[foxboro] Foxboro Users Group Updates
- From: "Johnson, David" <David.Johnson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2012 15:13:24 -0500
Greetings Foxboro Users,
I'm home from the conference. They offered training today but who has time to
learn these days? Many have asked, where are the conference updates. Well here
they are my friend.
It was at the Marriott, Copley Place, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
I arrived Monday, and was invited to sit in on a steering committee (now
advisory board?) meeting. The Invensys folks there seemed very interested in
learning how they could provide a better user experience. They seemed very
sincere (or faked it well), and listened to everyone but me and Darren Henrich.
I was making some excellent, salient, points, but Darren was just complaining,
so they tuned us out. Way to go Darren, you just kept them from adopting all
of my great ideas. Last time Darren did this to me, they did away with
letterbugs, and gave us an infrared letterbug zapper. I have appointed myself
Darren's life coach to see if I can help him get a little more laid back, I've
made Rob Brooks his role model.
Monday night we had a buffett in the demo area and got to look at the vendors
wares. Attendance seems pretty good, and without the WonderWare, and Triconex
folks, it's easier to get to know other I/A users. I'd say most of the users I
talked to enjoyed the reception. It was a nice opportunity to get some face
time with some of the FoxMass people.
Tuesday started with the overview from the Invensys executives. Nathalie
Marcotte, VP of marketing, acted as the events host, and she did a good job of
keeping things moving. Terry "Guiding Sun Ray" Deo (google it), the Steering
Committee Benevolent Chairman for life, addressed the folks and thanked Betty
and Mandy for the great work. BTW thanks Betty and Mandy. I heard more
positive comments about the content than I have in years, so I guess Terry and
the gang are doing a good job.
Mike Caliel gave the Invensys welcome, and it was welcoming, especially seeing
him back in charge. It's nice to have someone leading who understands the
user's concerns, and is an old hand in the controls business. He was
completely unwilling to let slip any insider information, so I'll hope that I
guess right and by the winning stock.
Dave Gaertner was up next and provided a view of where they were headed in a
big picture way.
Rick Morse and Mike Chmilewski presented the I/A vision and roadmap, and I'll
cover most of what they said in the product reviews below.
The morning presentations were short, and had pretty good focus for the target
audience. Some people *cough* Ken Fox *cough* wanted a more forceful
presenter, but Grant LeSueur can't do it all people.
Then we had industry breakouts. The presentations in my sessions were pretty
good. Good user interaction I thought.
We had the Cassandra Session roundtable Tuesday evening, and it was well
attended. I learned in Canada, they pronounce "Z" funny. FCS 3.0 was discussed
thoroughly with some pretty positive user comments. That's right, I said
positive. I still haven't had enough time to play with it, but I think FCS
version 4.0 might be "compelling" as Alex (MIA) Johnson used to say. The
typical conversation detailing PAS and Foxray was held with most users having
Foxray, but each group seemed to like what they had.
Then it was Demo Center Time. Here's what you come for.
Virtualization had the largest amount of floor space. They are using the Hyper
V virtual engine instead of VMware. The benefits are obvious, allowing
backup/restore, upgrades, and testing of AWs without taking any down time. The
ability to de-couple the software from the hardware promises to be a big help
in letting the users slow down upgrades forced by PC hardware changes going
forward. It is coming in the 8.8 release, the first quarter of 2013. It the
not too distant future they expect to be able to offer a redundant server pair
that hosts multiple virtual machines. It's IT technology, but it's proven and
a lot of people are doing it.
PC Hardware -- The HP Tower servers are being retired. I know right! I just
got one too. Going forward the only server platform that Invensys (notice when
I disagree with them that Foxboro becomes Invensys) will offer is the 19" rack
mount option.
PC/Control Hardware
I think the new USB annunciator keyboard will be released 1st quarter of 2013.
Control Hardware
The Universal I/O FBM247 is out, and seems to be an attractive product. You
can individually configure each channel on an 8 point card to be HART, 4-20ma,
Discrete 24v, or Pulse. It doesn't do thermocouple or RTD, but it does offer a
lot of possible uses. This includes the new termination assembly that allows
denser I/O.
Here's a link to Thad Frost telling all about it, it's on youtube, so you might
not have access to it
.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM2ZJTxNq0g
I came home and caught my wife watching it, but I'm sure that's just a
coincidence.
The FCP280 was talked about. I'm not sure what the release date is expected to
be, but it will have the option of having a copper interface (as opposed to
fiber) and it does a bunch of other cool stuff like run more blocks, and be
faster, and .... who knows. Also, it will eventually become a super FDSI that
can be used instead of the current FBM232/233s. I don't expect this in the
real near future, but it's good to know they are working on it. And as for
letterbugs. I think they are going to have buttons on the FCP to allow you to
set a letterbug in it. How cool is that?
Gayle Hicks said they have a new version of remote watch coming out. She is
very enthusiastic about this product. It uses a version of ferret that runs
daily and helps you manage your assets. I don't have to maintain a plant
anymore, but if I did, this would certainly be worth looking at.
FCS4.0
It's coming, and it will let you go back an pick up your legacy CPs. (Stuff
that's not 270). I have seen the beta of this back in the spring, and as I
said earlier, reviews are definitely getting better. I'm not sure what the
final release will be like, but I'm hoping to get my hands on a system to learn
a lot more about it.
FDM for HART
Charlie Piper was demonstrating "A single engineering environment for
configuring, calibrating, commissioning, troubleshooting and diagnostic
information for all your plant HART devices." I understand it means you no
longer need PACTware, as part of the solution. But, I was time constrained and
didn't get by to see Charlie in the booth, so I copied the line above from the
brochure.
100 Series upgrades continue to be hot. They have a lot more customer success
stories using the migration baseplates. We've done a few projects with them
now, and they worked pretty well for us. The guy to talk to at Invensys is
Graham Bennett. I think they make a lot of sense.
New Trends in Process Graphics was a session that was so full, it was repeated
by popular demand. I know, I was in the hall the first time. This is the high
performance, or abnormal situation. or gray scale, (grey scale to my European
readers), graphics. If you are coming from the WonderWare side of things, FCS,
InFusion, WonderWare, there are going to be a lot of standard faceplates,
templates, etc. that are going to be available. If you stick with FoxView, not
so much, but some. I really like these type graphics and think they are far
superior to what many of our customers use, and request.
FDSI Practical tips, presented by yours truly, was also very good.
Hesh Kagan presented on wireless, and Rob Brooks gave some practical tips for
wireless as well. I think the wireless stuff (operator walk abouts,
transmitters, even wireless mesh) is upon us. If you want to try wireless
mesh, to extend your mesh network, Foxboro is offering that as an engineered
solution. That means they know how to do it, and have done it, but each
instance might be a bit different, so call them.
I think that's what I remember from the conference.
I was glad to see everyone I saw, and missed those of you I know that weren't
there.
Have a great weekend everyone,
David
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