Posted by Mike Fahrion on Wed, Jan 18, 2012 @ 04:00 AM
We’re three weeks into 2012 and picking up another minute of glorious daylight every day. Wonderful.
But winter isn’t over just yet, and today I’m fresh off the sledding hill. I spent the afternoon participating in every variety of sledding carnage that you could possibly imagine. Kids from five to fifty turned themselves into human bowling pins and Weeble wobbles. It was great fun. As I sit here recovering, thawing my pinky toe over the fire and letting the day’s bruises settle in, I thought I’d share a few thoughts that have been rattling around in my noggin.
First, let me ask you this: How are those New Year’s Resolutions holding up?
Back in seventh grade a well-meaning Ms. Patten insisted that we write down three New Year’s resolutions. Someone in your own life has surely insisted that you to do the same. Optimism is a beautiful thing.
I’ve never met anyone who isn’t expert at dreaming up goals; any nit can do it. The real challenge is achieving something new. To achieve something new, you have to do something new. That means change, and we humans are rarely wired for it.
Goodbye RS-232, Act IV
Friday afternoon I found myself in the midst of a futile search for an important scrap of paper on my hopelessly chaotic desk. The elusive scrap contained my notes on a recent market study of the RS-232 and RS-485 chip markets. It said that the five-year forecast was for continued growth in those chip sales.
That made me smile. I travel in some geeky circles, and many of the people I know have been predicting the death of the serial port for more than a decade. In fact, it has been nearly a decade since EE Product News editor Joe Desposito penned a soulful article lamenting the loss of serial ports on his PC, calling it the end of an era. If you’ve read my previous posts you’ve probably noticed that I have my own opinions about that.
It has turned out that serial ports are not only moving into their fourth decade – sixth, for RS-232 – but that their numbers are continuing to grow at a prodigious rate. Somewhere around one billion more of them are expected to be deployed in just the next couple of years. In the electronics world, that’s immortality. RS-232 and RS-485 may not have the same sex appeal as wireless, but they’re certainly aging well.
What does all of this say about device connectivity? Among other things, it says that the need for serial ports is no longer driven by PCs.
I’ve always been enamored with everything involving the connectivity of specialized and remote devices. There’s hardly a device on the planet that I can’t find a way to connect and integrate into a system. The most interesting and challenging connections are made way out there at the very edge of the network; things like remote sensors, for example. And those are precisely the kinds of applications that are driving the demand for RS-232 and RS-485.
So, as my pinky toe regains its color over the fire, I’m playing mental Twister and considering how some of my recent applications and solutions have been a part of that demand.
How about gas pumps? Nearly all of the pumps in the US and most of the pumps in Europe use serial communications. If you have a car and a credit card you’ve fueled up at a station where your information not only traveled through a serial port, it traveled through a B&B Electronics serial server that connected the serial ports to the franchise’s local and wide area network.
The treadmills on the international space station use B&B Electronics equipment to connect their serial ports to the local data network. That network’s space-to-ground, point-to-point data link carries B&B Electronics’ bits and bytes all the way back to Earth. Not bad.
Have you ever seen a truck or van with the telltale dome on its cab that holds its array of cellular and GPS antennas? It’s highly probable that their mobile WAN depends upon some clever piece of engineering from B&B Electronics. We help move the bits and bytes that allow fleet owners to monitor everything from vehicle data to driver behavior.
The healthcare industry uses lots of fancy stuff too. Have you ever known anyone who benefited from the use of a mobile MRI unit? You guessed it -- B&B Electronics’s solutions helped it happen. Fetal monitor? Kidney dialysis machine? Same story.
Have you ever had bodywork done on your car? There’s a better than 50 percent chance that getting a perfect color match depended upon the flow of B&B Electronics-enabled bits and bytes.
Got a newer furnace or AC unit in your house? Were you surprised when the tech pulled out a laptop instead of a pair of vice grips? Yup – B&B Electronics was there too.
Watch for the newest B&B Electronics product solutions guide in your mailbox this week. If you’re not already on our mailing list, click here to request a product solutions guide.
Data connectivity has expanded into many new environments over the years. I wonder what New Year’s resolutions Ms. Patten would have written for the serial port, way back in 1983.
Talk back below.
Happy (Frosty) Connections,
Mike Fahrion
Posted by Mike Fahrion on Tue, Dec 20, 2011 @ 04:00 AM
Dear Friend and Subscriber:
Another Christmas season has zoomed up to our doorstep. School plays, concerts and late night shopping consume the evenings -- and I’ve found a few things to keep me busy at the office as well. All the chaos will come together with a few days of family celebration.
Christmas is also a leading indicator that another Midwestern winter is settling in, with no global warming-induced relief in the forecast. I barely lasted a day into December before I escaped to the desert Southwest for some warm air and R&R. This winter I’m vowing to slip off to someplace warm and sunny every month. So, if you happen to be somewhere warm, I may very well be coming to see you. In Minnesota? When Spring’s just around the corner, call me then.
Did you feel a slight disturbance in the force last week? That was me. It may get me banned from some engineering circles, but last week I fully succumbed to the Apple eco-system. It started innocently enough, with a little iPod to accompany me on runs. Then an iPhone ousted my Blackberry. And now the conversion is complete, as I’ve traded in my aging Dell for a racy little MacBook.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, every engineer can learn something about product design from the Apple guys. They sure know how to make things simple.
On the simple theme, I had a couple of calls last week that got me noodling about Power over Ethernet. PoE is a great example of a simple idea that can simplify your life, and it’s picking up momentum in more and more applications. But, like most commercial technologies, PoE wasn’t purpose-designed for rugged environments. I've put together a quick PoE video to highlight some of the PoE challenges that you might run into and show you how to solve them when you take PoE out of the IT closet.
Got six minutes to spare? Check out the video for yourself.
Or, want to jump right to a few great PoE solutions?
Ever need to install a PoE switch in a rugged location? Vibration, heat, cold and/or lots of noise-causing equipment or power cables nearby? You need the EIRP305-T. It’ll give you 5 PoE ports and has survived the engineering test gauntlet of snarky compliance tests for rugged environments.
Got heavy-duty networking requirements? Check out the 10-port managed PoE switch that also includes two Gigabit SFP ports for a backbone or ring connection.
Coming up short on power? Straight PoE pumps out about 15 watts per port. When that just won’t do, PoE+ ups the ante and gives you 25 watts of power per port. Enough for PTZ cameras, high power radios and all kinds of other devices that you may want to install in a location that doesn’t have access to AC power. The EIRHP305-T gives you 5 PoE+ Ethernet ports, each pumping out up to 25 Watts.
And what about power supplies? It’s always tweaked me that you have to feed most “industrial grade” PoE switches 48VDC. I don’t know about you, but I hardly ever see an installation that has an existing 48V rail. The EIRP305-24V-T solves that problem by supporting a 24VDC power input -- no need for a special 48V power supply.
What out-of-the-ordinary PoE applications have you run across? Talk back on the blog.
And, most importantly, have a very Merry Christmas!
Mike Fahrion
Posted by Mike Fahrion on Tue, Nov 22, 2011 @ 09:00 AM
Dear Reader:
I’m settling in for winter here in the Illinois plains. The signs are all there. Leaves have lost their grip, lawn mower stowed and out back those pesky deer are munching away at left over pumpkins. Fall is a great season. Hate to see it go - ‘cuz I know what’s next.
But there is something relaxing about a frosty fall evening in front of the fireplace, ice cubes clinking in a nice glass of Scotch, listening to the cool jazz of Miles and Coltrane.
Fantasy Mike leads quite a life.
Real Mike remembers those days...
(If you’re living the life of fantasy Mike, I wouldn’t object to an invitation. I’ll bring my own glass and logs for the fire).
It’s remarkable how life gets more complex - and wonderfully flavorful - as time marches on.
I remember when Thanksgiving was a gateway to the end of the year - time to tie up loose ends. Plan Holiday travel, tidy up the lab. Pop a new hole in your belt for the Thanksgiving feast.
Time flies when you’re having fun. This time of year is now a mind-melding jambalaya of concerts, business cases, ball games, 2012 planning, school plays, customer consulting, product road-mapping and airport terminals (as you read this I’m likely clinging to a boarding pass for an overbooked flight home from California with a bunch of folks hoping to be somewhere else for Thanksgiving).
Life is a frenzy - and I wouldn’t want to miss even a single beat.
Here at B&B we’re smack in the middle of some of the most exciting growth that I’ve been a part of in my long history with the company. Good things are happening -- Great things are coming.
Here are a few fun things that have sprung up in the last few weeks.
Product awards.
For the second year in a row, Control Engineering selected a B&B product as a finalist for its 2012 Engineers Choice awards. In fact, reflecting their wisdom, this year they’ve selected two of our new products.
First - our isolated, rugged USB hub (that would be the UHR304 for those of you reaching for your credit cards). I think highly of this thing myself, in fact just last week I put together a quick two minute video tour. (And if you have any inklings of using USB away from the safe haven of your desktop, watch my video on how to make USB reliable in ruggedized applications, this one will take a few minutes longer ‘cuz I have lots to tell you, but I promise it’s worth your time.)
Our second finalist is our new line of rugged plug and play Ethernet switches. Why choose an unmanaged switch for an award finalist? Because the new ESW100 line does everything just a bit better than everyone else. The smallest rugged switch on the market with fiber options. Flexible mounting means that a single part number can fit virtually any cabinet or panel. Rugged shock and vibration specs. Hazardous location rated. It’s not any single thing that makes the new ESW100 family stand out - it’s the sum of all the little things.
Hey, if you happen to have a free moment in your frenzied life, do me a favor and click over to Control Engineering to cast your vote. If you subscribe to their print or e-letters, you’re eligible to help make some of my favorite new products famous.
This week we celebrated the one month anniversary of the acquisition of Quatech. There are so many dimensions to this that there is no shortage of impactful stuff to work on. Great new people, new products, new channel partners, and outstanding capabilities in WiFi - both standalone and embedded. My crystal ball says that WiFi is one of three wireless standards that will ultimately rule the world. You’ll hear more from me on that down the road. Whether you want to network a single industrial scale, or you want to embed WiFi into thousands of access control devices -- Quatech brings the technology and application experience that will get the job done for you -- quickly, and reliably.
Our snarky marketing folks have been frantically busy too. Last week an anonymous B&B marketing elf slipped the results of a new brand survey into my inbox. They had a project up their sleeve a couple months back to take your pulse on how B&B and our competitors are doing. (Dunno if I’m supposed to be letting the cat out of the bag but I’m writing this far too late for last minute censoring - let’s keep this between you and I just in case). Bottom line is that over 500 folks like you defined 19 company attributes and scored B&B and our competitors against them. Being humble... B&B did well. Being not so humble, we kicked serious booty. B&B scored highest in every one of the 19 categories - sometimes by a factor of 2 to 3 times. Let me know if you’d like a "B&B Electronics for President" bumper sticker to fill that void on your bumper right between your "My child is an honor student" and "World’s Greatest Engineer" stickers. I might just have some printed up...
Busy month -- and we even managed to squeak out a couple great new products.
Does it tweak you off that you can only plug USB devices into your PC? Does me. What if you want to put a card reader more than a measly 5 meters from your PC? Bar code printers? QA scale? Problem solved. The new UE204 is an Ethernet-enabled USB hub. That means you can now reach your USB peripherals over your LAN. If you can reach it with Ethernet, you can pop in a UE204 and it will give you four USB ports that can be reached from any networked computer - just like a local USB connection. Great little problem solver that can save you thousands on PC’s and expensive device upgrades. Great device - I’ll make up a demo video for you soon.
We’ve also cranked out a new family of rugged four port Ethernet serial servers. If you’ve got 232, 422, or 485 devices that you’d like to reach with copper or fiber Ethernet, the VESR4x4 four port Ethernet serial server gives you all the features and flexibility you need for virtually any job - and the rugged reliability that you expect from B&B (survey says so!).
Whew - getting late now and Fantasy Mike can almost hear the crackle of the fire and those ice cubes clinking. Real Mike has to take out the trash, walk the dog, and pack a bag for the early-morning glamour of O’Hare. What to do...
Talk back - is it just me and some late-blooming version of ADD? Or are you feeling the gravitational pull of the 21st century acceleration too?
Happy Connections - and for those of us State-side, Happy Thanksgiving!
Mike Fahrion
P.S. Don’t forget to vote!
Posted by Mike Fahrion on Thu, Oct 27, 2011 @ 04:00 AM
We are spirits
in the material world
-The Police
Dear Friend and Subscriber,
Halloween and its less-famous counterpart, All Saints Day, are both celebrations of the invisible and immaterial.
There is more to the world than what you can see and touch.
I wrote that in my Halloween e-letter 5 years back – I’m recycling because it ties in nicely with today’s rather phantom-like topic.
I’ll start with the philosophical, then we’ll talk tech.
Forgive my geek profiling, but we Engineers aren’t exactly thought leaders in the shadowy world of cultural and emotional change. That’s ironic because engineers are the force that starts the avalanche of change. Hunters to farmers, farms to factories, laborers to knowledge workers. All instigated by engineers without even a premonition that their designs - innovative applications of current technology - were the equivalent of kicking a rock over the edge of a mountainside – triggering landslides of change throughout society.
We’ve done it again.
Historically, decades or even generations passed before history was able to look back and identify the resulting dramatic shifts in society. That implies that you and I might not know if we’re in the grips of one of those otherworldly events right now.
Spooky.
I bet I’d scare the britches off some if I told them that we are smack in the middle of what history will call the biggest and fastest transition in our society yet. It’s a Trick or Treat paradigm. Those spooked by change will have a rough ride. For change thrill-seekers – hang on to your broomsticks.
We’re in the middle of a new world of transactions that exist only in an ethereal world. Embedded sensors everywhere. Machines connecting automatically. Real life data tagging massive databases in real time. These ghostly transactions already rule our economy. And with just a bit of imaginative conjuring (and one eye of newt), I foretell that this is just the beginning of things to come.
The ability for machines to talk to each other is no longer cutting edge – but the critical factors of size, cost, computing power and network reach are enabling a rate of change that is massive – yet most of it is happening quietly behind the misty shroud of technology.
I had the opportunity to spend last week on the far side of the former Iron Curtain. As my passport was scanned by the grim-faced customs agent I pondered which event created more automated communications – my traveling through customs or my last Redbox movie rental. (I pondered, but I did not ask).
Or, think about what happens when you drive through an automated tollway. A scanner ID’s the RFID tag in your car. A camera captures an image of you, your car and your license plates. Image processing instantly reconciles your plate against multiple databases – some of which you voluntarily signed on to. Matched data is reflected on your financial account, which pulls automatically from your credit card as needed. Exception notifications are sent via email, which you may receive on your phone within seconds. Imagine what time and man-hours that process would have consumed 5, 10 or 20 years ago?
It wouldn’t be hard to write a chapter – or even a book – playing out all of the creative, innovative and sometimes frightening extensions of that simple transaction above – all using technology that’s readily available today to gather data and assemble a tremendous amount of business intelligence.
Interesting stuff. Think of it as a parallel to the heyday of factory automation. In the tail end of the last century we automated manufacturing. Today we’re automating the business and social processes of our lives.
Thrilling? Chilling? Talk back – I’d like to hear what you think of this new wave of automation and where it will take us.
Here’s another spooky topic. More videos from yours truly.If you missed my Ghostbridge video, now is a great time to go check out how you can put in a high performance wireless Ethernet link quicker and easier than you can hang a picture. No wireless Hobgoblins required.
And today a 2nd act. This month’s video is a brain dump of my experience with what you must do to make USB reliable when you take it off the desktop. (And there will be no extra credit points earned for picking out my acronym screw-up). We’re having great success with our line of rugged USB isolators, hubs and converters. More importantly – we’re getting reports back from customers that our USB products are working in harsh environments where all others are failing.
And finally, a treat. Just a couple weeks back B&B Electronics acquired Quatech. This is thrilling stuff. Quatech brings great talent to the B&B family along with a deep range of rugged WiFi products and capabilities, along with a set of solutions and distribution partners around the world there to make it easier than ever to get your hands into the B&B cauldron of goodies.
Happy Halloween!
Mike Fahrion
Posted by Mike Fahrion on Fri, Oct 14, 2011 @ 03:15 PM
B&B Electronics CEO, Sean Harrigan, announces B&B Electronics' acquisition of Quatech and explains how the two companies, with their combined product offerings, will offer expanded product solutions and distribution channels, as well as continued excellent customer service and support.
Read more about the acquisition.
Posted by Mike Fahrion on Wed, Sep 21, 2011 @ 04:00 AM
Dear Reader,
While paddling in and about Northern Minnesota last week (in an area that’s currently on fire). I was thinking about interesting people and good stories. Interesting people are full of experiences –but not just any old experience – it’s the ones where things go wrong that make for good stories.
A good trip is much the same. Take a trip with perfect weather, no lost luggage, no epic storms or forest fires. You’ll take away some epic memories but frankly your stories will be a big yawn.
Trips where everything goes wrong (yet you manage to make the best of the situation) leads to good story telling.
Same goes for people. People that are the most interesting are often people that screw up. The more mistakes they make the more interesting they are (but people that screw up and never recover aren’t so interesting). People that run into adversity and - eventually - overcome it have captivating and meaningful stories to share.
Technical people often get the opportunity to screw up in very impactful ways. I bet the tech out in the deserts of Arizona that pulled the plug on 6 million people will have a good story to tell some day. I hope so anyway.
Being in the product development business, I find that products have a story to tell too. I don’t care how big or small a company is, you can find drama behind product development that never makes it as far as the marketing literature.
Here in the engineering labs and hallowed Dilbert cube halls of B&B things are no different. Sure we have some products that cruise through development with little drama, but that doesn’t typically create the bonding experience that only stress, late nights and passionate debates can build.
Take our Zlinx Xtreme outdoor wireless modems and I/O. You would never know it, but in our quest to have an outdoor radio product that was small, powerful, easy to use and didn’t require teeny tiny little tools to wire, we really got ourselves twisted up. Right up to a last minute kill decision that put the product back to the drawing board just before its initial release. Cost us some real time and money, but the end result was an award winning product line that will sling your sensor data between nodes with such ease that you’d never know that you’ve gone wireless.
Rugged USB products have an interesting story to tell here at B&B as well. The trouble there all started over a decade ago when, as part of our own test configurations, we were unable to find any commercial USB products that would survive the rigors of our various surge testing that we subject each and every B&B product to. We had to learn all kinds of tricks to help USB ports and host PC’s that were running our test software survive without damage or lockups. Then customers started having the same problems as they started using USB peripherals in the field in less than friendly environments. Over time, our own boneyard of smoldering PC’s led us to the development of what our own and customer testing tells us is the most rugged and reliable line of USB converters, hubs and isolators on the planet. If you’re using USB in an environment that’s more demanding than printing out today’s lunch menu you’ll want to talk to us about USB isolation. Or, if you need to connect a serial device to a USB port, save yourself time, frustration and damage and go directly to one of our isolated USB to serial converters. A can’t-fail installation procedure, rock solid drivers and 2000 volts of isolation protection ensure that you won’t waste your day, or your PC, chasing problems that you never even knew you had.
Even our newest line of rugged and compact Ethernet switches went through their own Soap Opera drama. When we built our ESW100 line, a 3rd generation switch here at B&B, we knew we wanted it to be compact, but didn’t want to give up fiber options. (Other manufacturers give up on compact when they add fiber to their edge switches because they’re still using bulky, old school SC and ST fiber connectors). Well the rest of the world moved on. LC connectors are smaller and easier to use. Yet change isn’t easy and the discomfort of doing something different than all the competition out there wasn’t easy for everyone to swallow. It was the right move – if you haven’t used one of our ESW105 or ESW108 switches yet (especially the ones with fiber), try it – you’ll be glad you did.
Hope you’ve made some good memories and stories this summer. Share them here.
Happy Connections,
Mike Fahrion
Posted by Mike Fahrion on Wed, Aug 17, 2011 @ 11:26 AM
What makes you successful?
I was doing some bike-seat philosophizing about what makes people successful (what is it that happens to your brain when exercising? More thoughts on that later).
No, I’m not writing a self-help book (it would be short). But a couple events caused me to stop and think about what makes people I know successful or not, and what traits or quirks do they have in common.
It’s not intelligence. An uber-IQ may qualify you for more advanced work, but it doesn’t correlate to success. In fact extreme intelligence without the right stuff might even be counterproductive and lead to a dark world of cynicism and sarcasm. That’s a purgatory I’ve seen some engineers create for themselves.
What about motivation? Highly motivated people are enviable (and occasionally annoying). They throw themselves with unfettered enthusiasm at whatever they set out to do. But just being highly motivated isn’t it at all. Not by a long shot.
Why not? Because success really isn’t about you. It’s about those that you know and influence. Understanding what motivates them is where the real magic happens. Face it - on your own you’re a labor force of one in a world of 7 billion. You and I are a wee spec in space and time. But what about those that understand the motivation of others? They have a lever - maybe it’s 100x, maybe 1000x or more. I don’t care how motivated you are on your own, if you don’t understand the motivation of others (and do something about it), you’ll struggle. Agree? Disagree?
So I’ve been doing a bit of bicycling lately. Not a lot by enthusiasts’ standards, but between the commute to work and some weekend rides, easily over 100 miles per week. It’s one of a handful of physical activities that combines exercise, outdoors, an elegant mechanical advantage and rhythm. That combo does something for my brain which is constantly chewing on something or another when I’m riding. I find it’s impossible to dwell on petty stuff and I’m able to digest bigger issues faster and with more clarity than when my butt is planted in a desk chair. Is there something you do that gives this same mental nudge?
Enough philosophizing and on to business. Here are a few intriguing problems we’ve been involved with here lately. Maybe they’ll get you thinking about interesting problems that you can solve on or off your bike seat.
Nothing drives spending (or shirking in fear) like regulatory requirements. Widespread in Europe, and led in the US by California, fuel stations have to do leak monitoring and vapor recovery for their fuel tanks. That leads to a small embedded system being installed with, of all things, an RS-232 serial port that allows remote data collection. Instead of sending an employee out every day with a clipboard major fuel stations want to get that data into their network and business system. We’ve solved this one in a couple ways for different customers depending on what the sites look like. If they don't have wiring in place they’ve taken a pair of our Zlinx wireless modems to create a wireless link back into the computer systems inside the station. If they’re lucky enough to have some Ethernet cable (or an available conduit), they’ve adopted our single port Ethernet serial server to allow access over their existing network.
Energy management is a hot topic that isn’t going away soon. There is a quite a push to get more comprehensive data down at a more discrete level; for example, how much energy a particular location, device, or process is consuming. It turns out that, in the US, our government has been at play here as well, requiring all government buildings of significant size to monitor electric meters. Those meters aren’t always installed in a convenient location, so an enterprising solutions provider put together a combo of our Ethernet Extenders and our compact Industrial Ethernet switch to provide Ethernet connectivity at the electric meters which could then be located great distances from the host system. This could easily be retrofitted using existing telephone cable, avoiding the expensive proposition of pulling fiber connections through an existing building.
You’ll be happy to know that there are pretty demanding standards in the medical field when it comes to isolating devices that might be connected to your important bits from the power lines. Nice to know that someone is looking out on your behalf, especially when you’re wired up on a hospital bed during a lightning storm. B&B has provided serial isolation products for years (decades even), but now some of those medical devices are USB. That created a demand for USB isolation, and once some of our medical customers started inquiring we went out and got our USB isolator -- UL approved to UL 60601-1 medical standards. It’s now used to isolate the connection between a piece of USB-connected instrumentation and the IT-class PC that is prevalent throughout medical facilities.
I’m giddy about the success stories rolling in about GhostBridge - our new high performance outdoor wireless Ethernet bridge. I talked with a customer last week that yanked out a 3 year old wireless link that cost him an arm and half a leg, and replaced it with GhostBridge. On the far end was a network of high end digital signs. The wireless link provided programming access to update the content of those signs. His old link and its troublesome external antennas were getting him a throughput of about 700 kbps, which was leading to a lot of downtime for the signs. With GhostBridge his throughput went instantly to over 40Mbps and installation took just minutes. Another customer quipped that installation was “as easy as hanging a picture.” Great performance, great value, outstanding ease of use. Makes me circle back to my motivation philosophizing – there’s a nice little success story that makes me think we did a nice job in understanding what motivates many of you.
What are your motivation success stories? Do you buy in to my thoughts or am I missing some other key ingredients - or do you think I’m altogether wacked?
Talk back...I’d love to hear from you
Happy Connections, Mike Fahrion
Posted by Mike Fahrion on Thu, Jul 21, 2011 @ 09:03 PM
Dear Reader,
A few summertime topics in today's letter.
Tales of a bicycle commuter
I’m now a couple weeks into being a bicycle commuter. What seemed like a grand idea over the cold, dark winter months is actually turning out well -- although it’s pretty steamy this week so best to keep your distance from me at the office. I’ve dusted off the vintage Trek - and promptly burst both its vintage tires. Those kinks are worked out now. It feels good so far and must be good for me despite the few extra calories from the occasional wayward flying bug (insider tip, don’t chew the green ones -- very bitter). We’ll see how this new practice holds up over time -- tips welcome.
What I did on my summer vacation, Part 1
I just got back from a week of camping on the eastern shores of Lake Michigan. Perfect coastline, great water, no laptop and no cell reception. Great trip - although I’m still extracting beach sand. Vacation Part Two is coming up and will take the clan beyond the cheddar curtain into Wisconsin for more camping. I hope you’re all taking advantage of the summer season too. Time flies. When you live in a land of four seasons don’t forget to take advantage of the best of them.
Travel Agenda
Summer vacation has gotten a bit in the way of my thirst for Chicago traffic, airport security and cheap hotel rooms. I’ve got to get a head of steam back up to spend some time on the road visiting with you, B&B’s influential customer. There are many of you that I’m intensely interested in meeting in person to better understand your current pains and visions for future communications needs. If you think that could be useful chat for both of us drop me a note. I’ll buy the margaritas.
What is an "accident" anyway?
A few recent stories of misfortune got me thinking a bit about accidents lately. "An unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally". For the most part, I think that definition is bullhockey. Was it an accident - or being careless, uninformed or just plain "I did something stupid."
It seems to me that nearly all unexpected incidents are a result of either poor circumstantial awareness or are a predictable outcome to a calculated risk. Fair warning, talk like this won’t get you a lot of dates and isn’t broadly appreciated by accident "victims".
If you truly understand your surroundings you’ll be (nearly) accident proof. You’ll still choose to take some chances with an understanding of the slim probabilities of failure and make your own risk/reward decision. Good engineers excel at this sort of thing on a technical level, but we’re generally inept at the emotional and social level. Best to utilize a social consultant for those situations -- better yet, marry her. It seems to me that successful business people are exceptionally good at this in many dimensions. It’s notable that nobody ever calls a failed business decision an "accident".
So, it’s best to understand your surroundings. Here is some B&B circumstantial awareness to sink your teeth into.
You know what a big product guy I am, so I get excited about the new things we’re cranking out here at B&B.
As the largest supplier of serial data converters around, adding another family of rugged, compact converters to our line doesn’t exactly stretch your imagination. The new SCP family of converters gives you a tough metal enclosure, compact size and easy panel mounting capability with wide temp and isolation options. If you’re a machine or panel builder and aren’t enamored with DIN rail, you’ll love this line.
That one was easy and probably didn’t test your situational awareness of B&B one bit. You’ve seen serial converters from us for 3 decades now. But what about Ethernet? Did you know that B&B has more flavors and styles of rugged Ethernet switches than we do of any other product line? Rack mount, panel mount, DIN mount, a boatload of fiber options, PoE, PoE+, Gigabit. Oddly, I can’t tell you how many people I visit that say, "I didn’t know you had Ethernet switches."
Well, this month we’ve introduced yet another line of rugged Ethernet switches Frankly, these things are pretty sexy -- hands down our best switch line yet. Extremely slim line 5 and 8 port switches, metal enclosures with DIN and panel mount options, dual power inputs supporting both DC and AC. These buggers have passed heavy industrial EMC requirements as well as shock and vibration testing so they’re more than ready to handle any environment you can throw at them. Take a look, particularly if you ever need fiber. Adding fiber ports makes everyone else’s switches a bit portly, causing trouble in tight cabinets. Thanks to their LC fiber connectors, this line is slim with and without fiber.
Thoughts, opinions?
Happy Connections,
Mike Fahrion
Posted by Mike Fahrion on Wed, Jun 15, 2011 @ 02:21 PM
I visited the Sensor Expo last week in Chicago and thought I'd share a few observations.
Most importantly, man do I loathe the Stephens convention center. River Road, the parking, the broiler-temperature hike through the skywalk maze. Don't like it a bit. And I'm not just saying that because I took no less than 5 wrong turns…
Having suffered through that,
The "internet of things" bodes well for those in the sensor business, and best for those that are able to embed various sensing technologies into little bits of silicon where they make their way into an amazing number of devices.
Want to know where the future is? It doesn't take a big brain to put the patterns together at a show like that - just map the density of people and then compensate for booth-babes. This year's post-skirt-compensated model revealed three trends for the future; Wireless Sensing, Energy Harvesting and chip-level sensor technologies. Anyone working those booths made lots of new friends. Others looked a bit lonely.
Cloudy future?
"The Cloud" has been an IT buzzword for a few years now and it's now making inroads in many applications, including a number of appearances at the show. What's been interesting to watch isn't the technology (a database in the sky doesn't do it for me) but how companies are going to use and (presumably) profit from it. More interesting yet is who's succeeding and who's failing in that quest.
This is an important development for all of us interested in any kind of remote monitoring or asset management. These apps all have a common challenge of having lots of assets tucked away behind some flavor of firewall. Network infrastructures are built explicitly to deny the ability of anyone to reach in and grab data from the outside, but they can easily push data outward to a fixed location with minimal security risk. That's where "cloud" based databases and applications come in.
There's another ingredient that explains the fervor. MBA's wet themselves over the prospect of adding re-occurring revenue streams (with near 100% profit margin) and see the cloud as the yellow brick road to Emerald City. Maybe so for some, but for many that bright little path is fraught with lions, tigers and bears.
The secret ingredient is how to bring value to the customer, but in these early days I smell more solutions that look like a company trying to force fit a new revenue model. I don't see customers excited about that yet. Perhaps we haven't been well enough trained and the day will come where everyone is comfortably paying a few bucks a month to monitor our stuff. Maybe.
Apple's iCloud announcements last week drive home the state of things today, the business model and the customer value. Apple has decided that $25 per year is enough to cover the electric bill for the server farm and their reward will come in the form of increase sales of i-this and i-thats. Makes sense to me. In fact I think it's probably worth the $25 to me and I've given up resistance to the growth of more i-stuff in my own home. Apple will likely win another round in their quest to increase revenue within their existing business model and existing sandbox. Nice move.
I'll be in Ireland as you read this, participating in B&B Electronics first ever channel partner event. This is shaping up to be quite the rodeo with B&B solutions partners coming together from 20-some different countries to talk about new products and solutions that we're are able to put together in concert with our partners. It will be an exciting and energizing week with no shortage of interesting products, technologies and trends to discuss and debate.
On the product front, there are a few new developments that I can share this week - in fact the paint will barely be dry by the time you read this as these products in final production as I type.
First up is our latest-greatest line of compact, rugged Ethernet switches. This is an entire lineup of 5 and 8 port switches with great specs and wide temp options. Maybe it's wrong of me to pick a favorite, but I'm doing it anyway. Check out the little ESW105-ML. This is a tiny 5 port switch that includes a fiber port. Usually fiber options make a switch a bit, well, portly. But not this svelte little number. We used LC fiber to make what I believe is the smallest Ethernet switch with fiber on the market today. Cute as a bug, check it out
If you need to manage your Ethernet traffic, then you're ready for a move uptown into managed switches. We've got an entirely new line there as well. 5 - 16 ports, DIN and panel mount, wide temp range and other rugged options. Check them out here.
And finally, lest you think I've been neglecting our tried and true friend, the serial port, we have a nifty new line of 232 to 485 converters and isolators. Tiny form factor, rugged metal enclosure with panel mount capability and all the features and convenience you expect from the largest manufacturer of serial converters on the planet.
I expect to come home from Ireland loaded with zest and vigor (and yes, Guinness) all charged up for deep conversations and debates on the future of remote monitoring, asset management and this cloud business. Talk back to me (blog link) - I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of them!
Happy Connections,
Mike Fahrion
Posted by Mike Fahrion on Wed, May 25, 2011 @ 10:32 AM
Dear Reader,
Good news - I think - for all of us. Harold Camping's 2nd attempt at predicting the Rapture either was based on bad assumptions or (maybe) none of us were on the right side of the 3 percentile line and we're in for a summer of torment. I boldly prophesize a summer with mosquitoes, political doublespeak and no pennant for the Cubs.
I don't think I'll lose much sleep over it - May is just too busy of a month. 1st camping trip of the season is behind us, graduation parties are in full swing, pumpkins are planted and the Drive-in Theater is open. Things to do!
It's been a busy month here at B&B too. We kicked it off with a bang when we B&Bers celebrated our 30th company anniversary. 30 years of communications products - time flies! We've come a long way since those early days of building products in the corner of Bill's basement to today's three shifts of manufacturing (right here in the cornfields of Illinois) and a sandbox full of technologies and development tools for our engineers that we couldn't have dreamed of back in 1981.
Here are a few bits on the product and technology side.
GhostBridge wireless Ethernet bridge has been getting glowing reviews in its first month. "As easy as hanging a picture." Not to mention a number of installed sites in the 3-5 mile range, including some very noisy environments where other radios failed. If you've ever dreamed of beaming Ethernet from point A to B check out this short demo video I put together.
I've been in a lot of interesting USB discussions lately. I sat in on a panel for EETimes discussing USB in industrial settings and also in a few good customer meetings to help them adapt USB to applications that the Wintel consortium would never have dreamed of when they wrote the original specs. USB has reached a comfort zone where it's finding its way into everything from PLC's and drives to kitchen appliances and furniture. Our family of rugged grade USB hubs and USB isolators has proven that USB can be deployed in high noise and high reliability environments.
In fact, so many of you are putting USB in some seriously rugged locations like outdoor, machine mounted and industrial cabinets that we needed to add some heavy duty USB cabling solutions to help. If you're doing anything out of the ordinary with USB and have to deal with cabinets, vibration or moisture, take a look at this set up waterproof, IP67 USB cordsets and connectors.
Finally, it's no surprise that Ethernet use keeps growing. For the longest time here at B&B we stuck to a mantra of low portcount for our Ethernet switches because most of the time the high density stuff was back in a climate controlled IT closet where you get away with office grade equipment. Well, the reality is there is so much Ethernet connectivity now that a lot of you need more ports installed in some less than friendly locations. We've finally caved in and developed a line of 26 port rack mount switches with all the rugged grade features you need to survive in non IT-grade environments. Serious stuff when you need a lot of connectivity along with wide temperature specs.
Congratulations on your survival of the end of days (or on being in the dubious 97th percentile left behind). Our survival is now assured until December of 2012 so don't procrastinate your summer planning any longer.
Happy Connections,
Mike Fahrion