Slightly Sensible - B&B Insider

Mike’s Social Networking Quandary

Dear Reader,

Do you remember Metcalfe’s law? Back in 1980 (when much of the country was debating who shot JR and mourning John Lennon), Robert Metcalfe stated that the value of a network is proportionate to the square of the number of connected users of the system. While more a metaphor than an absolute, his statement is grounded in the fact that the number of connections increases at that rate, therefore the value potential increases as well.

Potential.

Ok fellow techies, geeks, nerds and general overachievers. I’m baffled and need your help.

Social networking. Particularly the world of Facebook and Twitter and those that inhabit it.

I don’t get it.

Facebook claims on the order of 500 million users. Cripes! That’s 500,000,000 networked end nodes, all presumably with at least a double digit IQ.

Twitter boasts about 65 million tweets each and every day. 65 million fresh chunks of data posted daily, much of it by living, breathing and – one would suspect - thinking bodies.

All that potential, I can’t find a decent use. Please, please tell me that I’m missing the point because this is driving me friggin’ nuts - and on two separate fronts.

First off, I agree with Metcalfe. Imagine the untold capabilities that should be lurking within - these should be the most powerful tools ever known to mankind. A cloud model database with the world’s largest network of intelligent (some more than others) end-nodes.

Second, hundreds of millions of people are investing time - real time - using these networks. Quick research reveals the average user spends about 6 hours a month. According to my napkin we’re talking about 3 Billion hours of humanity dedicated to this project every month. (The Egyptians built a pyramid in less time and 5,000 years later still have something to show for their efforts).

So we’ve got a colossal network of intelligent end nodes. It may be the biggest investment of manpower in a project in the history of our planet. And Metcalfe’s law predicts unfathomable potential.

Yet I can’t figure out the point.

I can’t even concoct a reasonable conspiracy theory. I’d feel better if someone was making uber-bucks but frankly nobody seems to be making much money either. Lemming mentality doesn’t seem to fit.

The grand result of the largest project of our lifetime?

Virtual farm animals? You know when Cousin Ed is jonesing for a double latte?

When Francis Bacon said “knowledge is power” I don’t think this is what he had in mind. I expected so much more. Am I alone in my quandary? Enlighten me please.

Imagine the potential for a moment - and allow me to take the human element out of it so we can share a rational vision.

Picture every device, every machine, every asset under your care was connected to this pervasive internet that’s rapidly becoming a staple of our world. Data at your fingertips. Sensor data tied to machines, to inventory, allowing you not only to recreate the past, measure the present, but virtually predict the future. A bearing that is about to fail, a wire that is going to overheat, energy costs that will be less expensive in an hour than right now. The gains in productivity, safety, reliability, efficiency – amazing potential. And it can be achieved with today’s technology. It’s happening all around us on an increasing scale.

It’s happening all around us. Somewhere last decade a smart marketer coined the term M2M for “Machine to Machine” communications. Catchy. It describes precisely what our customers do with the equipment that we’ve been building out here in the cornfields of Illinois for nearly 3 decades.

Ethernet Switches loaded with fiber optic ports used to communicate data in a wind turbine back to the controllers and a remote monitoring system.

A bakery integrated temps, scales, level sensors and conveyers over their Ethernet using B&B’s Vlinx Ethernet Serial Servers - increasing productivity and quality.

A coal fired power plant used Zlinx wireless 900MHz long range modems to connect PLCs to the coal conveyors, decreasing down time.

Temporary power generation is a big deal in developing countries and in disaster areas. B&B provided complete panels including our rugged Ethernet switches and serial Modbus to Ethernet Gateways to integrate data systems, enable remote monitoring and control of these portable power plants.

School crossing zone warning signs are connected wirelessly between the school and crosswalks using B&B’s Zlinx wireless radio modems.

The list goes on and on – the power of pervasive connectivity – linking sensors, devices and machines together and into local and wide area networks.

I may not get social networking, but the vision for these pervasive device networks is crystal clear.

Your thoughts?

Happy Connections,
Mike Fahrion

Dog Days of Summer at B&B

The Dog Days of Summer - a time "when the sea boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies" as described in Brady’s Clavis Calendarium.

Brady wrote that in 1815. Life before air conditioning must have been tough.

The first couple weeks of my own Dog Days have been anything but languid – although “phrensies” may apply. A weekend camping with family and friends, a quick and memorable trip to Israel to meet with some key customers, capped with a week of true R&R on Michigan’s lakeshore – no laptop, no cell service, no email – just sand and surf, meals off the grill or from a cast iron skillet. Beach runs followed by lake swims washing away the smell of campfire smoke and bug spray.

I’m not much of a Luddite, but 5 days without cell service has a dramatic short term effect on your lifestyle. Time of day is described as daytime, nighttime, or “almost sunset,” and just figuring out what day it is required some mental twister. A far cry from the daily regime where my day is planned in 15 minute increments and Outlook reminders are my dictator.

My two weeks out of the office has come to an end. Time to pay the piper.

Hundreds of emails and dozens of voicemails beg for attention, but the signal to noise ratio appears low.

One worthy of sharing is that in my absence the team has launched the new Zlinx Xtreme radio modem and wireless I/O product line. This is our first truly outdoor rated product, one that would withstand even Brady’s definition of Dog Days of summer.

If you’ve been thinking that wireless might be an easy way to grab data, or even just monitor that one contact closure, tank level, flow rate, or virtually any other analog or digital I/O, our new Zlinx Xtreme may be just the thing to scratch your wireless itch.

There are two key parts of the product line.

First is Zlinx Xtreme I/O with two analog inputs, two analog outputs, two digital inputs and two relay outputs. Use a pair of I/O products to do a peer-to-peer wireless I/O application, transparently bringing remote I/O where you need it - right to your controller’s I/O. Or use Modbus mode to bring I/O from one or many locations back to the radio modem, which will pump Modbus I/O data right into the serial port of your controller - completely oblivious to the fact that the data has been delivered wirelessly.

Next is the Zlinx Xtreme radio modem. Not only can the Xtreme modem play the role of a Modbus gateway when used with its I/O sister products, but it’s also a radio modem that can be used in a pair for wire replacement of RS-232, 422 and 485 communications.

Here are the hot points for the Zlinx Xtreme family.

Its IP 67 rated. That means we had it walk the plank of our one meter deep water test chamber. Then we sent it out to a lab for some nasty dust tests that would put the deserts of Israel to shame. On top of that it’s designed and tested for operation from -40 to 74°C. (While there I was talking temp with an engineer that spec’s our product in outdoor environments there. When I somewhat mindlessly mentioned our temp range he got a chuckle out of the “-40” part). So whether your application is outdoors, or even in an indoor environment that’s less than “controlled” – Zlinx Xtreme is ready to take it on.

Shock, vibration and drop tests were all part of the gauntlet of extreme challenges that we put the product (and ourselves) through, each of them leading to design and manufacturing tweaks to get it just right.

Extreme environments are more than mechanical. Remote communications tend to be in less than the friendliest of electrical locations. Welding operations, variable frequency drives, huge pumps – all kinds of interference spewing products that can leave lesser devices twitching under the influence of stray electrons. We designed and tested Xtreme to heavy industrial specifications of EN61000-6-2 for surges and all kinds of electromagnetic interference.

Great products are more than a collection of specs - we spent a great deal of time perfecting ease of use as well. A quick start mode button that can have you up in running in seconds. A built-in USB config port if you need to configure advanced features. Flexible I/O that can be configured to perfectly match your input and output needs.

Just like our indoor line of Zlinx I/O products, we’ve kept the speed and security features that you need to satisfy both the needs of your applications and your nosy IT guy that wants to know everything that’s going on in the wireless world.

If you’ve pondered wireless communications for serial or sensor data before, you owe yourself a look at Zlinx Xtreme. Check it out at http://www.bb-elec.com/product_multi_family.asp?MultiFamilyId=123

Looking for a quick wireless education? Don’t miss this white paper on how to solve monitoring challenges with wireless i/o. 

What’s new in your own Dog Days? Hysterics and phrensies, or …?

Happy Connections,
Mike Fahrion

Product Testing Glamour and The Big Flush

Dear reader,

A deluge of rain this weekend gave me time to catch up on a bit of drudgery - reviewing my engineering budget. Crunching numbers rates somewhere between balancing the checkbook and an appendectomy on my Saturday to do list.

When I'm slugging away at a wearisome task like this, particularly when sitting home at the kitchen table, a devious portion of my brain is frantically searching for distraction. I had no sooner tallied (and re-tallied) how much I've spent this year on various forms of product testing when I heard a radio headline about testing toilets with "The Big Flush."  Clearly distraction-qualified material - off to Google I went.

The Big Flush - 250 students were hired last week to perform The Big Flush at the Penguin's new Pittsburgh hockey arena by simultaneously flushing every toilet in the arena.  I'm pleased to report that The Big Flush was a success.

But, funny how distractions work - and here I am over an hour later writing this month's eletter on - product testing - of all things.

Product testing is getting more attention in 2010 than any time that I remember. Boeing's 787 Dreamliner struggled with huge delays as testing uncovered numerous design and technology problems (an engineering project of enormous size and complexity, but hardly Boeing's first).

Ongoing consumer product troubles from China, pet food, milk, toys.

Even the mighty have fallen. More has been written about the manufacturing and quality prowess of Toyota than any other company - yet 2010 found them struggling with fundamental product problems.

And while it's not yet apparent exactly what category it falls in, the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico can't be ignored.

There's little glory in product testing. While being the 787 test pilot will impress the ladies, you're not likely to find a mate describing your panache for testing the robustness of an Ethernet Serial Server against the ravages of static shock and electrical surges.

While I don't recommend it as a dating technique, it's the unseen efforts of test engineers that ensure product greatness. According to my spreadsheets, it's also quite an investment. Specialized equipment, annual calibration, scores of engineering hours, lab time, on and on. What exactly am I getting for my money - and - more importantly - how are you benefiting?

The short answer is rugged and reliable products - the result of one heck of a lot of investment in product testing, combined with a long history of communications product design for critical applications. 

It rarely comes up in polite conversation, but here's a peek behind the closed lab doors at what it takes to pull that off.

ESD testing - electro-static discharge - we zap every nook and cranny of our products with plus and minus 15,000 volts of ESD. Now, you're not likely to generate that kind of energy even with a herd of fuzzy kittens - but improvements in chip design and our own tricks of the trade have given us the ability to survive serious ESD zaps. ESD can do more than just blow out data ports - it can also send microprocessors off into never-never land, cause destructive latchup of inputs and cause general mayhem.

Surge testing - there are all kinds of nasty causes of surges that are conducted or induced onto data and power lines and we do a lot of testing to ensure that each of our ports not only withstands those surges but also keeps your connected equipment out of harms way.

Isolation - you've heard me soapbox about the benefit of isolating data circuits. There are many tricks to the trade here - particularly since there is a gaping lack of industry standards in this area. Component selection, power supply design, chassis design and printed circuit board layout techniques all play a critical role. Since isolation is only as good as the weakest link, I can tell you without a doubt that I've seen many companies really bugger this up - making bold isolation claims without the design practices to back them up.

Radio Frequency Immunity - even for the casual observer it's not hard to imagine that in this wireless age it's important that electronic equipment be oblivious to all the RF energy zinging through the air. Yet the reality is that it's unlikely to be your iPhone that takes down your electronics, it's more likely to be the variable frequency drive that's controlling that pump or compressor. To prevent you from being a victim of this invisible instigator of communications glitches, we put our products into an RF chamber and bombard them with energy across a broad frequency spectrum. And we rarely stop at the prescribed limit (heck, if a product passes a test you really haven't learned much of anything). We crank the knob up to find just how far we can go.

And don't forget the more mundane - temperature chamber testing, vibration, and the economical but potentially vicious drop tests.

All in, it adds up to quite the spend - time and money. But it's how we know that we've achieved truly rugged and reliable products - stuff that will withstand some seriously tough environments. And, we've got the test specs to prove it.

Need an industrial Ethernet switch that's qualified to sit in an outdoor traffic control panel (including the abusive truck ride to the construction site)? Check out our EIR300 line.

How about RS-232, 422, 485 and Fiber converters that are qualified for installation into electrical substations?

Or a USB isolator that meets the demanding isolation requirements of the medical industry?

Maybe you need an outdoor, wide temp 802.11 access point certified for hazardous locations and tough enough to withstand not just mother nature but wash downs as well.

This testing is serious business - whether it's The Big Flush or bombarding an Ethernet switch with RF energy.

Is there other specialized testing or certification that you require? Any bizarre product tests required for your industry? I'd love to hear about it.

Your comments are welcome.

Happy, reliable connections,
Mike Fahrion

Mental Engineering Wizardry – and Mike’s Brain

Engineering is a tough gig. It requires you to be dogmatically pragmatic, yet pragmatism doesn't breed greatness. Greatness is about creativity and innovation coupled with effective execution. They don't teach you that in Engineering school. Schedule and budget driven projects don't exactly nurture it either.

That's the challenge of engineering. And in this recovering economy where projects are being unleashed on lean teams you had better understand the mental triggers that unleash your "A" game.

When do you do your best work? I've been paying attention, and for me, the pattern is clear.

We all create value on a sliding scale. There are things we each do that are worth $1000 an hour, $10,000, or even more. But are there hours in the day where you're not creating enough value to pull in minimum wage?

The key to success isn't rocket science - maximize the former and eliminate the latter. Duh.

My best work, the $10,000 an hour kind, isn't entirely predictable - but the pattern has been clear for years. So when am I most likely to be worth $10,000 an hour?

• When I'm sweating - not sweating a deadline, but a good run or bike ride. Something that makes the heart pound yet leaves my brain free to connect the dots based on bushels of facts and experiences.
• Early in the morning - emerging daylight is best.
• Listening passively to good music. I like a lot of music, but not all of it works the same way for me. Could be Miles, could be Dvorak. Good music tickles something in my brain that frees the seeds of creativity.
• Performing good music is even better, but that talent takes a lot of time and nurture - my own talent for that art has waned. Rekindling it would be great brain food.
• When I'm outside. Nature trumps Debussy.
• After I've completely cleared my head. This is increasingly difficult to do. A solid week's vacation only works if I leave the laptop and Blackberry behind - a rarity. Hard physical labor combined with fierce concentration does it faster. Swinging my leg over a motocross bike and putting in enough hard laps to make my keyboard-jockey soft hands bleed does it every time.
  

Have you isolated the triggers that unleash your big dollar thinking? What works for you?

Reaching that state of self-awareness begs follow up questions. If you understand your triggers how do you nurture them? How well do they align with your work environment? What do you do to improve that alignment?

I've got my own answers - frankly some of them still need work (like putting in a motocross track behind the office) - but I'd like to hear yours. Talk back in the comments below and I'll throw in some more of my own.

More often than not the epiphanies that emerge from those deep thoughts aren't complex. In fact, the simpler it is the more likely it is to be effective. It just requires that you stick your head up far enough above the weeds to recognize what may be sitting right in front of you.

One simple fact that whacked us upside the head recently was that - in spite of doing nothing to promote it - we do a heck of a lot of what we call "OEM" business. I was reminded of it again as I worked with three different companies in the last two weeks on communications system designs or troubleshooting and every one of them included products discretely manufactured right here at B&B but under another company's brand. Hands down the hottest product lines for this kind of private-label OEM business lately have been USB converters and isolators. They've been out-pulling serial converters, Ethernet serial servers and Ethernet switches private label jobs by a factor of two lately.

So here's a quick commercial for anyone that needs a communications converter as an accessory or tool to accompany your own product, we can hook you up. We manufacture ourselves, not at some plant that's a 6 week boat-ride away so we pull these off fast, and are even able to do so at ridiculously low quantities.

What will you do today to nurture your own epiphanies? Share your insights.

Happy Connections,
Mike Fahrion

Products, Politics and Christmas at B&B Electronics

Dear Reader:

We're wrapping up yet another year, one that I'm sure many are happy to see fade into the sunset.  I've got just a few quick topics to wrap up before moving into a nice fresh 2010.

Business first. You heard from President Don last month about a year end sale on the most popular products. That sale is still on - until the end of the year. You'll be happy to know that it's not too late to put an industrial Ethernet managed switch or long range Zlinx Radio Modem on your Christmas list. And what engineer wouldn't enjoy a few DIN rail power supplies in their stocking?  Whether you're last minute Christmas shopping, or you've got a few bucks left in your 2009 budget, or even a January project that you'd like to save a few bucks on - get your orders in now!

The B&B Engineering elves have been busy working feverishly to unleash a bevy of new products next month. In fact, some of the elves will be writing lines of code with care in the midst of eggnog & such cheer. This November and December have been the most frantic I've ever seen for all of our engineers as they gear up for the January catalog.

Just a few teasers that I'll be diving more into next month:

If you haven't been using Ethernet Serial Servers to hang all of your standalone serial devices on your Ethernet network, it's time to poke your head out of your shell. And this large product lineup is going to grow even more in the coming weeks.

The Modbus Ethernet gateway line has been a big hit in 2009 - solving about every Modbus conversion and compatibility problem that could be thrown at it. With that success, look for new additions in that family to solve those same sorts of problems with other communications protocols.

What do you do when you need to extend your Ethernet into some remote location that blows the 100 meter limit out of the water? Our lineup of Ethernet Extenders is about to adopt a new sibling as well that will give you even more excuses to try out this first-rate problem-solver.

And even with the broadest line of serial converters and isolators on the planet, we're growing that line too. Some serious rough and tumble converter products, not to mention even more fiber conversion options will be hitting the shelves next month.

Our Zlinx line of wireless I/O and modems will be growing as well, giving you even more ways to get data whether from a sensor or a device, into your system without the expense of running wires.

Ok - let's get on with the juicy stuff.

Global Warming is a nearly irresistible magnet of a topic for me with its bizarre mix of science, politics and dollars.  I've gone out of my way to limit my rants, raves and diatribes on the topic, including Copenhagen's events this week.

But have you noticed that Global Warming has been re-branded as Climate Change? Not sure what to make of that, but I'm sure there is a marketing committee somewhere driving the transition. The entire debacle is fascinating to watch - if anyone ever writes a book called "The Science, Politics and Religion of Global Warming," I'll line up to buy a copy.

As long as I'm pushing hot buttons, at 1 AM Monday morning the Senate cleared their first hurdle in accomplishing their mission of completing a health care bill by Christmas Eve.  You can imagine the quality of that work. There's nothing scarier than political policy making with a deadline. By design, policy making must move at a snail's pace to end up with a product of value. Frankly, seeing the Senate abandon their slow and stodgy mode of operation scares me silly.

Speaking of political topics, it's a fun season to watch your inbox. All your suppliers have no doubt sent you a thoughtful holiday e-message. They all read something like; Happy Holidays, Season's Greetings, even Joyful Winter Solstice, or other "Happy non-specific gift-giving-season".

Not one Merry Christmas in the bunch, not in my inbox. Virtually everyone, here in the US anyway, has been so well-schooled in political correctness and is so concerned about a potential nasty gram from an anti-Santa zealot that the word Christmas has virtually disappeared from corporate language.

Even B&B isn't immune. One of those emails in my inbox is B&B's very own holiday message. You probably saw it yourself. A striking graphic scribed with the non-offensive message - Happy Holidays.

There was some print too, about how we will be open for business and shipping every day save the 24th (that would be Christmas Eve), the 25th(eh - Christmas), and New Years day (college football, hangovers and such).

So it appears the burden here lies with me to issue the politically incorrect holiday wishes.

So here you go - every politically incorrect holiday greeting I could muster.

Eid Mubarak
Happy Pancha Ganapati
Joyous Kwanzaa
Happy (belated) Hanukkah

 and of course,
Merry Christmas!

Mike Fahrion
e-support@bb-elec.com
815-433-5100

Pumpkins, Combines and Connectivity at B&B

It's here - the definitive icon of fall has arrived.

Pumpkins are picked, leaves turned to golden hues and giant combines lumber through the Illinois cornfields. But that indeed is subtle evidence in comparison to the watershed event of the season.

That's right, dear reader, you know it is fall because the autumn edition of the B&B Electronics catalog has just arrived in your mail slot. 136 vibrant pages of data connectivity wonders unleashing the crisp exhilaration of the fall season.

So finish your pumpkin carving and wash that pumpkin seed slime off your fingers while I take you on a unique tour. Not some droning, guided bus tour but a journey of ideas and solutions.

Time is short, let's dive in.

The single most ubiquitous language in the industrial world, Modbus, is an elegantly simple and open protocol. Over its 30 year history it's been implemented on RS-232, RS-485 and Ethernet by thousands of manufacturers. That enormous success predicts that you will run into quirky Modbus connectivity issues. Mark did when he got called out to an oil rig that had two RS-232 transducers (both unfortunately hardcoded with an address of 1) that needed to be connected to a PLC via Modbus TCP. A quick call to B&B's support team guided Mark to page 12. When you've got a Modbus conundrum, the Vlinx MESR family of Modbus gateways is the solution and now both of Mark's transducers are connected into his Modbus/TCP control system with no conflicts.

A few weeks back I got a voice mail from plant engineer David, "Mike, I've got a problem" (my favorite kind of voice mail). David's plant had a work cell with productivity problems due to high setup times. Previously masked by high production volumes, now that the plant is turning over products every few days it had constrained the entire manufacturing operation with its long setup cycle. David was tasked with automating the programming process which would allow both operators to focus on retooling instead of futzing with the two aging PLC's. Simple enough, each controller had a serial port (one RS-232, the other RS-485). But the crux of the problem was that the work cell was out of reach of the plant's Ethernet and extensive wiring work wasn't in the budget. David's remedy was on pages 18 and 82. A two port Wi-Fi serial server and an industrial-grade outdoor access point provided the connectivity needed for remote programming and monitoring of the PLC's, eliminating thousands of dollars of wiring costs.

John is a crack SI in New England. He was adding a SCADA system to several wells in a municipality that previously had nothing but local control (and a lean budget). While there were bundles of wires going between the pump house and the control panel, there was no Cat5 cable in this 1980's installation. John was able to leave the trencher back at the shop using the Ethernet Extenders on page 32. Using a pair of extenders and an extra pair of wires in the cable bundle he was able to get full Ethernet connectivity into the pump house.

Jesse called me late in August. Jesse's company had installed three electronic traffic-information signs in Texas and had seven more installations to go. But things weren't going well. In only six weeks they had lost communications to the signs twice due to lightning storms and the contract was in jeopardy. After outage #2 they wisely brought in Jesse to diagnose the problem. He called me to review the two grounding practices he found; the design as intended, and how it was actually wired. And he also called to tell me that he was less than pleased to find that it was not a B&B Electronics RS-485 converter that had been installed. Not only was the converter fried, but it didn't even provide proper connections for grounding. Jesse's solution was on page 49, a triple isolated RS-485 converter that not only provided the isolation badly needed to survive a Texas lightning season, but also had the proper connectors and terminals to eliminate the bad wiring practices he found in the field (B&B is the serial market leader for good reason!).

Matt was another systems integrator with a challenge. He'd been tasked with adding SCADA to 14 water towers in an isolated community. Now, anyone could solve this problem with some brute force and a lot of installation labor. But that's not how you win business or turn a profit - something everyone is well in-tune with this year. Matt found his solution on page 74, where he selected a Zlinx wireless I/O module to beam the information from his level and flow transducers down to the control panel, where it flowed easily into his software thanks to Zlinx native Modbus protocol.

I've run out of time faster than I ran out of pages, so I'll leave it to the powers of your own imagination to conjure the unique connectivity solutions available in the remainder of your catalog.

Don't have your own copy? Click over to the web site and request one before they run out, that would lead to a dull fall season to be sure!

Happy Connections,

Mike Fahrion
e-support@bb-elec.com
815-433-5100