream, all the way into, refining products. A lot of these applications, in in midstream, especially in pipelines, is going to be the addition of some sort of drag reducing agent. So we can understand as adding that as we start adding that drag reducing agent into pipelines, how much effect is it actually having? Are we changing the properties enough of the product, or is it, are we not changing it? Are we changing it too much? It gives us, more of a, a qualitative understanding of the product that’s going through the meter. So and, you know, I’d I’d mentioned earlier, you know, we do, a lot of industries, but, you know, I guess the two completely opposite industries would be something like oil and gas and, life sciences or pharmaceutical, And that kind of plays into this transition here into our, ProMASS U. This is our, is a relatively new product, that we’ve had out for less than a year at this point. But our ProMASS U is our single use Coriolis technology. In a lot of pharmaceutical applications, there’s a lot of challenges in terms of cleaning, in terms of making sure that there’s no risk of cross contamination. And the biggest thing with that is, the introduction of single use production. So taking cells, biology, all the way through to a, a marketed medicine or a product, but using all single use products. And that saves on risk for cross contamination, especially in large factories. And, it also actually does save some money because of the amount of chemicals and and cleaning that has to go on in a lot of these pharmaceutical companies. A single use technology kinda fits the need in in that industry very, very well. Shawn Tierney (Host): So what I’m looking at here is it looks like a a lab tabletop type device Yep. And the the u, right, the the the pipes is replaceable. So Yes. It looks like a cartridge where you would, like, you know, turn a lever. You could let’s say you ran product one and you ran that for a while and then you’re done. You would turn this lever, release the cartridge, pull it out, and those pipes don’t have to be cleaned. They can be disposed of. And now you put in your new one, and you can run a different product. And we all know, like, a few years ago, we all heard the horror stories of a pharmaceutical that makes two different batches of medicine, and it was like nightmares. Thank god. That never get out into the real world because only only god knows what would happen. So that’s that’s I like you can’t we can’t exclude that type of cross contamination just can’t happen in Yeah. The twenty first cent in the twenty first century. So but this this is so interesting. Is this c is this something that would be in a I’m just looking at such a nice looking desktop device. Would this be something that was only used in a lab or could it actually be used in a production line? Lauton Rushford (E+H): Yeah. So there’s there’s two versions. Okay. There is a tabletop, which is what you can kinda see on the screen where we have this chassis built around, the the there’s really three components in this. There’s a a transmitter that’s kind of sitting at the top there. There is a base unit, which is where the sensor goes into, that has all the electronics, and then you have your disposable sensor. So the sensor is where all your fluid is gonna be flowing through. Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm. Lauton Rushford (E+H): The base unit is doing all of the, manipulation on the tubes themselves. So we talked about how a Coriolis meter works or oscillating those tubes. The base unit is actually doing that, and then the transmitter is taking all of that raw data, understanding it all jumbled up, and giving it out a flow rate, a very accurate flow rate. And there’s two different versions of this. There is a test desktop version and a panel mount version. So the panel mount version would be, you know, in a skid of some sort. Mhmm. That would be permanent, but then the the single use cartridge would be pulled out, disposed of, and then a a new one would be replaced there. And and that’s kind of kind of what we’re gonna get to too in a little bit once we start seeing some of the challenges in this industry. So this industry really is is it’s not new, but it is in terms of process instrumentation. There’s not a lot of manufacturers out there who who have single use flow technologies. So there’s a challenge from our perspective as as the the manufacturer to try and meet all of the requirements of the industry, while providing a robust, accurate, reliable sensor for these applications. And so that’s where our r and d kind of, hit a hit a snag at at one point almost because they’re they’re so used to making robust products that last ten, twenty, thirty years in process. Now we have to look at a product that we want to also do all of those things, but also be disposed of. And so there’s there’s some challenges there. Similarly, there’s a challenge of of calibration in a lot of pharmaceutical plants because certain products require calibration before they’re even installed. Certain products require calibration before they’re installed and while on-site. And then, if there’s ever a replacement that goes in, there’s an additional calibration that might have to happen. And so what we wanted to do was take all of those constraints, all of those challenges, and try and check the boxes of all of them. And I think that’s kinda where our single use landed. There are still some, you know, some certain applications that are challenged, but they’re always gonna be a challenge, until there’s some innovation that comes out that that truly meets that need. But, I guess, in general, really, if if you look at a high level, it’s a half a percent accurate device. We have four different sizes of of sensors that can go into the same base unit. We have an eighth inch, a quarter inch, a half inch, and a one inch sensor that will go into this base unit. They all fit into the same base unit. So as we talked about it with an example, using product A, maybe you’re only flowing at 10 liters per minute, but then product b, you’re flowing at 75 liters per minute. Well, technically, those should probably be two different flow meters, but we can just change the different cartridges out, and and there’s no risk of of contamination, and there’s no need to change anything other than the sensor itself. It is gamma sterilizable, especially in pharmaceutical. That’s really important to make sure that there’s no contamination at all from anything in production, from any anybody’s hands getting on it or anything like that. We don’t do it as a manufacturer. We would kind of rely on our OEMs, on our, tube set manufacturers to actually put these skids together, and part of that package would be to gamma sterilize all of the fittings, all of the tubing, as well as as well as the the flow sensors. And then we also talked about the different the different designs that we have. It is stainless steel tubes, which is different, and it’s polycarbonate flow splitter. So if you see that purple part on the screen, where our tubing would come into, that is a plastic or a polycarbonate product. And then the tubes themselves where we’re actually performing the measurements is a stainless steel, three sixteen l, material, which is different because at when you think about single use, you think about plastic. You think about, bags that are plastic, bioreactors that are plastic, because they’re easy to throw away and they they’re inexpensive. But we felt like in order to meet all of those challenges and all of those, constraints in terms of, current, sensor designs, we felt like the most robust way to do that would be to use stainless steel. And we have a long history of of manufacturing stainless steel devices, and so this is just, another way that we could, show our our expertise in in in products and in especially in Coriolis meters. So there are, as I mentioned, three components. You have your base unit or your single, single use disposable sensor. Down at the bottom there, you have your base unit, which is again where all your electronics are, and then you have your, and then you have your transmitter. And there’s a cable going from the the transmitter to the the base unit. There’s a couple of things I want to highlight on the inside of what the meter is and how it what it looks like. The first thing and probably the most important is that barcode scanner. So every single one of these disposable flow tubes gets calibrated at our factory and then gets imprinted a QR code on the inside of the flow meter. And that QR code, that two d barcode scanner actually scans that information. So it can it can accurately pull in the calibration information. It can pull in the serial number of the tubes. It can pull in the line size of the tubes. It can pull in a lot of information related to those tubes. And then it can relay that back to the transmitter, and the transmitter can check to make sure everything seems functional. And that kind of falls into where our heartbeat technology, conversation may come in in in just a little bit. And then again, all the electronics are our sensor electronics boards, our, ISCM or our sensor electronics module, all is based inside that base unit, inside this very large not not very large, but a a very heavy bodied base unit to ensure stability, across the board. And so here’s an example of what that QR code kinda looks like on the on the backside of that that flow tube, and then another, look into kind of what the the the inside of the base unit looks like. You see coil inlet one, coil inlet two, or coil outlet two. Similarly to kind of what we talked about before, we really care about what’s hap what’s going on in between those tubes, in between those those two coils. And so we’re magnetically oscillating the, the Coriolis flow tubes inside at that back piece, that back, what is that? It’s like a gray type ceramic piece in the back, and that’s ultimately giving us giving us that oscillation that we’re looking for. And then our inlet and outlet, pickup coils are also magnetically coupled to to the sensors, and, we can detect very small changes in those at that oscillations those oscillations. So very very cool, very innovative. It’s a product that we’ve had out for a while in, a while, less than less than a year, but long enough. And there’s been a lot of interest in in the pharmaceutical space, especially as people are trying to save costs, go closer to maybe a personalized medicine approach, where there’s gonna be smaller, amounts of product going through, more expensive amount of product going through. Accuracy is gonna be the most important there. And so this is where, we kinda talk about a little bit more about how to maintain that data trail, that automated data trail from the cal the calibration in the factory all the way into production. And so in this case, what we what we’re looking at is, here’s the process of what would happen in in in a in a system. We would calibrate the tubes at our factory. The tubes would go to a tube set manufacturer. The tube set manufacturer puts all of these pieces together. They double bag them in a class seven ISO, ISO class seven environment. Super clean area, no risk of contamination there. And then just to be even more safe, they’re going to gamma sterilize it there. Then they’re going to bring it on-site where they have their skid created, and they’re gonna plug everything in. And then once they plug everything in and turn the entire skid on, they’re gonna, they’re gonna notice that on the flow meter, it says, hey, we’re doing a function check right now. What does that mean? That’s ultimately what we call heartbeat technology, and that’s doing some advanced diagnostics behind the scenes. And it’s checking information like electronics in the bit in the base unit. It’s checking, tubes, making sure the tubes are aligned and weren’t damaged in shipping, and ensuring that the the factory calibration is still valid on the current device. So all of that is happening kind of behind the scenes before you, even start running product through it, to ensure that we are fully CGMP or, current good manufacturing practice and operation, on a production side. And that kind of maybe leans leads a little bit into, another product that we’ve recently released, which is our Anderson Hauser ProMASS k 10. It’s the first Coriolis meter, in the world that has IO Link as an output. And now IO Link, I I think it’s really important to start with a really good basis about what IO Link is, and IO Link is something I call it the three wire digital communication, but it it’s not a 100% accurate. So we’ll maybe dive into that a little bit and talk about what IO Link can do, and how it is, is being accepted in industries, specifically in farms, in in food and beverage and pharmaceutical industries. As a general rule of thumb, most large smart factories are using Ethernet based protocols. So that means that their their the devices that they have, the control system that they have is all digital, which means you can get a lot more data and get a lot of data. You can get so much data you have no idea what to do with. There’s also, these Ethernet switches that are typically either remote Ethernet switches or switches that are out in the plant that, that are pulling in a lot of this data and then sending it up to whether it’s their asset management system or a control system, and ultimately can give us the most amount of information about the health of the device, any sort of multivariable, values that we have coming out of the device. And then similarly, on the op on the right side here of this screen, you see an IO Link system. IO Link also does a very similar thing where you have a remote, what’s called an IO Link master. It’s connected to a flow meter or connected to a level switch or connected to, a temperature probe, and it pulls all that information in, and then it outputs that information back to their control system. And so historically, we’ve had a lot of Ethernet four wire devices, whether that’s Ethernet IP, PROFINET, Modbus, any sort of digital heart as a as an option as well. That’s historically been where our Ethernet four wire and two wire devices come from. Now IO Link hasn’t really been a focus for us, but because of our our diversity in different industries, we’ve had to look at IO Link as a feasible, cost efficient choice for basic process needs in under in in flow meters, in pressure transmitters, in a lot of devices, and a lot of a lot of different applications. And so there’s some benefits and pros and cons to both. Ethernet, you have a lot of process devices versus simple simple measurement points. The, the IO Link, you have a specific range in terms of distances. That’s only about 60 feet, which means it’s really, really good for those skid solutions, that are put out in into many, many factories and especially especially in food and beverage. The IO Link masters are really where the integration happens. And then the data that’s recorded and aggregated is happening inside that IO Link master where typically on a, Ethernet based system, you all have full transparency from, device level all the way up to your your control system, DCS system, throughout and anywhere throughout that system as well. There is uses for both even in the same plants. There’s uses for both in in similar applications, but I I think one of the benefits is being the first, Coriolis manufacturer to have a IO Link device. What does that mean? Really, what it means is we can get some very good data, not all the data, but in many cases, we don’t need all of the data, and we can be super accurate, extremely fast in terms of data data transmission, and, make things a little easier in terms of of integration and installation of the devices. So typically what a a system or a subsystem might look like with IO Link, you have your IO Link master, that’s where power is is brought to, and it’s also where our connection to that overarching enterprise system or DCS system is. So that IO Link master is a must. You have to have that. You also have to have a flow meter that is or any device that is capable of outputting in an IO Link protocol, in an IO Link communication method. And then there’s a specific three wire cable that goes from the device to the master. And there this is the often overlooked thing, but it’s an IODD. Essentially what that means is it’s an IO Link device driver. So that device driver is gonna tell the IO link master what and how is this device sending information to me. So it’s almost like a little roadmap for the IO Link master to understand what’s happening on the on the base the base level of, of that IO Link device. Ultimately, these are the four things to have that you have to have for, basic subsystem components. And then, as you start integrating it to into an overarching system, there’s a little bit more that would be needed as well, but this will at least get you started, and understanding kind of why there’s IO Link masters, and why there’s IO Link protocols and technology in the first place. So again, this is our Coriolis k 10, with our IO Link master. It’s a line size three eighths of an inch all the way up to three inch. It also has what we call heartbeat technology. It has, three a. It has all of our, approvals for hygienic applications, for food and beverage applications, for pharmaceutical applications as well, and gives us a little bit more flexibility in terms of what we can offer our customers that will meet the need of where they’re at, but also prepare them for for future, expansions and, and and large scale DCS turnarounds and things like that. So, there is a couple of things here, mass flow as a standard with density, temperature, and you get a standard totalizer one as an output. There is, again, food contact materials, eHedge three a, all hygienic process connections as well as standard process connections, available with this device. And then one other key factor here is when we’re in actually interacting with this device, there’s a couple of ways we can interact with it. We can, of course, use a a touch screen. We can push the device and and be right in front of it. There’s also a method for using a free app that we have on on the Android store and the Apple Apple Store. That’s called SmartBlue. That’s available for a lot of different devices, but it is using a Bluetooth technology to, tap into the device and configure, everything. And then the other option is using a, a device manager, with a CDI port that’s built inside the transmitter as well. So all different ways to to interact with the same device, even, interacting with it using IO Link is possible as well. So a lot of different functionalities, a lot of different, options, so we can meet the needs where meet the customers where their needs are, and then also where their they wanna get get to. So that kind of takes us into what heartbeat technology is. And we actually we talk about heartbeat technology as a story because I think if we start talking about what it is before we talk about the story, it’s, it’s it’s it’s hard to to wrap your head around. There’s a lot going into it. And part of that that discussion really starts with a a marketing phrase, which is called taking the pulse of your measurement. And what that really does is is it’s trying to understand how the device is operating currently, and how the device may be operating in the future based on current conditions. And so all all of that is is started with what our customers expect out of a flow meter, expect out of a pressure transmitter, expect out of a pH probe. All of our customers’ needs and our users’ needs are expanding. So not only do they need excellent measurement performance from a device, they also need a reliable device. I I need to know when something’s going wrong. They also wanna be available. If the device itself isn’t always available, they can’t trust it. We want our customers to not only trust our device, but trust the measurement performance that they’re getting out of the device. And they also want it easy to easy to use. As we’ve seen in a lot of industries, the, the operations teams, the operators that are on on the plant floor are getting less and less, and maybe they’re moving more towards engineering. But there are a lot of plants that are running extremely lean. And so running lean means they have to run efficiently and they have to run effectively. And if our devices are not easy to use and easy to understand, we’re we’re kind of failing at at that point. So we also wanna make sure our devices are safe. We wanna make sure our devices are predictive, and we wanna make sure our devices potentially can be connected in the future. And so all of those together is now now we’ve got a difficult puzzle we’ve gotta try and solve, with any one of our measurement devices. And that’s where we think kinda heartbeat technology meets a lot of those needs and bridges the gap between, the excellent measurement performance and and all of these, needs that we have. So we split heartbeat technology into kind of three categories. We have diagnostics, which is, current, current status, current device diagnostics, advanced diagnostics. That’s the basis of everything. So if we don’t have a good basis of diagnostics, we can’t do verification. We can’t do monitoring. We can’t provide in, improved process insights, very effectively if we don’t have a good base unit. So that happens from that happens from the the design of our devices all the way down to the raw components that go into all of the devices as well. And then verification is kind of a what’s happening to my device right now, and can you give me a PDF printout of what that looks like. So that’s that’s part of the verification. And then again, monitoring how we look at certain values over time trended over time, so we can start understanding, predictively when certain process conditions or process upsets may happen or could happen, and how will they affect our measurements. So all of that together is really bridged on the diagnostic coverage. It’s based around how we can detect our, any alarms, alerts, failures, things that happen inside the device that weren’t expected. All of that needs to be, really, really important. And so our IO modules, our sensor electronic modules, our sensor, inlet and outlet pickup coils, and our divi our ex the entire excitation system that’s happening inside of a of a Coriolis meter, all are really, really important to understand the health of the device. If we can understand the health of individual components of the device, we can try and better understand the health of the entire device as a whole. Kind of the sum of, sum of equal parts or the sum of parts is is greater than the than the sum of the the system. So, that’s ultimately what we’re trying to do here. And what that means is that this value, the heartbeat sensor integrity parameter is always generated and can be used as a direct value for, understanding process related concerns as well as meter concerns. So in a similar way, we talked about, oscillation modes with our PROMAS Q, with our PROMAS I, and other flow meters as well. The frequency or the oscillation frequency that we’re actually doing for this HBSI value is a fixed diff distance from that frequency. And so at any one time, we’re we’re oscillating these tubes at one, two, almost, three every, three different frequencies every time. And so the part of this this parameter is ultimately giving us a little bit more information related to the health of the sensors, related to, even the health of the process as well. And we’ll talk about a couple of use cases on on how that, and what that means, and and can ultimately mean for you. So as a general rule of thumb, when we calibrate and design a new sensor, our HBSI value, is 0% at reference conditions, and that may fluctuate depending on if you’re operating at reference conditions or not. But right around zero, it could be negative point one to positive point one, percent, but there’s no no cause kind of for concern there. We do have kind of a stated bandwidth in which we expect the flow meter to operate well within its its factory calibration and well within its specification. But if that value shows very, very low, or values, like, right around zero as a reference condition, your HBSI value is related directly to sensor components that aren’t affected. So if our exciter current, if our pickup coils, if our, sensor tubes are not damaged, likely that HBSI value is going to remain at zero or right around zero. Now when we do have something like a wear mechanism, something like corrosion or erosion or abrasion inside the tubes, ultimately, there’s things that are going to be affected by that. Now how do we actually detect that? Well, that’s where using this HBSI value, we can actually understand individual components of the the flow meter, individual, components like the sensor tubes. For example, if we were to have a corrosion instance, your wall thickness of the tubes would change. And so what what would happen there is as we start oscillating these tubes, you would start to see that value increase because your tubes are moving moving more and more and more because we’re oscillating at the same frequency or at the at the same frequency, but the tubes is not our tubes are not as heavy. Right? So, that’s where that that HBSI value can give us information related to, kind of the health of all of our devices or all of our our components within the device. So there’s multiple ways to observe that HBSI value, and this is where trending comes into play, looking at something and trying to be predictive and preventative, in the long term. There’s no process interruption. This this entire thing happens. This entire, HBSI value is generated, automatically by the device itself. It remained the measurement remains completely available, continuously available, and it happens in situ behind the scenes, if you will, of a of your measurement. And then you’re gonna improve efficiency, obviously, and and reduce risk if you understand what’s happening and what’s going on inside the flow meter without you actually visually seeing what’s happening to the device. So, all of that to say, there’s a lot of ways to observe it, but there is also important ways, that we can use it. So, yes, knowing that the HVSI value is zero is just that’s great. That’s awesome. But what does that ultimately mean? And here’s a couple of examples. Here’s a couple of use cases. So we’ve had an application, in the past where, it was an abrasive fine slurry. And so anytime you have abrasive fine slurries, you have to be extra cautious of using bent tubes, and also the velocities in which you’re flowing those those those processes through there. So the initial one, they had was a dual bent tube that failed six months in the service, and they replaced it with a single straight tube. So they expected to see some abrasion, but because of the design of the flow meter, that HBSI parameter was taken over time, and it’s been installed for for four years now and shows a relatively flat line behavior for the the HBSI value, meaning there’s no wear mechanism going on inside that device, be because of the process. So that’s a that’s a use case there. Another use case that that we talk about a lot is is the presence of abrasion in general. We know that in some applications, there is going to be abrasion. And that’s on us as the manufacturer, that’s also on, the customer to understand what their levels and limits are, and are capable of handling. And if they don’t know, that’s that’s where we we should probably step back and say, hey, let’s let’s talk about this as a as a at a high level. What happens when something goes wrong? Do you just automatically remove the device? Is it are you down in terms of, not being able to produce properly? Things like that. And that’s where in this case we used, kind of predictive maintenance every ten, twelve, fifteen, eighteen months. We know we have to replace this device because of the abrasion, or we have to decrease our velocity, through the meter. So either way, that’s ultimately this use case and showing showing that there is a wear mechanism happening, and we need to understand at what point do we need to start replacing these devices. And lastly, here’s one that was an unexpected wear mechanism. So customer used a Coriolis flow meter, and for five days, everything was great. No worries. Everything was totally fine. Customer didn’t expect anything to be wrong, which is exactly what was shown. And then once they did a cleaning cycle with a new product a new cleaning product, they noticed that this value increased. And so over time, I mean, think about twenty five days, you’re increasing your HBSI value because you’re performing your regular scheduled cleaning. Well, that wasn’t understood, and that wasn’t, that didn’t the the customer didn’t know that was going to affect things. We didn’t know that was going to affect things, but this ultimately shined light on, here’s what’s happening. Now can we change cleaners, or can we use a material that’s more compatible with that cleaner, or can we just live with the the, the risk that the the values will last long enough for us to get really, really good good data, and then we can, and look at replacing it, things like that. So this was another, application where we weren’t expecting to see any sort of drift, but we did because of, the the wear mechanism that that wasn’t, very well known or or present at at the time. So, ultimately, I think, you know, using, something like heartbeat technology as a, a confidence boots booster in your measurement is is really the the key there. Because I think the more that we can increase confidence in our measurements, the more that our customers, will continue to want to to work with us and collaborate with us on on applications and and talk, about, different, industry applications and things like that. As as the working for a manufacturer is currently my my first my first job, I think I think, out of college, I think there’s a there’s a really cool benefit of of a privately owned company that continues to invest in research and development for the products that we have. And, I think that, you know, Anderson Hauser has has done a great job of, showing some innovations that we can within our Coriolis flow flow meter technologies. That’s all I got. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I thought that was very interesting, especially the HBSI, how you guys have in included that in your product so you can see that everything’s good, or if something is starting to go out of out of, you know, out of I don’t wanna say out of whack. You know, something’s starting to go out of alignment, you know, with Yeah. What you were expecting. And that example of cleaning, you know, nobody would have thought, you know, this, you know, this product is designed to run this fluid through it, but the cleaner, they’ll finding out that the cleaner was the problem. That’s priceless. Right? That’s priceless. And you can you like you said, there’s different options you can take to address that issue, but now that you know what the problem is. If you didn’t know there was a problem, then your values would be off over time, and that wouldn’t be good at all. Right. So Right. Just such an interesting topic to talk through. And I I appreciate you not only to take us through your products, but also taking us through some of the technologies that are built in the products and that make them work. And I you know, there’s a lot there between the, field bus, the PROFINET, and the Ethernet IP on your really high end, high accuracy, you know, type of installations versus maybe a smaller installation where you can use IO Link because it’s slower cost. We just had the IO Link folks on the podcast. If you guys missed that, just, check back, a podcast or two ago. We had the IO link guys on talking about what they do and how they do it, and I think you summarized it very well in this presentation. And so I think that makes a lot of people happy because in many cases, that’s a lower cost. Yeah. I mean, you’re not gonna get the same performance as you’re gonna get over Ethernet, but you’re it’s a lower cost, and it’s, you know, maybe enough information for your application. So it’s good to see that option there, especially for those skid manufacturers who can utilize those products. You know, with that, I I don’t have any other questions. Was there anything else you wanted to say before we close out the show? Lauton Rushford (E+H): No. All I have to say is thank you. I appreciate the the time and the the the platform. I think this is, awesome, and thank you for asking all the questions you did. I think there was a lot of a lot of really good information that you mentioned, as well there too. So, thank you. That’s all I have to say. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, Lon, thank you for coming on. I, I just like the first time we had Anderson Hauser on, it was just really just so intellectually interesting. So it’s our pleasure to have you on, and we really appreciate you guys. Lauton Rushford (E+H): Thank you. Appreciate it. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode, and I wanna thank Lawton for for coming on the show, not only to bring us up to speed on Coriolis flow meters, but also answering my questions because I know I interrupted there, especially at the beginning with a lot of questions. So really appreciate him, taking my questions and also bringing us up to speed on the technology. Now Now I also wanna thank E and H for sponsoring this episode so I could bring it to you ad free on all platforms. I don’t like ads, but, you know, you gotta pay the bills. And when a vendor comes in and they sponsor the show, it really underwrites our cost to edit it and publish it. So I’m super appreciative to them and to all our sponsors who do that. And please let them know if you see E and H anywhere out there, if you’re talking to one of their reps or you’re talking to, somebody from E and H, please let them know how much I appreciate and maybe you appreciate that they sponsored this episode. I also wanna mention that you may not know this, but I brought my other podcast back, the automation news podcast. I renamed the automation tech talk. And anytime I have an episode that is, one of my shorter episodes that I think will do good on audio, be a good listen. Right? I am publishing it on that automation tech talk podcast. And on this podcast, you probably notice every once in a while, I’m releasing an episode of the automation show. Some episodes of the automation show, there’s so much hands on that I don’t think they’d make a good audio addition, but some of them are like presentations and discussions. And I think those would make a good episode of the automation podcast. So I’m releasing them on this podcast channel, but I’m keeping the name, the automation show. So you know, hey. This is, originally was a video that was turned into a podcast. So give me feedback. If you don’t like those, I’ll stop doing it. But I thought because, some weeks we can’t always bring you a new episode, we may have an episode of automation show that I think would make a good listen. So I wanted to bring those to you on this platform as well. And, again, I always love your feedback, and I wanna thank everybody who’s given a five stars or thumbs up. You guys are great. I you know, last time I checked on it, you had so many people, had given us five stars. And that you know, that’s really how we find new vendors come out, like E and H and other vendors. Right? They specifically said you guys were such had such great feedback on the previous podcast that they wanted to come back on. So please take a moment. I know a lot of you listen while you’re driving. But when you get home or get to some place where you can look at your phone, please give us a thumbs up or a five star rating because that really helps us grow the audience and find new vendors to come on the show. And with that, I’m gonna end the show right there. I wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace. Until next time, Peace ✌️  If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

Our discussion with Jeff Carlson about his newest release, Take Control of Your Digital Storage, to discuss network-attached storage, memory cards as storage options, and the evolving challenges of digital storage. He explains practical trade-offs between direct-connect drives, NAS, and portable media, highlighting security and performance considerations. Jeff also shares his new role at CNET, where he covers mobile tech and photography, including hands-on testing of the Pixel 10 Pro XL.  This edition of MacVoices is brought to you by our Patreon supporters. Get access to the MacVoices Slack and MacVoices After Dark by joining in at Patreon.com/macvoices. Show Notes: Chapters: [0:00] Introduction and NAS pros and cons[1:38] Synology experiences and setup challenges[3:46] Using SSDs with NAS and “sneaker-net” transfers[5:00] Ethernet speeds and NAS performance[6:19] Balancing direct-connect vs network-attached storage[7:59] Cost, drive types, and replacement concerns[9:12] Memory cards as storage and performance trade-offs[10:36] Risks of using SD cards for regular file work[12:52] Alternative setups with docks and card readers[14:10] Book details and Take Control Premium[15:56] Jeff's new role at CNET[18:31] Covering mobile tech and writing for CNET[19:48] Testing the Pixel 10 Pro XL camera[21:20] AI-powered zoom and photography advances[23:44] Balancing AI with traditional photo quality[25:07] On-device AI processing and security[27:01] Security always a core concern[27:25] Where to find Jeff Carlson's work Links: Take Control of Your Digital Storage Guests: Jeff Carlson is an author, photographer, and freelance writer. Among many other projects, he publishes the Smarter Image newsletter, which explores how computational photography, AI, and machine learning are fundamentally changing the art and science of photography. He's covered the personal technology field from Macs and PalmPilots to iPhones and mirrorless cameras, publishing in paper magazines, printed books, ebooks, and websites. He's also the co-host of the podcasts PhotoActive, writes for Take Control, has spoken at several conferences and events. He lives in Seattle, where, yes, it is just as gray and wet and coffee-infused as you think it is. Catch up with everything he's doing at JeffCarlson.com. Support:      Become a MacVoices Patron on Patreon     http://patreon.com/macvoices      Enjoy this episode? Make a one-time donation with PayPal Connect:      Web:     http://macvoices.com      Twitter:     http://www.twitter.com/chuckjoiner     http://www.twitter.com/macvoices      Mastodon:     https://mastodon.cloud/@chuckjoiner      Facebook:     http://www.facebook.com/chuck.joiner      MacVoices Page on Facebook:     http://www.facebook.com/macvoices/      MacVoices Group on Facebook:     http://www.facebook.com/groups/macvoice      LinkedIn:     https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckjoiner/      Instagram:     https://www.instagram.com/chuckjoiner/ Subscribe:      Audio in iTunes     Video in iTunes      Subscribe manually via iTunes or any podcatcher:      Audio: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesrss      Video: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesvideorss

Shawn takes a look at the ET 200SP line of Distributed I/O from Siemens in Episode 19 of The Automation Show, Season 2. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Show from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Show on The Automation Blog: The Automation Show, Season 2 Episode 19 Show Notes: The links mentioned in the video are listed below: ET 200SP Website ET 200SP Manual Collection Shawn’s Siemens S7 Course Programming Note: Due to scheduling conflicts, episodes 17 & 18 and releasing after episodes 19-2x :-O Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated) Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey everybody. Welcome back to the show. My name is Shawn Tierney from Insights and Automation. And today, we’re talking e t 200 s p distributed IO from Siemens. Before we go any farther, I do wanna thank Siemens for sending in the samples and for sponsoring this episode so it will be ad free, and that’s as far as it goes. Everything else is my own opinion and thoughts. And, although I do appreciate them making this ad free and sending in the samples because I wanna be able to show them to you if I didn’t have them. And, this is one of the reasons I’m doing this is I just put these hands on demos together for my students who come out to the automation school for hands on training. So I wanted to have something they could bring to their station and program with an s seven twelve hundred or 1,500. And, so I’m creating a bunch of these, and you’ll see more and more of these as the weeks go on. But in any case, I we previously covered a couple on IFM, but now I’m doing the e t 200 s p. So we’ll take a closer look at the hardware in a little bit. But But before we get into the hardware, I did wanna run through some slides that do a great job of explaining what e t 200 s p I o is. And, again, I call it distributed IO, not remote IO because here in America, most of us know there is a remote IO product from Rockwell Automation that is trademarked, Rockwell. So we don’t wanna confuse people by using the term remote IO when possible. So let’s go ahead and go to the slide deck now. And, the first slide is and, again, these this is a slightly of a couple three year old slide deck from Siemens that we’re gonna be going through. And, you know, the first thing is, hey. E t 200 s p and e t 200 m p I o or I p 20 in cabinet I o. They’re not on machine or machine mount IO. And, of course, the e t 200 MP is the full size IO that’s about the same size as the 1,500, whereas the SP is the smaller. They’re like the slice IO you see from all the different vendors. A matter of fact, a couple of big vendors are coming out with new IO this fall or have already come out with it, and we’ll be covering those as well in the coming weeks. But today, we’re focusing on e t 200 s p. And so I wanted to, talk about, you know, this is a marketing slide that Siemens puts in their presentations, and it makes sense. All the vendors wanna have IO for all the different applications, and Siemens is no different. And, actually, they got some stuff that other vendors don’t have. But I’m gonna go right beyond this one and jump right into, you know, the main selling points of this product line where it’s compact, it’s fast, it’s any of NG efficient, it’s easy to wire, and I can attest to that having done three, four hundred wires here. It was very easy to wire. I really liked it. They say it has a great environmental coverage. There actually is, some extreme modules. We’ll talk about that towards the end. And then built in diagnostics. Again, depending if you buy the high function and standard or basic modules, right, will depend on what kinda diagnostics you get. In any case, here is what it looks like now. The coloring of this slide, I think that the pictures colors the gray is a little lighter, almost it’s almost like a light green. It’s darker in person as we saw. Let me switch over here. As you can see here. So, I don’t know what’s going on with that, but one of the things you do see on this slide is, one of the first things you’ll notice is a fail safe module, so safety modules. So, yes, you can mix standard and fail safe modules in the same rack or same lineup. The other thing you’ll notice is it’s compact like most of the Slice I o that’s out there. Energy efficient ruggedness, there is an extreme version of this available. Intelligent, you can get high functionality modules. Right? Push in terminals, which I really liked, very easy to use, tool free connections. Of course, if you’d put a wire in the wrong place, which happened to me once or twice out of 400 wires, you can use a screwdriver and get it out really quick, and then, reduced parts of variance. So that’s their marketing on this product line, but I also wanna call attention all the different ways you can actually mark up the products. You can put labels in the front, right in the front of the module itself. You can put labels on top and on the back as well. So a lot of different labeling options is also a color coding you can put over the terminals as well. We’ll see that a little bit later. In any case, this is the physically how it goes together. So first of all, it doesn’t you they don’t all just slide together like tongue and groove. You do have to put them on the DIN rail and slide them into each other from right to left. So keep that in mind. Okay. And we always start the leftmost part is what we call an interface module. And so think of that if you’re a Rockwell guy, that’s your adapter. Okay? Now the interface module, most of these take a bus adapter. In other words, you can choose copper or you can choose fiber, or you can choose copper and fiber. And I love this design because, well, I’m sure it adds a little cost to the product. Being able to swap out copper for fiber if you need to or do one copper one fiber if you need to, I think it’s a great idea. That kind of flexibility is great. Now there is a low cost interface module that has that bus adapter built in, but in any case, most of them, as you’ll see, what was what I’ll show you here on the workbench, it’s module. You choose the one you want and this basic and advanced and we’ll take a look at all those. Then you have the bases and the IO modules and we’ll look at this in real time here on the workbench in a moment, but you can see here the basis of what the IO modules plug into. If you look there on the the fourth item there, it’s just a base module without the IO. And, that’s what clips onto the DIN rail and slides together, and then we stick our IO modules in. Also, share the keying. A lot of people leave that out, but I think it’s pretty cool what they do there. And at the very end, they have something called a server module. The name for this, I’m thinking of servers like a computer server. So I don’t know what happened with the translation there, but it’s like an end cap. If you’re a Rockwell person, it’s like an end cap. You gotta have that at the end. It doesn’t really serve up anything, but, in any case, you gotta have it. So in any case, then you can see kinda how it’s laid out there. Let’s go ahead and go to the next slide here. And, these are all the different type of interface modules they have. So the very basic one, right, if you needed a low cost drop of IO, it only does up to 12 modules, but, you know, it’s an all in one unit with two Ethernet ports built in, and you can use all the modules with it except for safety modules. K. So that’s important to know. Then we have the standard interface modules, which do up to 32 modules. Right? You can use safety with them. You can actually expand them to e t 200 a l if you needed to have some, on machine products or machine mount I o. I’ll show you the a l in a future video. We’re gonna cover that separately. And you can hot swap any single module at a time, which is very cool. And then, of course, if we go to the high featured, we get up to 64 modules. You can multi hot swap, multiple modules. You can actually set it for asynchronous mode so you can get the speeds up to two hundred fifty microseconds. So it’s, very cool there. And you can see the other options there including the CPU, which we will cover. That’ll probably be next week, though. Alright. So, one of the cool features they have is this was new at the time of this, you know, two, three years ago of this presentation is they added a, a unit that actually could use three Ethernet ports. So why would you do that? Well, think of it. Right? You maybe you’re daisy chaining from one interface module to the next and you have a station where you either need a bulkhead connector so you can program from or you have an HMI. You need that third connection. Right? And so this allows you to have three connections. Now the downside of this is you actually have four connections, but you can only use three and I’ll show you what I mean here. Let’s go back to the overhead, and I actually have that module right here. Thank you, Siemens, for sending him in. And you can see I have my two bus adapters, but I can only use three of the four. Okay? So it’s it’s just a limitation. And, you know, I don’t really know why they’re limited to that. I’m sure there’s a reason. I was thinking about that earlier. It’s like, maybe they wanted to prevent this or that or the other thing, but in any case, it’s still cool. It’s so much cheaper than buying a switch and putting it in that place. Well, in most cases, it would be. Right? There’s also the optional, grooves here. Let me switch back. There’s also optional grooves here. I don’t know if you can see them very well. We’ll zoom in later. But that is for, strain relief, if you need to have that as well. You can see those plastic pieces go in, and then you can, you know, zip tie your cables right to them. So very interesting new product there. And then these are all of the different, bus adapters. So you can see there’s, basic ones with two RJ 45 ports, two FastConnect ports. There’s, units with, one RJ forty five one fiber optic and so on. So lots of different options there to choose from. And, again, not a lot of people do this. You have to replace the whole interface module with other companies’ products, like in Rockwood would be an adapter to get a difference. Right? And here, you don’t have to. You just replace the, the, bus adapter. Okay. Now here’s just showing the different type of modules. So if you’re familiar with Siemens, you know, all their modules come well, most of their modules come in different flavors. You have the standard, you have the basic, and you have the high feature. Right? And they’re also showing, a safety module there with the yellow, and then you can also get high speed. So lots of different options here. And we’ll take a look at that. But, they all have different, article numbers or part numbers for us Americans. And so, you know, if you’re in OEM, you’re just doing a lot of clickety clack, maybe you get all the basics. If you’re in process, you’re probably gonna want the high features, advanced diagnostics, and so on. So in any case, and this is what the front of them looks like. Of course, they have digital in and digital out. They have analog in and analog out. They also have what I call specialty. So they have technology modules and communication modules. I love, that they have, BACnet and IO Link and PROFIBUS, Aussie in this form factor as well as conning modules, position modules, energy management, weighing modules, all those different modules. And here’s some of the other things too. So tool free, I did all three or 400 wires. It was all tool free. I just put my wire in. Boom. It clamped a really good across your pool test every single one. Right? And so I’ve been one of the guys who’ve driven hours and hours to find out the problem wasn’t with the product. It was with the guy who wired it. He didn’t screw them down tight enough. So you pool test everyone, make sure they’re in there solidly, and, I didn’t have any problems at all. Very easy to take out. I have a couple that I forgot to run them through the Panduit. I just looped over the Panduit and and over the top of the box. And I’m like, Shawn, if you put it in that way, you won’t be able to close the cover. So So when you’re doing so many, sometimes you get distracted. So in any case, very easy to get them back out if you put them in the wrong and you need to rewire them somewhere else. They say they’re 50% narrower. I would say that versus the e t 200 m p. I think they’re about the same size as, everybody else’s slice IO, very close. And then you can see there the marking, at the bottom. Those reference identification labels, that those are pretty cool, if you need the color code, the wire, terminals. Okay. So let’s go on from there and, this one is really cool too. Now this is a fairly new not everybody knows about this, but this is the multi field bus version of the interface module. I think this is so cool. It does Ethernet p. It does Modbus TCP, and it does PROFINET all in one module. It does set up a little differently. When I was testing it out, I was like, wow. That does set up a little differently than the other interface modules. But, I didn’t have to use the, the separate tool to get it working. So in any case, very cool, and it can talk all three at the same time. So if you had a couple of the of people who needed to listen to the traffic, but you need one station to control it, then, you could have all three running at the same time. I just think that’s so cool. And we do have one here. We’re gonna do it use it first with the Siemens and then maybe use it with the Rockwells if time permits. But, definitely wanna do that, in another episode of the show. But, very cool. I’m I matter of fact, we just, did an episode. It’s not released yet, but, it will be out shortly with the METTLENOTO I n d three sixty, and that also supports multiple protocols. So so cool. I love it when vendors do that all in the same part number. So cool. And so you can see more information about that here. I’m not gonna go into details. We’ll talk about later, when we actually have the episode on that. And another thing I noticed with their high function modules, it says firmware 4.1 and up is that you can, so on the HF modules, you could do module to module communications. So you’re talking, like, screw to screw, like, two hundred fifty microseconds. I think that’s so cool. That’s something else if time permits. In the coming days, we’ll, do a demo on that too if we can get, if we have the time to do it. I just think it’s a cool feature. I’d love to see it in action. There’s other things in here about, other types of modules. I’m not gonna go through all this. This one I thought was pretty interesting. It’s 48 24 to 48 volts AC or 48 volt DC. So eight inputs either AC or DC in those ranges and it has a built in fuse which I think is so important. Right? So, an interesting new module that does both AC and DC. Right? Looked like it was really designed for transportation and that kinda wraps up the PowerPoint slide. And, again, this is just one of many of their lines. Oh, I do wanna mention this. This should have been before that. This is the extreme version of what they call their psi plus extreme, where you get the minus 40 to 70 degrees c. You can install it, up to 5,000 meters. You know, the air is thinner up there. It can, handle salt mist, chemical, active substances. You know, this is a lot of people would think of this as conformally coated. So, you can see all of those different, regulations that the extreme version, makes. Okay? The Ciplas Extreme. So with that, let’s see. Last slide here. So this is just one of many products. So we’ve covered this in the past. We covered the 1,200 to 1,500. This is the t 200 s p. We will be covering the a l and the Eco PN. I think these are both Eco PN, in the future. But with that, I wanna actually give you a physical demo of how this stuff works. So in any case, let me move the modules around here a little bit, and we’ll be zooming in and out. So this is the unit I, I, you know, wired up this weekend, and we’ll zoom in on her. And this is the one that gives you the, up to threes that I put, so you have two bus adapters. Okay? And it’s a little bit wider. If you look at one of the other ones, you can see it’s a lot narrower. Right? That’s actually the multi field bus model, which is about the same size as the standard model. Well, long here, I might as well bring that one in too and show you that one. K. So in any case but, let’s focus on this guy, and, we’ll take a look at I wanted to show you this one because this one also has the analog in, even though I haven’t put the analog operators and make gauges on the panel. I do have them wired up. Right now, I just have them wired to each other. But in any case, so let’s go ahead and zoom in on this a little bit. Okay. First thing you’re gonna notice is the first terminal block here, the first base is is a light style, and then they go to the darker style. And that’s because you can bring power into these light bases. Right? Like an a zero. And, I go through all the part numbers in my course. You guys can find that in the literature. But and it passes power to these other bases. Okay. So you’ll typically start with a light style. You’ll go through as many bases as you can power until you need another or you need isolation until you need another, light style base. And then here, you can see the modules themselves. I love the fact that everything has a QR code on it. So if you need the manual, you just you just, you know, get your phone out and and it’ll link right to it. But I want the wire in here, so I was able to wire everything based on just, the little label here. And again, this is where you can slide in your own labels if you want. And then the indicators here, they all worked when we when we actually do in a next video, we actually do the integration. You’ll see these lights come on. They’re very easy to see. You can also see here some version information. I did run into some of these modules being too new for version 16. So I usually default to version 16 because that’s what I started with. But, if you have 16.1, you can get the new GSD file and it supports most of the I think almost all the new modules. In any case, up here and I do have a mix of new and used because back when I was, getting ready to do this, we had the whole component sort shortage, so I had to pick up some modules myself. But, in any case, you’ll see the type here. Digital in, and this is a basic. Okay? So eight by 24, eight inputs at 24 volts DC. And then you have the digital output, DQ. This is a standard eight by 24. Eight u, I believe that means voltage, and, u for voltage. But in any case and then if we come over here, we have an a q. This is a standard, s t, and this is for UI, so voltage or current. And so you can see those there. And down here is the article number, which we typically refer to as, like, a, catalog number here in The US. K. And so when I’m sending these up, I take a picture of the front of the unit, and that’s what I use to set them up in the software. But in any case, you can also see the versions here as well. I love that all that information is on the front of the module. And then at the top, we already looked at that. And so we already looked at the top. And then over here, we have the server module, or what we may call an end cap here in The US. Alright. So one of the cool things about this, these modules is the keying. So I’m going to take these out just by squeezing in. I’m gonna pull it out, pull this one out too. Okay. And in there, you can see I know the lighting’s a little tricky, but in there, you see those black little wheels, those circular black things? Those are the keys. And you can see how they’re let’s see if I go up to the camera. If I put the overhead light on, it just gives too much glare. So hopefully, you guys can see that. Well, the cool thing about that is that those come pre installed on the modules. Like, they clipped in there really good, and they don’t come loose until you stick them in all the way, and then they stay in the base. And I love that. So you don’t have to turn anything. You don’t have to memorize what position it’s in. You just put the module in and boom. Now I did have a couple modules put in the wrong position, so I was able to get out with a screwdriver, get in that little, notch there and get it out. But you can see there’s two notches in each, but I it doesn’t feel like when I was doing that, it didn’t feel like it was designed for those to be reused. So I probably say that not, but let’s go ahead and try to put this module in the wrong place. Yeah. You can. So, I really like that design feature, automatic keying, and, yeah. That’s great. And they really go in. You’re gonna make sure they’re all the way in, but once they’re in, they’re in. Now let me zoom out a little bit and show you how to take them apart and put them back together. So there are these, push in buttons here on the top. Right? So these latches, these releases. And so what I’ll do is let me push in the first two, the the server module and the module, and I’m gonna slide them to the right. Okay? And I know it has all the, wiring on it. But in any case, that’s how easy it is to assemble and disassemble. Quick or disassemble like this. Okay. And now to get them on and off the DIN rail, I’m gonna push in those two, tabs at the top there. I’m gonna lift the bottom up. Okay. Now I can get it off the DIN rail. Alright. And so when you’re pushing in that top tab, it’s doing two things. Okay? It’s gonna release the, DIN rail, but it’s also gonna release the connection to the module on the side of it. Alright? And so you’re gonna be cognizant of that. Alright? You can’t just release it release the module off the DIN rail. You have to release it from the side as well. Okay. And, you can see that here. Well, let’s see if we can get him off. He’s a little sticky. I don’t know why. He could be used. But in any case, get him off. Okay. And it’s the same for the sky too. Let’s see here. So let’s go ahead and put it back together again. We’ll put the top on first and then we’ll click it on to the bottom. Okay. And then we’ll slide it in. Nice. Then we’ll do the same thing for the server module and cap. Okay. It’s not called the end cap. That’s my race. Okay. And this one, sometimes this might be a useful one. There we go. It’s all in together and working great. You gotta make sure you get those modules all the way in. Okay. And there’s a lot of great, diagnostics when you get the system up and running. It’ll tell you if it’s missing a module. It’ll tell you if you chose the wrong base in the software. If let’s say you chose the light colored base versus the dark colored base. I mean, the new power versus the power pass on. It’ll tell you if you get the wrong firmware or the wrong style. Maybe you chose a standard and it’s a basic. So you get all that kind of stuff that you would normally get when you’re, you know, to make sure you have the right IO modules. And so with that, that is a, look at e t 200 s p. I hope it makes sense to you now. Now if you’ve been using this for a long time, longer than I have, and you have some more tips, please leave them in the comments. I do appreciate everybody who comments on the videos wherever the video is. Also, we do have more content coming out about this. We’re gonna go through each of these in a separate video and get each of these up and running from scratch. And then after that, there’ll be new lessons at the Automation School for anybody who’s interested in maybe a longer version of this with more details and support. Right? So in any case and, of course, if you guys wanna call me and, have a group of your guys come in and do some hands on training, these are actually ready to be used in the training room with all the s seven twelve hundreds and 15 hundreds. So if you wanna do some hands on training. It’s, we’re very unique here because of having the automation show and podcast and blog and all the vendors we work with. We have a lot of equipment that you will find almost in nobody else’s training, rooms. So with that, I wanna thank you all for tuning in. I wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace. Vendors: Would you like your product featured on the Podcast, Show or Blog? If you would, please contact me at: https://theautomationblog.com/contact Until next time, Peace ✌️  If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

Our discussion with Jeff Carlson about his newest release, Take Control of Your Digital Storage, continues with network-attached storage, memory cards as storage options, and the evolving challenges of digital storage. He explains practical trade-offs between direct-connect drives, NAS, and portable media, highlighting security and performance considerations. Jeff also shares his new role at CNET, where he covers mobile tech and photography, including hands-on testing of the Pixel 10 Pro XL.  This edition of MacVoices is brought to you by our Patreon supporters. Get access to the MacVoices Slack and MacVoices After Dark by joining in at Patreon.com/macvoices. Show Notes: Chapters: [0:00] Introduction and NAS pros and cons [1:38] Synology experiences and setup challenges [3:46] Using SSDs with NAS and “sneaker-net” transfers [5:00] Ethernet speeds and NAS performance [6:19] Balancing direct-connect vs network-attached storage [7:59] Cost, drive types, and replacement concerns [9:12] Memory cards as storage and performance trade-offs [10:36] Risks of using SD cards for regular file work [12:52] Alternative setups with docks and card readers [14:10] Book details and Take Control Premium [15:56] Jeff's new role at CNET [18:31] Covering mobile tech and writing for CNET [19:48] Testing the Pixel 10 Pro XL camera [21:20] AI-powered zoom and photography advances [23:44] Balancing AI with traditional photo quality [25:07] On-device AI processing and security [27:01] Security always a core concern [27:25] Where to find Jeff Carlson's work Links: Take Control of Your Digital Storage Guests: Jeff Carlson is an author, photographer, and freelance writer. Among many other projects, he publishes the Smarter Image newsletter, which explores how computational photography, AI, and machine learning are fundamentally changing the art and science of photography. He's covered the personal technology field from Macs and PalmPilots to iPhones and mirrorless cameras, publishing in paper magazines, printed books, ebooks, and websites. He's also the co-host of the podcasts PhotoActive, writes for Take Control, has spoken at several conferences and events. He lives in Seattle, where, yes, it is just as gray and wet and coffee-infused as you think it is. Catch up with everything he's doing at JeffCarlson.com. Support:      Become a MacVoices Patron on Patreon      http://patreon.com/macvoices      Enjoy this episode? Make a one-time donation with PayPal Connect:      Web:      http://macvoices.com      Twitter:      http://www.twitter.com/chuckjoiner      http://www.twitter.com/macvoices      Mastodon:      https://mastodon.cloud/@chuckjoiner      Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/chuck.joiner      MacVoices Page on Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/macvoices/      MacVoices Group on Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/groups/macvoice      LinkedIn:      https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckjoiner/      Instagram:      https://www.instagram.com/chuckjoiner/ Subscribe:      Audio in iTunes      Video in iTunes      Subscribe manually via iTunes or any podcatcher:      Audio: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesrss      Video: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesvideorss

Jeff Carlson takes on the latest information in the newly updated Take Control of Your Digital Storage. Topics include choosing SSD vs HDD and NVMe, when Thunderbolt 5 matters, APFS basics, and why cables and enclosures affect speed and reliability. They cover backup strategies, OWC DIY builds, iOS/iPadOS Files support for external drives, NAS pros/cons, and even using SD cards—when it's smart, and when it's not. This MacVoices is supported by OpenCase. MagSafe Perfected. Use the code “macvoices” to save 10% at TheOpenCase.com Show Notes: Chapters: [0:00] Welcome and why storage knowledge matters [1:13] New edition: Take Control of Digital Storage [2:15] When storage goes wrong: errors, space, missing files [3:25] APFS, Finder free space, and modern Mac limits [5:46] SSD vs HDD; Thunderbolt 5 reality checks [7:55] NVMe terms, enclosures, and choosing wisely [9:13] Do you actually need max speed? [10:24] Photographer's perspective on “want vs need” [12:19] Cable chaos: labeling, charging vs data rates [16:43] Backup strategy: fast vs affordable drives [19:03] DIY builds with OWC; reliability over bargain boxes [26:02] iOS/iPadOS Files: formatting and managing externals [29:53] NAS basics: use cases, speed, and security cautions [33:41] “Sneaker-net” to NAS and Ethernet options [37:32] SD cards as storage: pros, cons, and lifespan [43:21] Pricing, page count, and where to learn more Links: Take Control of Your Digital Storage Guests: Jeff Carlson is an author, photographer, and freelance writer. Among many other projects, he publishes the Smarter Image newsletter, which explores how computational photography, AI, and machine learning are fundamentally changing the art and science of photography. He's covered the personal technology field from Macs and PalmPilots to iPhones and mirrorless cameras, publishing in paper magazines, printed books, ebooks, and websites. He's also the co-host of the podcasts PhotoActive, writes for Take Control, has spoken at several conferences and events. He lives in Seattle, where, yes, it is just as gray and wet and coffee-infused as you think it is. Catch up with everything he's doing at JeffCarlson.com. Support: Become a MacVoices Patron on Patreon http://patreon.com/macvoices Enjoy this episode? Make a one-time donation with PayPal Connect: Web: http://macvoices.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/chuckjoiner http://www.twitter.com/macvoices Mastodon: https://mastodon.cloud/@chuckjoiner Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/chuck.joiner MacVoices Page on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/macvoices/ MacVoices Group on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/macvoice LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckjoiner/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chuckjoiner/ Subscribe: Audio in iTunes Video in iTunes Subscribe manually via iTunes or any podcatcher: Audio: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesrss Video: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesvideorss

Jeff Carlson takes on the latest information in the newly updated Take Control of Your Digital Storage. Topics include choosing SSD vs HDD and NVMe, when Thunderbolt 5 matters, APFS basics, and why cables and enclosures affect speed and reliability. They cover backup strategies, OWC DIY builds, iOS/iPadOS Files support for external drives, NAS pros/cons, and even using SD cards—when it's smart, and when it's not.  This MacVoices is supported by OpenCase. MagSafe Perfected. Use the code “macvoices” to save 10% at TheOpenCase.com Show Notes: Chapters: [0:00] Welcome and why storage knowledge matters [1:13] New edition: Take Control of Digital Storage [2:15] When storage goes wrong: errors, space, missing files [3:25] APFS, Finder free space, and modern Mac limits [5:46] SSD vs HDD; Thunderbolt 5 reality checks [7:55] NVMe terms, enclosures, and choosing wisely [9:13] Do you actually need max speed? [10:24] Photographer's perspective on “want vs need” [12:19] Cable chaos: labeling, charging vs data rates [16:43] Backup strategy: fast vs affordable drives [19:03] DIY builds with OWC; reliability over bargain boxes [26:02] iOS/iPadOS Files: formatting and managing externals [29:53] NAS basics: use cases, speed, and security cautions [33:41] “Sneaker-net” to NAS and Ethernet options [37:32] SD cards as storage: pros, cons, and lifespan [43:21] Pricing, page count, and where to learn more Links: Take Control of Your Digital Storage Guests: Jeff Carlson is an author, photographer, and freelance writer. Among many other projects, he publishes the Smarter Image newsletter, which explores how computational photography, AI, and machine learning are fundamentally changing the art and science of photography. He's covered the personal technology field from Macs and PalmPilots to iPhones and mirrorless cameras, publishing in paper magazines, printed books, ebooks, and websites. He's also the co-host of the podcasts PhotoActive, writes for Take Control, has spoken at several conferences and events. He lives in Seattle, where, yes, it is just as gray and wet and coffee-infused as you think it is. Catch up with everything he's doing at JeffCarlson.com. Support:      Become a MacVoices Patron on Patreon      http://patreon.com/macvoices      Enjoy this episode? Make a one-time donation with PayPal Connect:      Web:      http://macvoices.com      Twitter:      http://www.twitter.com/chuckjoiner      http://www.twitter.com/macvoices      Mastodon:      https://mastodon.cloud/@chuckjoiner      Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/chuck.joiner      MacVoices Page on Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/macvoices/      MacVoices Group on Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/groups/macvoice      LinkedIn:      https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckjoiner/      Instagram:      https://www.instagram.com/chuckjoiner/ Subscribe:      Audio in iTunes      Video in iTunes      Subscribe manually via iTunes or any podcatcher:      Audio: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesrss      Video: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesvideorss

This week we cover the first alpha release of KDE Linux, OpenRGB's new home on Codeberg, Canonical adding CUDA to the Ubuntu repositories, and a clever Waveshare add-on that brings Ethernet and USB ports to the Raspberry Pi Zero without dongles.

Shawn Tierney meets up with Michael Bowne of PI to learn what IO-Link is, how it works, and when to use it in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 246 Show Notes: To learn about our online and in-person training courses please visit TheAutomationSchool.com. Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated) Shawn Tierney (Host): Thank you for tuning back in to the automation podcast. My name is Shawn Tierney from Insights in Automation. And this week on the show, we have a special guest, somebody who hasn’t been on in four years. We have Michael Bone from PI. They’re the folks who manage technologies like PROFINET and IO Link. And Michael’s come on this week to talk specifically about IO Link. We’re gonna talk about what it is. We’re gonna talk about when you should use it, and we’re gonna talk about the technical details of IO Link, like, all the things, like, engineering minds like to know about. So I think you guys are gonna enjoy this. It took about two to three hours to edit this one, and I really enjoyed going back through it. You know, we recorded it, I think, four weeks ago. So I hadn’t seen it in four weeks, but I really did enjoy it. I really think you guys will enjoy it too. And that brings up another point. Organizations like PI and ISA and other organizations, they’re not vendors. They don’t sell stuff. Right? And so this episode is not sponsored by a vendor. And, you know, as I was going through it yesterday, I was like, you know, there’s a lot of great slides in here. I wanna share it with the public. So I’ve decided to sponsor this episode myself, and I’ll use this as an opportunity to tell you a little bit about my company and the automation blog, the automation school, and the content I have planned to release this fall, including content on these products right here, all focused on IO Link. And I just actually did a live stream with these, products in front of me. I’ll be doing more tomorrow, and I’ll be adding lessons to my, courses as well on these products. So in any case, but before we get to that, let’s go ahead and jump right into the show and hear from Michael and learn all about IO Link. I wanna welcome back Michael to the show. It has been four years. He was last on in podcast 76, back in September 2021. So just going on four years. Michael, thank you for coming back on the show. If you could, a lot of people may not remember four years ago. Mhmm. So before we jump into your presentation, which which I am so excited about talking about IO Link again. But before we jump into that, could you please tell me a little bit about yourself and a little Michael Bowne (PI): bit about PI? Yeah. Sure. First of all, my pleasure, to be back on on the podcast. It was a lot, a lot of fun. I remember that back in in 2021, and, I’m glad to be be back doing it again. I started with PI North America in 2011 as the technical marketing director. And since 2016, I’ve been the executive director running the show and chairman of the board since last year. I, have the, let’s say, pleasure to serve as the deputy chairman of PI on a global scale since 2015, and I come from a prior to working for PI, I worked for a sensor manufacturer who had some interfaces on there that that brought me an introduct to to Profibus and Profinet. And before that, I studied, physics and and math at at Penn State University. Just, really quick for those. I’m I’m sure many of you are familiar with with PI, but, it was started in the late eighties. Half a dozen companies and universities got together, and they wrote the PROFIBUS spec, and that evolved into the into into PROFIBUS DP and PROFIBUS PA for process automation in the early two thousands. PROFINET came under the umbrella. And the reason I bring all this up is because there are some newer technologies under our umbrella that I I think the audience might wanna know about. Of course, EyeLink is is the one that we’ll talk about today, and that was in 02/2009. But there are some others like Umlocks, which is a location tracking standard. There’s one called MTP, module type package, NOAA, NAMR open architecture, also under our umbrella. And, basically, what we do is promote, maintain, write the specs, turn them into standards, and the work on those specs is done in working groups, which are staffed by volunteers, engineers from member companies. They donate their time to to develop the specs, for these technologies we have under our umbrella. And we’re a little bit unique in that we’re decentralized. So we have competence centers and test labs and training centers located throughout the world. It’s not all just in one headquarter kind of place, and they’re all independent. But they have a contract or quality of services agreement with PI that says, hey. If you have a question about the technologies, go to a competent center. If you want further training, go to a training center. If you want to to test the device, go to a test lab. And then they are all working with regional PI associations of which we PI North America is one of them. We were founded in 1994 by a guy by the name of Mike Bryant. At that time, we were called Probibus Trade Organization. And we are the and now I didn’t come up with this this name. We are the North American Rio League. This is a an IO Link designation, a regional IO Link interest group, which means that we have a a separate contract and and quality of services agreement with the IO Link community to to promote and and work with members, specifically for IO Link here in in North America. And we’re nonprofit, member supported. I got nothing. So you’re talking about products and and and stuff at the beginning. I got nothing to sell today. We’re we’re working solely on on technology. Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, I do wanna throw out there, though, you have a great update every month about all the new products that fall in the buckets of IO Link, PROFINET, PROFIBUS, and a lot of those new products across our IO Link. So while they may not have products of their own, they do keep the, industry up to date on who’s joining up and signing up, for these new these you know, the jump on board and release new products that, that, you know, meet these specifications. And you know what? Maybe you’re not using PROFINET because you’re using brand x or y. You still probably use an IO Link. So Oh, that’s for sure. Very interesting very interesting updates that you publish every month and, as a blog. And, I know when I was doing the news for a couple years, I would always, go to your site to look for new updates. Michael Bowne (PI): Cool. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, I got a slide on that at the end, but the the you’re referring to the, the PROFINews. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yes. The PROFINews. Yeah. Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. That’s a that’s that’s been a baby and a labor of love, for a while now. And and, oh, man, it’s it’s it’s incredible because every month, the most when we track this kind of stuff, obviously, the most popular article is the new products. Well, because that’s what, right, that’s what people want is the stuff they can buy, the stuff they can use. Yeah. Yeah. That’s and we got another one coming out next week, and every month, we we push that out, and it’s always half a dozen or a dozen new products, half of which are are IO Link. I mean, it’s just growing like crazy. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And you guys have had some good articles. I think you had a great series, and I’m now I’m stretching it. So stretching the old memory here. I thought you had a great series on on, MTP, which I really enjoyed. Did did I remember that correctly? Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. We we try and, you know, we try and get some editorial content in there. It’s it calls it falls into, like, three main buckets. What’s new products? What are new trainings and events that are coming up? And then and then some editorial content. I think I think what we’re driving at is I think we need to do maybe an MTP podcast here at some point in the down the road. Shawn Tierney (Host): Probably. Yeah. Down the road. Definitely. Definitely. I I’m still you know, I still have a very casual understanding of it. But, let me throw it back to you because I kinda jumped in and interrupted your your your, update. Michael Bowne (PI): No. It’s good. It saves it saves us at the end when when that slide, we can just just jump over it. Now we’ve we’ve got it covered, and it’s and it’s an and it’s an important one. But you kinda you kinda gave me a nice lead into the to the next one, which talks about, the Ireland community. And I’ll start from the bottom, work my way up as being fieldbus independent. Shawn Tierney (Host): I just wanna break in here for a moment and thank you folks in the audience who’ve signed up for my membership program. Really, really appreciate you all. Eighteen months ago, after reviewing ten plus years of being on YouTube, you know, it was pretty obvious that there’s no real revenue on YouTube. I mean, it comes in at maybe 1% of my monthly expenses. And so that ad revenue there is just not something to rely on going forward because it’s not something that’s been reliable in the past. And so I set up the membership program both on YouTube and at the automationblog.com. And I wanna thank all of you who signed up. I, we have a $5 tier, which I know most people sign up at, and then we have a couple other higher tiers. And so I just wanted to thank you all for doing that. You are actually the membership program’s probably 3% of my monthly, revenue. And so that’s, you know, one or two times more, than, what the YouTube revenue was. So thank you all for that. And I hope that, some of you who are not part of the membership program will consider becoming a member, supporting my work so I can do videos that are not always sponsored videos. Now I love sponsored videos. I love it when a vendor sends me a piece of hardware and then sits down with me and teach me how to use it so I can create a video ad free and share with you on how to use that product, or maybe they just come on the podcast and sponsor it to make it ad free so we can tell their story about their product or service. And I I will continue to do that going forward, but I would really also like to do more audience generated type of, content. So content where you generate the idea and say, Shawn, why don’t you try this? Or, Shawn, why don’t you do this? And a lot of those topics that the audience wants to see, they’re not necessarily topics that the vendor wants to promote with advertising dollars. Okay? And so that’s the whole purpose of the, membership program. Like I said, right now, it’s around 3% of my monthly income comes from and I’m talking about the business income, not my personal income, the business income. 3% of what the business needs to, to move forward and pay its bills every month. But, still, I that that, you know, so many of you have decided to jump in and support me. I just wanted to stop and say thank you very much from the bottom of my heart. And if you’re not part of the membership program and you’re doing financially well, please consider if you enjoy. This is episode two forty six of the automation podcast. Every episode has been free. The audio has been free for all 246 of them. And most of those episodes I funded myself just by well, you can understand how you fund something when you don’t have the income coming in. But in any case, if you enjoy it, please consider becoming a member, and we can branch out and do other things together. And with that, let’s go ahead and jump back into this week’s episode and learn more about IO Link. Michael Bowne (PI): So like you said, yeah. I mean, organizationally, the IO Link community came to PI in 2009 and organizationally under PI because we have the infrastructure for working groups and and IP policies and contracts and things like that. But the IO Link community has their own steering committee, and from the from the outset and from every IO Link event that we do and everything that we do is is independent of, of any Profibus or Profinet stuff. And we try really, really hard to maintain that independence, no matter what vendor you’re using. And there, at this point, we’ve got 500 companies in the IO Link community, and it’s really just growing by by leaps and bounds. So we kinda track this stuff by nodes and all the IO Link companies. They send their node count to an independent auditor, collects the counts, and gives us back an an an anonymous total. So we don’t know where or who is selling them, but we get the total. And you can just see this this hockey stick exponential growth. Particularly in 2023, there was some supply chain over purchasing that that went on. I mean, that’s like we’re looking at a a growth rate of 89% there, which is obviously unsustainable. But still, last year, 9,700,000 nodes were added. Again, because it’s field bus independent, it really has no competitor. And that’s what’s kinda cool about IO Link. I mean, you wanna do and and you don’t need to choose a field bus and therefore get IO Link. You can use any field bus or industrial container protocol, and IO Link works with it. Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, I wanna just, mention for the audio listeners. If we go back to 2012, it looks like we’re probably at the 1,000,000 mark or below it. And as you go to, you know, 2022, you look like you’re 35,700,000. Is that 2022 or 2023? Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. That’s the 2022. Exactly. 35,700,000.0. Yeah. Shawn Tierney (Host): And then at, the end of twenty twenty three, we’re at 51.6. So you talked about that, you know, overbuying. And then at the end of 2024, we’re at 61,300,000.0. So you can just see from, you know, 2022 to, 2024, you went from 35 to 61. So the adoption, like you said, it’s a hockey stick. The adoption has really picked up. And I think you you hit the nail on the head because it is fieldbus independent. It’s a way to just get more information out of our devices, like sensors and photo eyes, you know, and it’s just you know? I mean, though, these chipsets that come in these, devices now are just amazing. Michael Bowne (PI): And that’s what, I mean, that’s what the whole point of this is. You’re you’re not gonna put a $5 ethernet chip, like, enter $5 ethernet interface on a $15 proximity sensor. But computing and memory has gotten really, really small and really, really cheap that it’s on just about everything. And so this proximity sensor not only can tell you if, like, for example, let’s say it’s on a conveyor belt. It cannot only tell you if the box is there or not, but it can tell you how many blue boxes would buy or how many red boxes would buy or if the box that’s going by is off kilter or or misaligned or something like that. But how do you get that data out in in inexpensively, and here we are. IO Link is is the way to do it. Shawn Tierney (Host): I’m sad to see a lot of these sensors too come with humidity, temperature, and all these other things should be like, really? I can get that out of my Michael Bowne (PI): photo eye. But yeah. Multivariable. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You know, traditionally, with an analog interface, how did you get that? You couldn’t get it. Mhmm. But now with a digital interface, which is what we’re talking about, digitalization in the last meter, now you can get that informate that data, that information, and do some pretty cool stuff with it. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yes. You can. Yeah. I’ll talk Michael Bowne (PI): a little bit about the architecture a little bit here to kind of get a little bit into the technical side of things about how IO Link works, but it they’re kind of some main devices, and that’s the IO Link masters and the IO Link devices. And these IO Link masters are available for we have here 16 different industrial Ethernet or field bus systems. 21 manufacturers offer central PLC, like an IO Link master built into the backplane of the PLC if you so desired. And the number of devices that so that hockey stick we showed before is just exploding. I mean, we’ve got 60 something million sold, and we have tens of thousands of unique IO Link devices from hundreds of different device manufacturers that have implemented this interface. And for those that if there’s anybody on the podcast that wants to do this and add this to their sensors, there are a number of different companies that help with, product design, either with the chips, the transceivers, the software stacks, and then a number of companies that help provide technical support in order to do that. So an IO Link system kind of is made up of four parts. Like I said, you have the IO Link master. That’s the gateway between the IO Link devices, the IO Link interface, and the higher level communication system, such as the fieldbus or the in industrial Ethernet protocol or backplane. You have the devices. This is the exciting part. Your sensors, your switch gears, your valves, your signal lamps, maybe some simple actuators, whatever the case may be. You’ve got a IO Link cable, just a three wire unshielded, super simple connection between the master and the devices. And then every device has an IODD or IO Link device description file, and I’ll explain how that gets used to engineer and parameterize the IO Link system and the and the devices. And what this kind of enables you know, traditionally, communication only reached the IO level. You had connection between the PLCs and the and the the the IO, and then it kinda stopped there because all those sensors and actuators were not accessible. They were analog, and you got your one process data. You brought process signal, and that’s where it ended. But with IO Link, what we do is we enable that communication bidirectional, cyclic and acyclic, and that’s the cool part, all the way from higher level systems, not only to the PLC or especially from the PLC, but down all the way down to the simple sensors and actuators, which are now accessible. And you kinda touched on this before where these chipsets have gotten really, really smart and really, really powerful. And it’s not that the it’s not that any of these use cases that are that are being solved with IO Link that none of them are new. What’s new is the ease with which they can be solved. So because you can get all this extra data out, things like OEE, showing things like downtime tracking, track and trace, predictive maintenance, for example, remote monitoring, recipe management, SPC, all these things. It’s not that these use cases are now being solved. The you know, we’ve we’ve been doing this for a long, long time. It’s just the ease with which because because it’s a standard and because all this stuff is standardized in how it gets from the the the device to the master and upwards to the controller, it just makes it easier. If you spend all your effort trying to gather and collect and sanitize the data because every device is different and, you know, that’s just that’s just a mess, and the ROI disappears really fast on any kind of project to do that. But if we have a standard on how to do that, then we make it very, very easy to do, and everything can come in, quite nicely. And and and it just and it just works a whole lot easier. You start getting access to that data. And so what we’re starting to see is connections being made. You know, you talk about the the flattening of the traditional automation hierarchy where now not only is that IO block or that sensor connected to a to a PLC, but it’s got some extra data. Like you said, like, this little photo I might have a a a temperature or a a moisture, you know, sensor also in there, just because it’s part of the the chipset. But the PLC don’t care about that. He just wants to know about the, you know, the information from the photo eye. So what do you do with all this extra beautiful information that isn’t necessarily processed data? Well, maybe the MES wants to know about that. So how do you get that? And in a running factory, in a brownfield environment, rule number one is don’t touch the running PLC. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Michael Bowne (PI): And rule number two is see rule number one. That thing is running, and any minute of downtime costs more than any one thing on the on the factory floor. Shawn Tierney (Host): Before we go on, I did wanna break in here and tell you a little bit about my website, theautomationschool.com, where I do my online training. I also do in person training. And you probably don’t know that that all started back in 2014 with a Kickstarter I ran for my first PLC basics course. At the time, it was called microprogrammable controller basics, and I ended up changing it just the PLC basics. But in any case, since then, I’ve had added a dozen courses on a various number of topics, and you’ll find them all at the automationschool.com. But what I really wanted to talk to you about is why. Why did I do that? Well, I had spent twenty five years as a certified authorized Rockwell Automation distributor specialist covering PLCs, HMIs, SCADA, MES, and other stuff too. Right? And I knew from visiting, customers in the plant every single workday, almost every workday, that there was a real need for affordable training. So the first thing is, you know, large companies have large expensive, large paychecks, and lots of overhead, so they gotta charge a lot. Right? And so that was a problem because a lot of the people I was working with, you know, the controls engineers, automation engineers, high end electricians and technicians, they had to fund their training themselves. Their company was sort of like, no. We trained this guy back in the nineties, and then he will have to get a better job. So we’re not spending money on training. And so all these people were having to train themselves, and it was unaffordable to either, you know, buy the the, vendors courses. Or even if the the company did have training dollars, it was unaffordable to send them away for a week to a $3,000 course somewhere halfway across the country, probably $3,000 worth of travel and hotels too. Right? And then they go where without one of their smartest guys, right, one of their best people, because you you that’s usually who you’re gonna train and and uplift through the through the organization. Either people are doing good on the lower level, you wanna bring them up and train them on automation. And so that’s why I started the the, automationschool.com because of the the try to provide I knew the the courses would never be Hollywood quality. I mean, this isn’t Hollywood quality. Right? But I knew it could be helpful and and, you know, be affordable by just filming them in my garage. Right? And, you know, picking up some used equipment and putting together the episodes. And the site has grown so much. We have thousands of, students from over a 150 countries. We have hundreds of, vendors we work with. But the other thing I did is, is made up by one’s own forever. Right? So more like an ebook or an audiobook or an m p three album. Right? And the reason I did that and I understand why the vendors don’t do that because they’re like, well, they’ll sign up one guy in the I and e shop, and he’ll share his password for everybody. You know, that could happen. Right? People could rob a bank too. But I’m like, you know, most people, when they buy a course and I saw this. I was on an independent platform for a while, and on that platform, they showed you how the progress of every student. Most people buy the course well before they’re ready to take it. And I’m like, I’m not gonna charge people a monthly fee or only give them access to to a short window if, you know, they have good intentions now, but it takes them a while to actually free up their schedule to get into the course and take it. So that’s why my courses are buy one’s own forever. And it can you know, as they grow, the price goes up because I’m adding more and more content, and I do split them out and make cheaper versions over time. But, those people who buy in early, they get the like, my s seven course. Like, I think it originally came out at 40 or $50, and now it’s $200 because I’ve added so much to it over the years. But in any case, same with ControlLogix and CompactLogix. And then the other thing too is I want them to be able to take it more than once. Right? So if you take a let’s say you take a ControlLogix course. Right? You don’t use it for a couple years, you probably gonna have to take it again. And I don’t want you to feel like you have to pay a monthly fee to do that. It’s like an ebook or an m p three album. You bought it. You bought access to it, I guess I should say, and now it’s yours. Right? And the other thing too is I support my students personally. Okay? So I check the website every day for questions, every work day. I should say, you know, I do take Sundays off. So in any case, if you’re if it’s a work day, though, and I’m working, I’m not on vacation or traveling for business, I’m up there. I’m answering questions. And I should say, even when I’m traveling on business, I’m I’m on there answering questions. So although if I don’t have any hardware, there’s some questions you can’t ask. Right? I guess I should have said some questions you can’t answer. But in any case, I just wanted to share that with you. Theautomationschool.com, a high quality online courses, five star rated, buy once, own forever, and guess what? I’m updating all the PLC courses, and if you already own or buy one of the existing PLC courses, you not only get the updated lessons that get added to that course, you get the new course completely free. So I’m not gonna charge you for just an updated version of a class on the same core on the same product. Right? That would be kinda silly in my opinion. So, I hope you guys appreciate that. Again, if you didn’t know any of this, if you have any questions, if you go over to the automationschool.com, at the very top of the site, you’ll see links to contact me, set up a meeting, leave me a voice mail, fill out a form. You know, I have many ways you can get in touch with me. And if you have multiple people you wanna sign up, I do have multiple seat discounts starting at three seats. And, I do actually work with a number of Fortune 500 companies who, you know, enroll maybe 10 people at a time to get that discount. And you know what? Unlike the big vendors, if somebody you sign somebody up and they all take the courses, I’ll let you replace that person for free of charge. You don’t have to pay anything extra. If you sign up Joe and he decides to quit or leave or not to learn, you can put Bob in his place. That’s not a problem. Now I have said some situations where the same spot kept getting replaced or replaced or replaced. At some point, I do charge a maintenance fee to to switch the names out. And then, hey. Look. If Joe leaves and he took, you know, two out of three courses, I’ll prorate refilling that seat with the new person. Right? So whatever percentage of the lessons he took versus the total number of lessons, I’ll prorate it. So, you know, we’ve had number of cases where somebody goes through half of the content then leaves, so we can reset that seat for half price. And I that’s something you won’t find, any major vendors doing as well. So if you have any questions about that, reach out to me over at the automation school dot com. And with that said, let’s jump right back into this week’s episode of the automation podcast. Michael Bowne (PI): In a brownfield installation, what we’re seeing these these cool little edge gateways, And what they’ll do is they’ll grab the bus, they’ll collect some data, and pump it out the other side via, you know, maybe an IT protocol that that the IT guys wanna know about or, you know, like an MQTT or an OPC UA. Of course, in a in a greenfield, in a new installation where you’ve got a brand new PLC, yeah, get the data there. That guy has all the brains, has all the all the information in one ply in all in one place, so get it from the PLC. But in Brownfield, I the edge gateways, even some IO Link masters are being put on the market that have not only an industrial Ethernet interface, you know, just on one port, on the same port, industrial Ethernet interface for control, but that interface will also speak like a higher level IT protocol like an MQTT or an OPC UA, so you can get it even from the IO Link master that data is is accessible. So the different ways to get it, and, and that’s kind of the whole point is is getting that data from the sensors to the to the master and then further upwards. Shawn Tierney (Host): We actually covered a product on the show that had two ports. It had one for your fieldbus Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. And then it Shawn Tierney (Host): had a separate one for your IT or your IOT or your MQTT, which I thought was so inventive too because now the control system gets its data, and it’s under control. But reporting wise, you know, that’s kind of the best of both both worlds. You don’t have to have two sensors. You can send it to data both ways. And, yeah, just it’s the way you can do with these things and, you know, a lot of the sensors you probably have out there, I’ve noticed that some vendors, every sensor they sell is IO Link. So Yeah. You may already have it installed and not know it because the price difference to add it to some products. Once you get up to the fanciest sensors, of course, not the simplest sensors, but once you get up to the fanciest sensors, it’s it’s, you know, there’s a lot of horsepower in that chipset. So, you know, they can add IO Link for for pennies on the dollar. So very interesting stuff, though. Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. That’s that’s a good point. And and, you know, of course, we could spend all day talking about IT, OT, and the segmentation of networks and all who’s who owns the IP addresses. And we I mean, that’s a whole separate topic. But in cases like that, yeah, it’s cool. You got a separate port. IT can do what they want on their one port. And if but, hey, don’t touch me in the control realm because Mhmm. This is my this is my realm. And and you bring up another good point, and that’s kind of there’s a I don’t I don’t wanna say that, you know, there’s there isn’t, like, a thick black line between, okay, this sensor is simple, therefore, should have IO link, or this sensor is complex, therefore, should have its own industrial Ethernet, interface. There’s almost a little bit of a gray area, but you’re right. I mean Mhmm. We kinda leave it up to the vendors to decide. Hey. My thing needs the horsepower that and it’s so complex that I need something like, like, an industrial Ethernet protocol. But, oh, you know what? This other central line is tailored for low cost, and so, therefore, I’m gonna put IO Link on it. But that’s, you know, that’s up to them to to decide. So when we talk about IO Link in terms of benefits, we kinda like to make the analogy with USB because everybody knows USB. You got your USB cable. You plug it into your computer on one end. On the other end, you plug it into your you know, you plug your mouse in or you plug your keyboard in, and you plug your key your printer in. Automatically, it it uses the same cable. It’s always the same. Everything everybody’s using that interface, and we kinda see the same thing with IO Link where it’s just a unified, unshielded three wire sensor cable, and it can use be used with all IO Link devices. Up until now, you know, if you had smart devices, right, memory and computing power is smaller and cheaper. Up until now, to get that extra information out, you would need multiple cables. The wiring is time consuming. It’s expensive. They’re large, costly to to install and maintain. But But with iolink, you just you just plug it in. It’s a simple m 12 plug, and then you don’t have all these spare parts of different cable types. It’s just one cable and, easy to maintain, thin, flexible. I’ve got a I’ve got an example here I’d like to highlight, and I’ll try and talk through it for those that are that are listening instead of instead of viewing. This is an example of 256 IOs via 16 fieldbus modules. So, like, fieldbus like remote IOs or whatever the case may be. So we’re connecting them to a PLC out in the field. And to do that, we would need 16 fieldbus modules in order to do that. These are just let’s let’s call them simple DI, you know, digital input proximity sensors. Mhmm. Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm. Michael Bowne (PI): With IO Link, we can do that via just one fieldbus module. So that’s just one IP address or one IO Link master. So already you’re cutting out 15 of those more expensive devices. And then we use what are called so called IO Link hubs, which bring those DI signals, put it all on one IO Link connection, put it into IO Link master, and send it out the other side. And with that, we can connect if you imagine these 272 IOs as shown here via just one fieldbus module. So it’s showing just huge, huge, huge savings simply on cost alone, due to the wiring. And, that that one cable, it fits all sensor types. So simple sensors, like a proximity sensor all the way up to complex devices like pressure, temperature, signal lamps, and even simple actuators all use the same IO Link cable. Shawn Tierney (Host): So where an IO Link device would be giving you not just on or off, but a lot of other information and some of that analog information. If all you had was a dumb device, well, now I can put 16 of them or so, you know, some number of them together Mhmm. Bring them into a hub. And each since each device only has an on or off, where a regular IO Link device would have lots of other information, you can now just join them all together and say, okay. Here we go. Here’s inputs one through x. Michael Bowne (PI): It’s, almost like multiplexing, put it all together on one and then Mhmm. Pump it out the other side. Yeah. Shawn Tierney (Host): Perfect. Michael Bowne (PI): The other way we relate IO Link to USB is kind of in the the identification and parameterization. So if we look at how you plug your printer into your computer, you plug it in, and automatically, your computer says, oh, okay. I know that that’s a HP something something desk check printer and and okay. How do you wanna do you wanna do color or black and white? Do you wanna do full duplex? Do you wanna do back and white, back and front on on the printing? And the same is true for for IO Link. So you plug in that IO Link sensor into your IO Link master. It reads it. It says, hey. The dialing says, hey. This is who I am. This is my type. This is my serial number. Every device has a vendor ID and a device ID. And then the IO Link master goes up and gets the IODD file, and I’ll show that here in a little bit, and then you can start that parametrization. And it’s just like it’s just like a USB. It’s it’s, no special knowledge is required. You can format changes very, very easily. You can even do them on the fly, for example, with an HMI on the on the machine. And, the identification methods make sure that you don’t plug in a wrong device into an IO Nialink port, which could stop the machine. It’ll it’ll it’ll recognize that and prevent, incorrect connections. It allows you to exchange devices very easily of the same type or the the same same manufacturer, same same device. So just like USB, it it it kinda works in that way. And then the other way, it’s kind of like USBs in the diagnostics, and this is a really, really powerful part of IO Link. So when your printer says, I’m out of paper or I’m out of toner or there’s a paper jam, it sends that signal, standardized signal to the to the computer, to your computer, your PC, and you know exactly what what to do, how to fix your your printer, why your printer isn’t working the same as true for IO Link. We’ve standardized these diagnostics. So this is a, a photo eye saying, hey, under voltage or over temperature or the the window on the photo eye has gotten dirty, so signal quality is deteriorating. So we standardized all this, so that these diagnostics all come in the same way, and, you can, you know, fix any any problem as fast as possible to to to, minimize downtime. And in the case of things like signal quality, hey. The the the window’s getting dirty. This enables things like preventative maintenance. Oh, I know I’m going into a planned shutdown next week. Now’s the time to go out and clean those sensors kind of thing, because I know that they’re I know that the signal’s going is deteriorating. So some cool things like that, that wouldn’t be possible with a traditional analog signal, which we’re showing here. And it also makes really no sense. I mean, in this example, what we’re showing here is a generic this is a pre pressure sensor. You know, it does its measurement. It then does some amplification, and then to stabilize the signal, it does an a to d, puts it into a micro, which does some temperature compensation linearization. But then, traditionally, prior to IO Link, what you do is then do another data a to send it out via zero to 10 volts or four to 20 milliamps, whatever, into the into a, an a to d card on the backplane of the PLC, I mean, this is just this is just crazy. It’s it’s time consuming. It’s, the the signal is still susceptible to interference. The the analog inputs on the cards on the PLC are expensive. There’s manual calibration of the signal. But with IO Link, it just makes sense. You take that signal right from the micro, pump it out digitally via an IO Link inexpensive interface to your, to your IO. And, we use that unshielded three wire inexpensive cable, Shawn Tierney (Host): and Michael Bowne (PI): then you get all those parameters and diagnostics. And, really, that’s the point of using IO Link is all that extra data, all that extra information that that comes along with the the process data. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And so those of you who are listening, I mean, what we saw there was to to shoot out a four to 20 milliamp signal or zero to 10 volt signal, it had to convert it from the digital value that was inside the device to analog, then I have to pump it out. And, you know, we always have to worry about noise and, you know, shielding and all that, you know, depending on the length of the run. And then in the PLC analog card, it’s converting it from analog back to digital, so you have that zero to 32,000 value or zero to 64,000, whatever your PLC does. And so IO Link does eliminate that. It eliminates the noise of your traditional analog. And I know I’ve met so many customers say we have no noise issues on our analog, and that’s great. But not everybody’s in that same boat. So you’re eliminating that d to a and then a to d, and that’s that’s you’re keeping everything digital. So you’re not only getting a cleaner, more accurate value from your device, you’re also getting all those additional pieces of information and the ability to be maybe configured to products. Some of these products need to be changed based on the type of product they’re sensing, you know, the type of fluid going through, the recipe that’s being drawn, the lighting, the colors. So all those different things, you you know, with a typical analog signal, you’re not gonna be able to send back and do a configuration to it. So, go ahead. Back to you, Michael. Michael Bowne (PI): No. You’re right. Exactly. We we have I I took this line out of this deck for the for, you know, for for brevity, but we show examples of of particularly food and bev, right, where you have batches, different I’m running a different batch. I’m running a different product. I need a different label on the on the bottle or whatever I’m running through the the the machine. You reconfigure that via the HMI. It sends all that stuff down to the sensors. Okay. Now I know I’m looking for I should be sensing this instead of this. Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. It could be a clear bottle sensor, the clear bottle detector that the bottles change colors. So it’s has a different setting, or it could be background suppression depending on the color of the product. You need a different setting or a color sensor. Maybe you’re making different products and the different colors, and so, you know, all this is now configurable through your PLC, through your control system, through your HMI, which I just think is so cool. Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. It’s it’s it’s super cool. Alright. Let’s get a little bit technical here. I think for some of the engineers, that might be nice. The IO Link signal and 24 volt power supply, like like we talked about before, it’s it’s an m 12 connector. So you’ve got five pins. Your pin one is your high, pin three is your low, and then pin four is your CQ line. That’s that’s where the IO Link digital signal lives. It’s serial. It’s bidirectional. It’s point to point. And then we also have on that same pin four, if you so desired, you could also parameterize your device via IO Link, set it all up, and then put it in what’s known as a CO mode or simple IO mode. And I’ll show that on the next slide too if maybe you’ve just got a digital IO, that you want a fast switching interface. So pins one and three are our power. Pins two and five are freely assignable. So for example, if you wanted to use that pin four for your IO Link signal and then separately have your own DI or DQ line, you could do that using a three wire, four wire, five wire cable. And then what’s cool also in IO Link and we’re starting to see this more and more is we call this port class b, same m 12 connector, same five pins, but pins two and five provide a separate power supply for additional power because and this is cool. We’re starting to see more and more IO link just, like, simple actuators Mhmm. On the market. And that’s really neat. So let’s say you’ve got some simple linear actuator, not not a complex, you know, driver, you know, or motor or something like that, but a a simple linear actuator. You can drive that via IO Link if you just gotta move something really, you know, maybe maybe even within connected to the same ports, on the master as some other sensors, and so you can do that logic in the master itself, you know, simple simple stuff like that. But that’s also possible with IO Link where you can drive it, not just sense it, but also actuate it with with IO Link. So that’s that’s some cool stuff that’s coming down the line. Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, and I found that all the IO Link devices I had here, they came with the SIO mode already set up. So I was able to use the photo eyes and the proxies and all the other devices just as simple IO devices and without even touching the IO Link side of it, which I think is cool because, you know, in in many cases, you just need a photo eye to get up and running. Right? Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. And that’s and that’s how they come out of the box. So out of the box, it’s in that CO mode. And I think you you kinda touched on this before. Maybe many customers have IO Link devices Yeah. On their machine. They don’t even know it Mhmm. Shawn Tierney (Host): Because they Michael Bowne (PI): took it out of the box. They needed that photo. They plugged it in and away they went. But there’s also that all all that extra stuff. If they wanted to, they could get down into the IO Link part of it. Mhmm. Maybe to reparameterize it, or what if you got to change, you still wanna use the CO mode. You just want that digital input. What if you wanna change the switching distance, for example, something like that? I don’t want it to switch at one meter. I want it to switch at two meters or whatever. So all that all that can be configured via IO Link. So on the if we if we talk about the the IO Link communication itself, there are three transmission speeds, comms one, two, and three. Comm one is 4.8 kilobits per second. COM two is 38.4 kilobits per second, and COM three is 230.4 kilobits per second. IO Link masters support all three comm modes, but devices are free to choose based on what they’re sending. If it’s temperature, maybe you don’t need COM three because that’s changing more slowly than something like like like we’re talking about a proximity sensor, which may want to send that a little bit more quickly and uses that that COM three mode. Many, many devices use COM three mode because still two hundred two hundred thirty kilobits per second, that’s, you know, that’s not gonna that’s not gonna kill you. And then a typical cycle time, because this is the question we get all the time, is what kind of cycle time can be achieved? It’s about a millisecond at at com three. So if you’re, you know, trying to go submillisecond, you know, maybe IO Link is not is not the solution at that point. But for many, many applications, that one millisecond cycle time can can, can accomplish whatever they need to. And then what’s cool is that from the EyeLink master’s perspective, it’ll have eight or 16 sensors connected to it. Each device can be set independently. So on this port this device, I’m talking at this comm rate and this cycle time. This other port number two, I’m speaking at a different transmission speed and a different cycle time and so on and so forth, you know, so that you’re not sending data unnecessarily that is simply just being sent for the purposes of being sent. And that’s and that’s pretty cool. Shawn Tierney (Host): And a lot of times, you don’t because you’re not reading a digital on off, you don’t the speed, you’re you’re actually getting a value, and that value a lot of times your PLC is not gonna be running faster than a millisecond scan time. So if you’re getting your value updated, you know, faster than the PLC, then that’s a then then that’s really what you need. Do you know how fast is your PLC running? How fast can your program controller use that value? And, you know, I’d be hard pressed to see a lot of applications where they’re breaking that one millisecond update rate. The other thing too is just because we’re talking at the speed doesn’t mean the actual calculation is even possible in a millisecond. So, you know, temperature changes, things that that sensors there’s limit limitations to the physical world. You know? And, you know, I I don’t know if anybody’s ever said this to you before, Michael, but when I first saw the whole comm thing, I thought that was confusing because having grown up with PCs, I always thought of comp one, comp two, comp one group. Right? And these are really just bought what I would call from the old days, sewer rates. Right? Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. Exactly. Shawn Tierney (Host): Exactly. Insight why why they is it just maybe because it was the standard started overseas or any idea why they went with CALM? Michael Bowne (PI): I’m not gonna lie to you. That’s the first time I’ve gotten that question. Shawn Tierney (Host): Really? Okay. Michael Bowne (PI): Why they’re called that yeah. Let’s just let’s just rewrite this. They call it BOD one, BOD two, BOD three. Shawn Tierney (Host): I know. It’s just so weird. But, anyways, sorry sorry, audience. I just have Michael Bowne (PI): That’s a good one. That’s a good one. Nope. I’ll take that one back. Alright. So IO Link data comes in a couple different flavors. You have your process data. That’s your bread and butter, what you’re using to run the run the factory. Transmitted cyclically in a Telegram, the the data size is defined by the device, and it can be up to 32 bytes for each device, both input and output. Along with that comes a value bit indicating whether the process data is valid or invalid, and this can be transmitted is transmitted cyclically with the the process data. And then you have things that happen acyclically. These would be device data like parameters, identification data, diagnostic information, and these happen on request of the IO Link master. Obviously, a lot of that happens during startup, but also can happen during runtime if, as shown here on the slide with the with the last case, events can be error messages. So the the, the device will set a flag. Hey. There’s a short circuit or so, and then the the master can pull that device for more information, more diagnostic information, based on that event flag that’s that’s set by the set by the device. And so, the the question we always get at this point is, how do I make this all work? How do I integrate this stuff into my into my plant? Shawn Tierney (Host): Before we go any further, I did wanna jump back and tell you about a service I’m doing that I don’t think I’ve talked about very much, and it’s comes in two different flavors. First of all, I’ve actually had some vendors and companies reach out to me and say, Shawn, I know you don’t wanna travel all around the country with all your equipment. Right? That’s not what you do, but we want you to come out and teach us something. Would you come out and do a lecture? We’ll set up our own equipment. And, can you come out and just run us through some of the products and teach us some of your knowledge, and you don’t have to worry about bringing all the equipment with you. And so that’s something I really don’t talk about much, but I do wanna tell you that if you’re looking for training and you need it on-site, of course, you do have to pay for my travel time. But if you do want me to come out for a day or two days or for a week and do training on any of the products I train online now. Now if you want me to come out and do training on a product I don’t already have a curriculum on, I can’t do it. The building the curriculum is where all of my costs is on the training. Right? I shouldn’t say that. The web service in in in the back end does cost something every month as well, but most of the time it goes into and that’s really what being self employed is it’s time. Right? Most of the time goes into build building the curriculum. So if you have a need for somebody like Shawn, we can’t do a webinar. We can’t do a Teams meeting. We we can’t do online training. We want you to come out. And, again, I just got a call on this yesterday. Yes. I can do that. As long as the curriculum I’m gonna teach you is something I already have existing. And, I’m not gonna hand out lab books. We can buy you lab books if you want. People sell great lab books for $80.90 dollars a pop. If you want lab books, I’d be more than happy to include that in the quote. But in any case, I that’s one thing I do. The other thing I’ve been doing with vendors is they’ve hired me to come out and interview them at their trade show. So, usually, what happens is somebody will sponsor a podcast for $5.99. They’ll come on. We’ll do the interview. I’ll edit it all up. I’ll put their links in. We’ll talk about the thumbnail, and then we’ll release it ad free. Right? And so that covers my cost of producing that episode roughly. Right? We just raised it from $4.99 to $5.99 because most of the shows were were actually upside down on, so we need to raise it a little bit to make sure we’re covering our cost. But in any case, sometimes vendors have, you know, they have their own trade show, and they may have all of their product specialists there. And they’re like, hey, Shawn. We would like to do six or seven interviews at the trade show. Would you come out and actually record them there? We’ll pay your flight. We’ll pay your hotel and your expenses to get there and back. And so that’s another thing I haven’t talked about much that I’m doing. I’m working with some, you know, top five vendors to do that, and I’ve done it in the past. And so I did wanna explain it to you if you’re a vendor listening or if you are, talking to your vendor, like, you should have Shawn come out and interview all your people. You have them all in one place. Let them know that they can contact me about doing that. Again, you can contact me at theautomationblog.com, LinkedIn, YouTube, theautomationschool.com, pretty much any way you want. You can write me snail mail if you want. But in any case, I do wanna share that, and we also have in person training. I think I’ve talked to you guys about this quite a bit. We do custom in person training for as little as two people, $900 a day up to four people. And so if you wanna get some people in here, we can actually do Allen Bradley and Siemens in two days back to back. One day Allen Bradley, one day Siemens. So if you wanna learn two PLCs in two days back to back now I do have somebody ask me, hey, Shawn. Where’s your schedule of upcoming courses? And back in my previous life of twenty five years, we were always trying to sign people up and then canceling, you know, events and classes because, we wouldn’t get enough people to meet the vendors minimum. So I don’t wanna do that. So I don’t have actually any dates now. I have been talking with doing a intensive POC boot camp, but, you know, I just got so much things going on in my life right now that I don’t think I could pull that together this fall. But in any case, if you need some training, you wanna send your people here, we can even start at, like, noontime and then end the final day at noontime so you can get your flights and travel and all that. We’re one hour away from Albany, New York, and that’s a great little airport to fly in and out of. Actually, I’m flying out of it in November. They’ll go to a trade show, to interview vendors, vendors, product people. But in any case, I just wanna break in. There’s something about my company. I don’t think I ever talked to you guys about much, and so I just wanted to insert it here since I’m sponsoring this episode and eating the cost to produce it. I wanted to share that with you. And now, I won’t be back until the end of the show, so please enjoy the rest of this episode. Send any feedback you have to me, and, we’ll talk to you at the end of the show. Michael Bowne (PI): And it kinda works like this. So you have your IO Link device, which has an IODD file, which we mentioned earlier, that gets ingested by a parameterization tool. The parameterization tool comes with the IO Link master. Could be a separate piece of software. In some cases, could be a web page built into the IO Link master itself. Depends on depends on the vendor. But then what happens after that, how that data goes from the IO Link master to the controller, the PLC, is fieldbus specific. So you have your own, fieldbus file, you know, GSD or EDS or ESI, whatever the case may be, which is ingested by the engineering tool of the of the PLC and kind of outside way outside the scope of of of IO Link. And so the EDS file, the GSD file, and and that is the that data then gets sent via fieldbus, and that’s the sum of all the IO Link device data from all the ports on the IO Link master, where that IO Link communication as as defined by the IODD file, configures the port for the master and for the devices. And so an IODD file is provided by the devices, and every device manufacturer must provide an IODD for their device. It can be downloaded from the IODD finder, which is a website, and, it it describes what the entire device does. It describes the process data length, the process data structure, the parameter the name of the parameters, what range to expect, the data types, the addresses of the parameters in the in the in the indexes and subindexes. It can talk about GUI information, pages on which a parameter shall be displayed, names of parameter pages, all this kind of stuff is in an IODD file. It’s a it’s a zip file where you have that IODD as an XML. So that’s how we format the file. So it’s it’s both and this is the key part, both machine readable and and human readable. It’s got a little picture of the device, picture of the manufacturer logo. And with your permission, maybe I can show the IODD finder. It’s, ioddfinder.io-link.com. Mhmm. Looks simple enough. Let’s say we wanna look at a I’m gonna type in something here. Max ref. Let’s pick this. So this is just a this is a reference design, not an actual product that that, an end user would employ in their in their factory, but a reference design of something that maybe a device manufacturer would use. And it’s shows the manufacturer name, the article name number, the product name, the device ID. All that stuff is ingested by the parameterization tool, which then uses that information to go up to this IODD finder and grab the IODD file shown here, which can be downloaded if you wanted to look at it yourself. But in the past few years, we implemented what’s called an IODD viewer, which is pretty cool, which takes that nice XML file and parses it. So in human readable form, if you wanted to compare quickly, hey. I’m an end user. I wanna compare the IODD file from device vendor a to device vendor b to kinda see what kind of features they have. You could do that all very easily, and that’s shown here in the IODD viewer. What’s really what’s really neat about this IODD finder is that it has two ways it it it gets accessed. That’s this website that I just showed here. So as in humans are are accessing it, but it’s also accessible via API. And we we track the the traffic to the Audi divider, and the vast, vast majority of the traffic comes via API. So these are IO Link masters that just had a device connected to them. Parameter is I’m sorry. Parameterization tool that has a you know, or connected to the IO Link master that had device connected them. They go up to the AudiD finder, and they pull down that IODD file for the device that was just connected so that now they they can be, configured. And that’s really, really cool stuff. So all these IODD files are in one spot, in one database up there for for viewing or via the IODD viewer or for access from any number of IO Link tools out there. Shawn Tierney (Host): So when we’re talking about API access, we’re talking about the tool we’re using to configure the master. So it could be a web page built into the master, or it could be a separate software program. Do I have that correct? Michael Bowne (PI): Yeah. Right. So the parameterization tool, yeah, is usually is usually a software package that’ll run on your computer connecting to your, IO Link master that parameterizes the IO Link master. Yeah. Shawn Tierney (Host): Excellent. Or Michael Bowne (PI): through the network somehow. Maybe through the network. Yeah. Goes out and grabs that IODD file from the IODD finder to, you know, to parameterize that port in that device. Shawn Tierney (Host): Which is excellent because in previous iterations of smart networks and smart devices, you always have to go searching a vendor’s website, and then people would get the wrong file, and then I would be in the field saying this is never gonna work because you get the wrong device file. If they can’t give you the right device file, you’ll never get it to work. You know? And so this is much better having the organization have everybody require everybody who has IO Link to put their IODD files in the one place so everybody can always find it. And so the software tools can find it automatically for you, which is just a huge a huge change versus what we went through in the nineties. Michael Bowne (PI): Exactly. We came on a CD or something or what I mean, God only knows. I’m gonna switch gears a little bit here, talk about two topics subtopics within the IO Link domain, and one of them is IO Link wireless. This is, what we call is bridging the gap. So it’s an IEC standard, six eleven thirty nine as of November 2023, Shawn Tierney (Host): and Michael Bowne (PI): it’s enabling connections that simply weren’t possible before for IO Link. And in an example here, we’re showing a a smart machine tool where the IO Link sensor is integrated into the chuck of the lathe. Now that guy is spinning at 6,000 RPMs. That connection simply couldn’t be possible couldn’t be done any other way than with IO Link wireless or, let’s say, independent movers. So you’ve seen these moving systems where you’ve got the either floating or on a on a rail the other track systems exactly. If you integrate the smarts of IO Link onto the movers themselves instead of using, SCARA or Delta robots to do the to I mean, that’s you’re saving huge amounts of cost Mhmm. That way if the if those guys can move on their own, and they use IO Link wireless to do that. Slip rings where certainly sending power, is is well known, but sometimes communication can be tricky via slip ring. Mhmm. Yeah. End of arm tooling, like robot robot end of arms where you have a you’re gonna change the tool at the end of the arm. It’s more lightweight, saving on on robot cost that way. Less fewer lighter robots can be used, but it’s it’s, it’s cool. It the architecture looks pretty much the same, where you have your field level, your IO, and instead of wired connections, it’s it’s simply a wireless connection. Is that wired? It’s it’s wireless. And and what’s different about IO Link Wireless is that it was built for industry. So I think in the past, people have been burned by wireless technologies that made some promises that didn’t maybe you know, they they couldn’t meet the the the the the rigorous environment and and requirements of of industry, but that was different. It was built for industry from the start. So it uses the two point two point four gig license free ISM band. And what we do is a is this frequency hopping so that we use the same IO link, you know, data structure. We do this frequency hopping, and it’s it’s a cycle of five milliseconds. So you’re not going to get that one millisecond time that you get via wired IO link. We do a five millisecond cycle time, and then it’s using this frequency hopping method. It’s basically cable grade, connection, 10 to the minus nine error probability. You can have hundreds of wireless devices in a machine, and it’s deterministic. It’s designed it is designed from the outside for both for control, of course, but, of course, also for for monitoring and maybe, like, a brownfield. You wanna you can’t get IO Link to a sensor or something that you can maybe use IO Link wireless to get access to some some hard to reach sensor. Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, you know, I thought that I think this is so

Ben and Jay unpack why Broadcom's “fourth customer” (~$10B) custom-ASIC win reset sentiment even after a modest beat/raise, and how that squares with hyperscalers second-sourcing away from NVIDIA in the near term. They frame the true battleground as networking—Ethernet's ubiquity vs. NVLink's tight integration—then differentiate GPUs' performance-per-watt advantages from custom ASIC cost calculus, arguing that “lumpiness” (program outcomes) is not “cyclicality” (inventory swings). They stress TAM realism: it's easy to total up CapEx, but the ROI numerator (revenue/profit) is still unknowable. Structurally, TSMC remains the default winner, with a plausible Intel Foundry financing path in the wings, while Google looks more likely to “sell capacity” for TPUs than chips. Net: GPUs keep the bulk of spend through 2030 even as select first-party silicon scales, and the market should judge claims against networking choices and workload fit—not headlines.

Send us a textBreaking beyond the conventional 100-meter cable limit isn't just possible—it's becoming essential in today's expanding network environments. This deep dive into extended distance cabling reveals how manufacturers are pushing boundaries with specialized solutions that extend connectivity to 150-200 meters without sacrificing reliability.Steve Cowles steps in for Chuck to explore the critical factors that make extended distance cabling work. From the fundamentals of heavier gauge conductors to the crucial role of DC resistance unbalance (DCRU) in maintaining Power over Ethernet performance, you'll gain practical insights into when and how to implement these non-standard yet vital solutions. The discussion highlights why proper testing methodologies matter, how termination hardware selection affects extended distance performance, and why not all network equipment responds equally well to longer cable runs.The conversation takes an exciting turn toward Single-Pair Ethernet (SPE)—a fully standardized alternative that stretches connectivity to an astonishing 1,000 meters while delivering power and 10Mbps bandwidth. Perfect for cameras, sensors, and access control systems, SPE represents the future for many specialized applications. Steve breaks down the power delivery capabilities at various distances and explains the unique testing requirements that differ significantly from traditional four-pair certification.Whether you're struggling with that one device just beyond standard reach or designing systems for sprawling industrial environments, this episode equips you with the knowledge to confidently implement extended distance solutions. Subscribe to Let's Talk Cabling for more expert insights that bridge the gap between industry standards and real-world networking challenges.Support the showKnowledge is power! Make sure to stop by the webpage to buy me a cup of coffee or support the show at https://linktr.ee/letstalkcabling . Also if you would like to be a guest on the show or have a topic for discussion send me an email at chuck@letstalkcabling.com Chuck Bowser RCDD TECH#CBRCDD #RCDD