Energy and process automation
Monitoring the status of the different protocol elements (PREs) in our SICAM RTU based SCADA system is not only a safety-critical requirement, but can be of great help in locating sporadic communication problems. The SICAM TOOLBOX II with its great flexibility offers us many configuration options, so we can freely decide how detailed the communication should be monitored.…
The Bulk edit tool is probably the mostly used instrument in OPM, no TOOLBOXer can live without it. Though powerful when it comes to managing image parameters, it still has an unpleasant weakness: image names cannot be edited with it.
We all know those situations when in the middle of the commissioning phase the client comes with some special change requests, like making a global change in the image naming system.…
Update (07.06.2018): Siemens has officially solved this issue with Rev 0406 of CPCX26.
Several years ago SIEMENS released the SICAM AK3, the newest version of its biggest and most powerful SICAM RTU. By doing so, the company aimed not only to facelift the older AK ACP, but also to cut product costs, thus making it more attractive to the market.…
SIEMENS’ SICAM (Substation Integration Control Automation Monitoring) product line offers amazingly flexible industrial controllers specially created for energy automation projects. The configuration toolchain, our beloved SICAM TOOLBOX II, contains all the tools needed for the engineering and programming tasks, moreover offers handy instruments for the diagnosis and troubleshooting of the automation units.…
Each application program written for the BIM M13x family has at least one common part: the handling of the communication over the KNX-bus.
Though the BIM Tools prepare the code for the programmer – saving him from quite much work -, there are several issues, regarding the KNX-communication, which may occur during the program development and can cost a lot of time, until the correct solution is found.…
Developing new smart home appliances based on bus interface modules (BIMs) is comfortable not only because of the provided firmware and application programming interface, or the hardware for the easy KNX-bus connection. Using the provided development toolpackage also saves the developer from creating the application program from scratch.…
Using a bus interface module for developing new smart home appliances which conform to the KNX-standard is easy and comfortable.
The family members of the BIM M13x series provide for the developer the hardware needed for connecting the new device to any KNX-bus using a twisted pair as physical layer.…
Developing and building smart homes have become trendy and cool in the last decades, as problems like energy efficiency and aging society were considered more and more serious.
Different standards have been defined in order to create a basis for the building automation industry.
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In the last few weeks I had the honour to date a Virtex-4™ FX12 LC Development Board provided by Avnet Memec.
The Virtex-4 FX12 LC system board utilizes the Xilinx XC4VFX12-10FF668C FPGA. The board includes 64 MB of DDR SDRAM, 4 MB of Flash, USB-RS232 Bridge, a 10/100/1000 Ethernet PHY, 100 MHz clock source, RS-232 port, and additional user support circuitry to develop a complete system.
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“The FlexRay Communications System is a robust, scalable, deterministic, and fault-tolerant digital serial bus system designed for use in automotive applications.” (www.flexray.com)
In the following article you’ll find a possible solution for managing the communication between several nodes in a vehicle, using FlexRay.
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