Kepware Technologies today announced its new hands-on training program, designed to help customers successfully set-up and operate communication systems for automation applications. Customers can schedule on-site customized classes at their facility with the Kepware training staff. In addition, courses will be offered at Kepware's Portland, Maine headquarters once a month, beginning in January 2013. This 2-day course provides seating for up to 10 attendees. Kepware is also scheduling "on-the-road" training at special events throughout the United States, and internationally in regions such as Asia and Europe.

For more information click Kepware Unveils Customized Training Program

ICONICS continues to make the most advanced technology options available to its customers. ICONICS demonstrates the ability to create virtual operation surfaces, to operate with natural gestures, and to execute actions with voice commands, all utilizing the latest version of Microsoft Kinect™.

Virtual Surfaces

Now, any surface, such as a control room wall, a conference room table, or even empty space on an equipment panel, can be utilized as a multi-touch interface. Simply point the Kinect device, parallel to the surface, and ICONICS GENESIS64™ HMI/SCADA software will interpret finger movements within the virtual plane as one or more touch points (for selection), or gestures such as swipes (to move through graphics or menus) or pinches (for zooming in and out). This technology enables control by operators with gloved hands and reduces equipment costs when compared to industrialized touchscreen technology

Natural Skeletal Movements

Utilizing the ability of Kinect to recognize the positioning and movement of the human skeleton, ICONICS GENESIS64 is now able to extend input options for the Human Machine Interface to include natural movements and actions. Plant control room operators can now command action on a video wall by looking at (with recognition of face/head position) and pointing to (for selection) large screen monitors. Operators in a manufacturing cell can stop their machinery by raising their hand with an open palm. The ability to interpret skeletal positions removes the restriction that the human interaction must occur in front of a computer screen.

Voice Recognition.

Further expanding the options for the manufacturing automation designer, ICONICS is demonstrating fully configurable voice command operation. Voice recognition has existed in industrial applications for many years, but recent advances in both recognition and noise cancellation, developed for devices such as Kinect and consumer interfaces such as Microsoft Bing®, have made voice operation realizable for industrial applications. Operators are able to change views by calling out the graphic name, pan through information by simply saying “Right” or “Down” or, in the manufacturing cell, display current temperatures by simply asking for “Temperatures”.

To download the full PDF of the Press Release, Click HERE.

The Amplicon Impact-E 100 is a compact light weight embedded PC powered by the Intel® N2800 ATOM™ processor. Being of a compact design and weighing in at less than 2kg, this unit is ideal for installations where space is at a premium. With a typical power draw of 10W this embedded system lends itself well to being powered by either a battery or solar panel in remote installations.

This compact system allows expansion for additional solid state, mSATA or hard drives, with optional expansion for Wi-Fi and cellular modules. This embedded PC system is suited to applications in various markets such as transportation, security and automation.

With Version 7.2 of its Simatic WinCC Scada software for the acquisition, visualization, and analysis of production data, the Siemens Industry Automation Division has expanded the software into a plant-wide information system. The new version also supports multitouch operator input concepts. The new Simatic Process Historian and Simatic Information Server options for Simatic WinCC V7.2 also offer users scalable long-term archiving of process data, as well as powerful, Web-based analysis and reporting tools. Both options include plant-wide analyses and reports, thus providing the basis for optimizing the production process.

In the new Version 7.2, users can adapt the Simatic WinCC Scada system to even larger systems than previously with up to 18 optionally redundant servers. The archiving function automatically creates weekly, monthly and annual archives in accordance with the selected business management periods. As well as process values, the values of consumption counters and those of manual entries, such as lab values, can be recorded, analyzed and archived. For global use, Simatic WinCC 7.2 supports the Unicode data format, and individual language selection by the user. Users select their preferred language for local display or for operator input over the Internet, regardless of the language setting of the operating system. In addition, Simatic WinCC Version 7.2 supports operator input via two-finger multitouch gestures, with the usual gestures used on consumer devices such as zooming, sweeping, and rotating. This is designed to make operation of complex production plants more intuitive and simpler. Setpoint inputs can also be implemented. For safety reasons, these are designed as two-handed operations to protect users against unintentional switching operations.

With Simatic Information Server, reports and analyses can easily be created, managed, and made available via Web-based interfaces. Based on Microsoft Reporting Services, users transparently access all the data archived in WinCC or Simatic Process Historian without the need for any programming know-how. Depending on the task – management, quality assurance, or maintenance – users compile the required plant data individually for reports and analyses. Add-ins in Word and Excel are additionally available for Microsoft Office analyses.

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