The Real Time Automation Industrial Networking Newsletter!

The RTA Industrial Networking Newsletter is a free email newsletter published by John Rinaldi and delivered only to those who have asked for it. See the end of this issue to shut me up forever.

Table of Contents

Click on the following links to skip directly to the associated topic.

THE VIEW FROM MY COUCH: Beer Goggles and Star Trek (Read at your own risk)
TECHNOLOGY OF THE MONTH: XML – eXtensible Markup Language
MY BOOKSHELF: The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
CONTACT ME: Get In Touch With The Professor of Industrial Networking
THE PRIORITY CHANNEL: RTA Announces Partnership with NetBurner and new speaking engagements
EMAIL INSTRUCTIONS: Manage Your Subscription

1. The View From My Couch

Drunk Buster Goggles

Ever wanted to have that tipsy feeling without drinking even a drop? Well, Drunk Busters of America has your solution. For $99 you can get to .06 to .08 and have that “smashed” feeling without taking a drink.

The goggles are designed to teach people about the effects of drinking on your senses. The goggles simulate the effects of impairment “including reduced alertness, slowed reaction time, confusion, visual distortion, alteration of depth and distance perception, reduction of peripheral vision, poor judgment and decision making, and lack of muscular coordination”.

This goes to show that there is an unlimited use for technologies that we work with every day. There is something waiting to be discovered. Take a look around your desk, office and factory. Is there something that you’re using every day that could be put to a different use?

On a totally different note, do you ever listen to those radio talk shows in the middle of the night? I sleep very little – you don’t want to know the things I find to amuse myself at night – and last week came across an interesting Star Trek story, theory really. Are you old enough to remember the original Star Trek? I loved every episode.

Remember the bad, no not bad, terrible sets they used. The moronic plots. The bad acting and campy lines. When they started to fix all that in the later years with Next Generation and all that I couldn’t generate any interest. The first series was so much better than that. It was always good versus evil. A moral lesson in every show. It was the power of Love, friendship, duty and honor. Many of the plots were based on setting our differences aside, accepting each other and getting along.

There’s now a hot new theory about this show. If you aren’t familiar with the shows creator, he was Gene Roddenberry, a pilot, writer, producer and so much more. Little known fact – Gene was married to Dr. McCoy’s Nurse; Nurse Chapel. The late night talk show theory is that Gene was really the second coming, yup, Jesus Christ himself. That he was just using the show as a vehicle to preach his gospel of love, friendship and everything else. Asked why Gene, who died in 1991, didn’t let us all know who he really was, the host was quick to say that "It didn’t work out so well for him the last time – why would he want to go through that again"?

I guess I really need to start sleeping at night.

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2. Technology Corner: XML – eXtensible Markup Language

[This is an excerpt from my book on Industrial Ethernet, which is finally going to press]

XML is the language of choice for transferring data between two computers be they a PC, a temperature controller, a programmable controller or an industrial drive. XML has the unique ability to transfer data and data descriptions in a format that is hardware independent, software independent, extensible and readable by any other system. Let’s look at a factory floor example to see some of the shortcomings we face with the technologies we’ve used for the last twenty years.

Image you have a weigh scale at the end of your production line. The weight delivered by this scale is important for your control system as it needs to reject under and overweight packages. It is important to your logistics systems as they need to load that package into a truck and it is important to your production control computer that needs to record how much is produced this hour, day, week and month. There are a lot of uses for this data.

As is typical for system of this type the weigh scale delivers a string of bytes in some format every time it completes a weighing operation. A typical string of bytes is shown in the following Figure.

Byte 1	Byte 2	Byte 3	Byte 4	Byte 5
Header Data	Weight in lbs	Weight in Gm	I/O Bits	Trailer Data

Figure: Traditional Weigh Scale Data

The header and trailer data allow you to identify the start and end of the packet but you still have some questions. How exactly are Bytes 2 and 3 formatted? Do these bytes have the actual weight or are they scaled? Are they in some kind of floating point format? Once you learn more about the data format you can program your control system and all the other systems to receive this data.

Now if the scale maker revises their scale or you buy a new scale you are faced with repeating this effort. The new scale data now looks like the following Figure.

Byte 1	Byte 2	Byte 3	Byte 4	Byte 5	Byte 6	Byte 7
Header Data	Weight in lbs	Weight in lbs	Weight in Gm	Weight in Gm	I/O Bits	Trailer Data

Figure: Weight Scale Data Revision 2.0

They’ve expanded the data in the packet and now all the systems dependent on this data are unable to access it.

If you expand this example to the hundreds of factory floor devices each containing their own data encoded in their own special format you get an idea of the problem XML is designed to solve. Using XML a device transmits a text data file that not only contains the data but carries descriptions of the data as well. Here is what an equivalent XML file might look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
- <Scale_Data>

<from>Company XYZ Scales</from>

Figure: Weigh Scale Data Using XML

The XML data file is superior to the traditional data packet in a number of different ways:

The XML data file is completely hardware independent. Where values expressed in binary data formats are dependent on the byte order of the computer, values expressed in text are independent and transportable to any computer system.
The XML data file is completely software independent. Any IT program, PLC program, Basic program or the like can read it, find the appropriate tags and extract the data. Macros could be written for a spreadsheet or word processor to process XML data.
An XML file is human readable and can be directly displayed by most current browser editions. As a human readable format it becomes very easy to troubleshoot.
Data in XML files is extremely extensible. New data can be added at any time. As long as the current descriptors or “tags” as they are know are not changed the receiving software can continue to extract the data it needs no matter how much the rest of the data file has changed.
XML data is fixed format. All data is ASCII format and can be easily manipulated into the native binary format of the receiver.

The syntax of XML files is very straightforward and clear. The first line is a declaration describing the XML version number which validates the file. The next line is the root element. The root is the parent element for all the other elements in the file. You will notice that every element including the root has a start tag of the form “<tagname>” and an end tag of the form “</tagname>”. Data is contained between the start and end tags.

XML is not good for hi speed, dedicated control applications. These applications require a small number of bytes delivered in real time. XML applications are applications where data needs to be delivered to widely different and disparate and sometimes, unknown destinations in a common, well-understood format.

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3. My Bookshelf: The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen

I have to admit that I picked this up, read that the author is a professor at Harvard and rolled my eyes. Professors at Harvard in my humble opinion hardly ever have anything worth reading by people who really want to accomplish something and learn how to how to make themselves and their companies more successful. Thankfully, I couldn’t have been more wrong. This book is amazing. It is entertaining, insightful, extremely well researched and thoroughly documented.|

Professor Christensen has examined many industries and many companies to learn why market leaders, well-respected, well-run companies lose focus and either become insignificant players in a market or go completely out of business. Describing any number of industries but concentrating on the disk drive industry, the book details the machinations and shakeouts that regularly occurred as we went from the earliest disks through 14”, 8”, 5”, 2.5” and 1.8” disks. At every step of the way, the majority of companies that led in a particular segment were noticeably absent when the next technology took hold. The reasons for this are fascinating. These companies did everything they were supposed to do. They managed well, listened to their customers, innovated, gave their customers consistently better performance at a lower cost but ended up bankrupt or as marginal players.

The book argues that the reason for this seemly odd result is that these companies focused on “Sustaining Technologies” and ignored “Disruptive Technologies”. If you’re a company making 8” disks for minicomputers you take a look at the new 5” technology. You survey your customers and find out that they want faster, higher density 8”. Size has no meaning to them. The 5 inches are more expensive and there’s no market for them. So, very prudently you make a management decision to focus on improving your 8” product line. Until one day the minicomputer disappears and it’s too late for you to get into the “Disruptive 5” Technology”. If you’re lucky, you’re still in business even though you did everything right; you focused on your customers; gave them everything they wanted and made prudent R&D decisions based on market needs.

The heart of The Innovator’s Dilemma is how to avoid this fate. Christensen makes the point that an organization needs an entirely separate and distinct plan for identifying new markets with Disruptive Technology. Different management rules, market analysis and funding decisions should be made for these markets to avoid the fate suffered by so many of the well-managed companies described in the early chapters.

This is a Harvard Professors Book that every technology manager should read!

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4. Contact The Doctor Of Industrial Networking

You can reach John Rinaldi by phone at (414) 453-5100 or by email at jsr@rtaautomation.com.

Reprinting and distribution of this ezine is highly recommended, provided that the content and links are left intact. It is currently delivered to thousands of subscribers, clients and friends.

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5. Priority Channel

SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS: I’m speaking at the Machine 2 Machine (M2M) conference in San Antonio in November. I’ll have details in the next issue.

Reprinting and distribution of this ezine is highly recommended, provided that the content and links are left intact. It is currently delivered to thousands of subscribers, clients and friends.

PARTNERSHIP ANNOUNCMENT: RTA & NETBURNER Join Forces!
Net Burner: Networking in 1 Day!

NetBurner, a premier Ethernet networking solution company and RTA have joined forces to provide seamlessly integrated networking solutions for the industrial market. If you are unfamiliar with NetBurner (www.netburner.com) they are a premier supplier of Motorola Coldfire-based solutions. Their product include processors, serial-to-ethernet devices and wireless solutions.

RTA is now providing EtherNet/IP, Modbus/TCP and DeviceNet solutions on the entire NetBurner product line merging an extremely powerful process and development environment with the advanced networking customers expect.

For more information visit:

EtherNet/IP: www.rtaautomation.com/ethernetip/nbserver

Modbus/TCP: www.rtaautomation.com/modbustcp/nbserver

DeviceNet: www.rtaautomation.com/devicenet/nbslave

ControlLogix ASCII Gateway: www.rtaautomation.com/ethernetip/435nba

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6. Subscription Management Instructions

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Contact: John Rinaldi, Real Time Automation
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