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Bad Assumptions, Summertime and the End of Days

Posted by Mike Fahrion on Wed, May 25, 2011 @ 10:32 AM
  
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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

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Dear Mike 
 
I am the technical partner in a property development company (www.pellerade.co.za) 
 
Most of our buildings are of the size and specification that require smart building technologies. 
 
We recently had a local company install a system from HDL in China. I do not know the exact architecture of the system but my understanding is that it is uses RS 485 protocol. 
 
The system is unreliable and suffers from interference and lost data. HDL blame the installation but I feel that it is more a case of the device/s not having robust enough circuitry.  
 
I have read your newsletters over many years now and would like to ask if you have any suggestions or buffering/ filtering technologies that could be used. And / Or what questions should we be asking of HDL. 
 
Thanks and Regards 
 
Paul Stuart 
 
Posted @ Thursday, February 16, 2012 5:27 AM by Paul Stuart
485 problems are usually caused by grounding issues. Check for proper signal ground connections to start. Adding isolation to the system will eliminate ground loops (lots of isolators and isolated 232 to 485 converters on our sitewww.bb-elec.com).  
People tend to get carried away with using termination resistors, check that it's not over terminated (when in doubt no termination is better than incorrect termination).  
 
Hope that helps! 
 
Mike
Posted @ Sunday, February 19, 2012 2:20 PM by Mike Fahrion
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