Control System World

National Instruments, the provider of platform-based systems that enable engineers and scientists to solve the world’s greatest engineering challenges, announced today TestStand 2016. This latest version of the industry-leading test management software focuses on helping the more than 10,000 current users to further increase their productivity while also helping to ensure the initial success of new developers.
TestStand 2016 continues to deliver features that drive faster development, deployment and maintenance of automated test systems through:

• A redesigned Property Loader for importing/exporting test sequence variables, limits, properties and more
• Additional right-click options and a native enumeration data type to help increase productivity when developing and modifying test sequences in the TestStand Sequence Editor
• Simultaneous execution and development of multiple independent applications through TestStand Environments

As product quality, time to market and cost pressures continue to rise, leading companies task their test departments with increasing test coverage to ensure product reliability with fewer resources. When compared to the development and maintenance costs inherent in building an in-house test executive, commercial off-the-shelf test management software can help users drastically shorten overall time to market. Developers can take advantage of out-of-the-box functionality for common tasks like sequencing, parallel test execution, report generation, database logging, operator interfaces and system deployment, and customize each functionality per their requirements.

“Environments in TestStand 2016 have greatly simplified and sped up the development of my suite of universal test benches. Between off-the-shelf features, such as parallel test, and customization available through plug-in architectures, TestStand is the tool that allows me to develop my complex test sequences faster,” said Elaine Ramundo, senior development engineer in the Mobile Device Division at Qorvo. “Coupled with superior support and integration with the NI toolchain and other vendors, TestStand continues to be the premier choice in a test executive rather than building and maintaining my own.”

As the first company to receive TÜV SÜD certification based on IEC 62443-4-1 for the interdisciplinary process of developing Siemens automation and drive products, including industrial software, Siemens received the certification at seven development sites in Germany. Among other things, these sites are developing Simatic S7 industrial controllers, Simatic industrial PCs, Simatic HMI (Human Machine Systems Interface) devices for operator control and monitoring, and Sinamics drives as well as the TIA (Totally Integrated Automation) Portal engineering software. The international series of standards IEC 62443 defines the security measures for industrial automation systems, with Part 4-1 of the standard describing the requirements of the manufacturer's development process.
The TÜV SÜD certificate is based on the standard IEC 62443-4-1 (Secure Product Development Lifecycle Requirements, Draft 3 Edition 10, 01.2016). This standard includes security-relevant requirements such as capabilities and expertise, security of third-party components, process and quality assurance, secure architecture and design, and issue handling as well as security updates, patches and change management.

As a leading automation and software supplier for industry, Siemens is continuously improving its products and solutions with regard to industrial security. This also includes the certification based on IEC 62443-4-1. With this achievement, the company is documenting its "Security by Design" approach for automation products and is giving integrators and operators a transparent insight into the IT security measures. Integrators and operators use this for the conception and operation of automation processes and systems using Siemens technology and the "Defense in Depth" protection concept.

To ensure comprehensive protection of industrial plants from internal and external cyber attacks, all levels must be protected simultaneously – ranging from the plant management level to the field level and from access control to copy protection. This is why our approach to comprehensive protection offers defense throughout all levels – "defense in depth". This concept is according to the recommendations of ISA99 / IEC 62443 – the leading standard for security in industrial applications.

Omron NY Industrial PC has been designed from first principles to be powerful, reliable and scalable, making it ideally suited to visualization, data handling, measuring and controlling. We’ve simplified the design and build to eliminate faults caused by complexity and, with other unique design features, to maximize uptime and reduce costs. The future will be IT driven: Omron’s IPC platform will make you part of it.
Performance:

• Based on fourth-generation Intel® Celeron® to Intel® CoreTM i7 processors
• Up to 8 GB DDR3L RAM
•  Intel® HD Graphics
• Unique heatsink effectiveness
• RoHS Directive (2002/95/EC), EU directives

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exida, a global supplier of functional safety products, services and certifications is pleased to announce a business partnership with Precision Engineering Inc. (PEI).

“exida has established an excellent reputation in the industrial environment for providing high quality safety products and services,” says Joe Kenny, PEI President. “PEI views this partnership with exida as an excellent opportunity to grow our business in programming and configuring industrial safety systems. With this partnership, PEI can now offer its clients the complete safety system engineering package.”

“PEI has been in business for the past 20 years and has built a strong reputation for providing quality engineering services to their customers, which complements exida’s service and product offering,” says Steve Gandy, exida vice president of global business development. “exida has been looking to partner with a select group of companies as a means of enhancing both companies’ product and service offerings. We are pleased to partner with PEI and expect to have a very successful partnership.”

The MGate 5109 is an industrial Ethernet gateway for Modbus RTU/ASCII/TCP and DNP3 serial/TCP/UDP protocol conversion. All models are protected with a rugged metallic casing, are DIN-rail mountable, and offer built-in serial isolation. The MGate 5109 supports transparent mode for easily integrating Modbus TCP to Modbus RTU/ASCII networks or DNP3 TCP/UDP to DNP3 serial networks.The MGate 5109 series gateways support Modbus and DNP3 Protocol Traffic Monitor for easy troubleshooting, especially during the installation stage. Communication issues could be caused by incorrect software parameters, such as slave ID and register address, 5109 also support agent mode to exchange data between Modbus and DNP3 networks or to act as a data concentrator for multiple Modbus slaves or multiple DNP3 outstations. The rugged design is suitable for industrial applications such as power, oil & gas, and water and wastewater.

Features:

• Supports Modbus master/slave and DNP3 master/outstation
• Up to 31 Modbus serial slaves or DNP3 serial outstations
• Up to 32 Modbus TCP slaves or DNP3 TCP/UDP outstations
• Supports DNP 3.0 subset level 2
• DNP3 master mode supports up to 26600 points
• DNP3 master and outstation modes support time-synchronization
• Complete diagnosis information for maintenance
• Embedded Modbus and DNP3 serial traffic monitor
• Redundant dual DC power inputs and relay output

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The ECI driver with VxWorks support allows easy development of CAN-based real-time applications on Intel® Core™ architectures and processors, such as Intel® Core™ 2, Intel® Celeron® (Core), Intel® Celeron® M (Merom), Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core (Allendale /Merom) and Intel® Xeon® (Core).

IXXAT PC interfaces are available for all common PC interface standards – from PCIe and PCIe Mini to USB and Ethernet. Depending on the PC/CAN interface version, up to four CAN channels and a galvanic isolation of the CAN bus interface is offered.
In addition to VxWorks HMS supports its IXXAT CAN interfaces with ECI driver versions for the real time operating systems RTX, INtime and QNX as well as for Linux and Windows (VCI driver).

Whitepaper by Iconics: Today’s manufacturing and building operations are faced with the need to reduce cost and be more competitive with the fewest of resources. Connectivity to different infrastructures for data gathering and the need to analyze and visualize data in real time is ever more important in today’s economic environment. Recently, visualization systems have taken a giant step forward incorporating advanced hardware accelerated 3D graphics into standard off -the shelf commercial products.
As a result, providing compelling 3D graphics applications and having access to plant data is the key to having a competitive advantage.

This paper presents an overview of a powerful approach to visualization of manufacturing that greatly reduces the learning curve for developing Human Machine Interface (HMI) applications.

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Industrial automation manufacturer and Internet of Things platform developer Opto 22 announces immediate availability of Node-RED nodes for its industrial programmable automation controllers (PACs), significantly decreasing IIoT application development time and complexity. These Node-RED nodes for PACs make it easier to prototype and develop applications for connecting physical assets to cloud applications. Node-RED nodes and a RESTful API for Opto 22 SNAP PAC R-series and S-series controllers are available free for download at http://developer.opto22.com.
Rapid IIoT Application Prototyping:
Linking technology assets and services together to build IIoT applications often requires layers of complex software development and long development cycles that quickly erode IIoT application ROI. Opto 22’s Node-RED nodes for SNAP PAC programmable automation controllers enable nearly anyone to rapidly prototype and develop IIoT applications with Node-RED, opening a path to quickly connect legacy physical assets to the digital world of cloud services.
Node-RED for IIoT:
Node-RED is an innovative visual wiring tool to connect edge computing systems such as industrial automation controllers to cloud services such as Amazon Web Services™ (AWS) IoT, IBM® Watson IoT, and Microsoft® Azure® in new and interesting ways. Created by Nick O’Leary (@knolleary) and Dave Conway-Jones (@ceejay) of IBM Emerging Technologies (@ibmets), Node-RED is an open-source, cross-platform technology available on GitHub.com and npmjs.org, and is currently available for a variety of platforms, including OS X®, Microsoft Windows®, Linux®, and Raspberry Pi™, and cloud offerings like IBM Bluemix® and AT&T® Flow. Built on the popular Node.js JavaScript runtime, Node-RED benefits from a large Node-RED library—containing over 500 prebuilt and ready-to-deploy nodes—allowing IIoT application developers to leverage existing software code and deploy it directly into their applications.