John Rinaldi’s Blog

Today is January 1, 2009. If you’re like most people you’ve got some kind of New Year’s resolution. You’re going to lose weight. You’re going to get rid of the credit card debt. It might even be to stop gambling or learn to speak French.

By far the losing weight goal is the one that most Americans have on their list. It’s also the one that most will fail at within the first couple of weeks of this New Year. Why is that?

Goal is not a good word. Matt Furey (www.matfurey.com) has a great idea. Don’t call it a goal. Matt says make it a promise. Promises are much more difficult to break. If you promise your son or daughter to take them to the zoo on Saturday it’s real hard to back out of that. But if you have a goal to take them to the zoo Saturday, you might just sit back and watch a bowl game or a movie instead.

What Matt’s getting to by calling it a promise is emotionalizing the intention. When you have a desire, you fire it up by emotionalizing it. A promise carries emotion with it. If you want to lose weight but aren’t emotional about it, you’ll fail.

In Psycho Cybernetics we use imagination to add emotion to a goal. If the goal is losing weight you imagine a new healthy you. You imagine what you will look like in the mirror, how you’ll be wearing great new clothes. You imagine how much energy you’ll have, the vitality in your face, how much more creative and happy you’ll be, how much better you’ll do at work because of how much better you feel about yourself. If you see these images 3 or 4 times a day, see them up close in color just like you’re in a movie theater, you’ll add the emotion that’ll carry you through and make your PROMISE come to life.

If you’re going to have a goal I’d encourage you to have a money goal. A BIG money goal. Let’s say a net worth of ONE MILLION DOLLARS in the next five years. By January 1, 2014 you’re going to be a millionaire! Does that sound hard? If you’re already a millionaire make it five or ten million. The number isn’t important.

What’s important is that you decide that you can. Believe me you can do it. I personally know a lot of millionaires and deca-millionaires. None of them are special. I wonder how some of them find their way out of bed in the morning. There’s nothing special about these people. You can be one of them if you decide you can.

Once you decide, you’re next step is to figure out how you can create value in whatever you do, so much value that people will gladly give you as much money as you want in exchange for that value.

You can do this in any occupation or you can invent your own way of delivering value. Say you’re a plumber and you realize that the plumbing firm has a lot of money stuck in the trucks that plumbers drive around. Well, you think about it for a while and figure out a way to reduce that inventory and keep customer service high. When you do that you’re employer will gladly shell out more bucks to you in exchange for delivering that kind of value or you’ll realize that you can make your own plumbing company and use your initiative to deliver lots of value to lots of customers. You achieve a money goal by delivering lots of value and making the changes in yourself that are necessary to create that value.

And that’s what it’s all about. Self Improvement. Continuous improvement of yourself that leads to the delivery of more value to lots of other people. And the delivery of value to lots of other people leads to achieving your money goal. So it’s not about the money itself, it’s about how you have to improve, get more disciplined and continuously find more ways to serve others. Having the money goal drives that development and it’s how you can measure your self development.

Jim Rohm says it best: “Work hard on your job and you’ll make a living. Work hard on yourself and you’ll make a fortune”!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Bright guy asked me the other day: “Why does any body need a ring topology anyway?” That’s not a bad question. Lots of people don’t understand ring technology and why it’s needed. Yes, It’s pretty much about cost but there’s a few other things to keep in mind.

Most people think that the most important element for choosing a network is speed. If this one is faster than that one then we’ll take the first one. There are a couple of truths here that I’ve been spouting off about for a long time.

BIG TRUTH #1: Nobody selects a network based on any of the network attributes. Yup, that’s true. They don’t pick Modbus TCP because it is user friendly. They don’t pick Profinet IO because it’s fast and they don’t pick EtherNet/IP because CIP is a really cool way to organize a network at various levels of an automation architecture. They pick a network based on what they’ve done in the past and what plc is their favorite. 99% of the time that’s what happens. There’s no closed door meeting to evaluate some huge spreadsheet of features and topologies.

BIG TRUTH #2: Speed Doesn’t matter (at least not very much). In the majority of applications, electrons move over the wire a lot faster than things happen in the mechanical world. There are plenty of things that happen every 2 or 3 seconds. [And as long as I am on big Truths, here’s a bonus big truth for all you single guys. It’s one of my all time BIG TRUTHs: When a woman tells you “I don’t play games…” it means the game has not only started but it’s the second quarter and you’re down by 2 touchdowns!]

I’ll leave women alone for a moment and get back to Ring Topologies… [unfortunately I get paid to talk about networking and not women].

Most of the applications we do are linear. Big paper machine, material handling line or packaging line; that sort of thing. That’s where the most cost savings are for using devices with embedded switches. If you are going to run wires to devices along a 100 ft conveyor line all that wire is expensive as is the installation of it, not to mention all the switches you need. Once those switches are embedded in devices you’ve saved a lot of money but you now have created latency, ways for messages to circle endlessly and a point of failure that can disable every device in a sub net.

If an external switch fails, the switch can be bypassed in one way or another depending on the architecture. Network keeps running. But once, you’ve embedded the switch in a device, if you device fails, no data is passed around the ring and your system is dead in the water.

 That’s really what Ring Technology or Ring Topology is all about; managing the performance and failure modes of devices with embedded switches. I’ll have more to say about how CIP Ring technology does that in a day or two.

“…There use to be more Leprechauns in Ireland but then the foreigners came and found out they tasted like chicken…”  as told to me by Jerry the Cabbie.

Now Spending a few days in Ireland visiting with various automation people of one sort of another. I’m finding much of the same as I’ve found in England and other places in the world. There is a banking crisis, stock markets are down, the mortgages business is a mess and on and on but the automation business appears strong.

Liam Power of Embedded Labs in Waterford said it best. His opinion is that industrial companies are intent on coming out of this world wide downturn with new products and in position to win in the next boom. I agree. Everywhere I go, I see new product development and companies making investments in the future. 

If you’re in Europe, you should get to know Liam (www.embeddedlabs.com). He and his partner, Shane Robinson, are a terrific embedded design team. They are doing some very impressive developments for lots of major manufacturers in and around Europe and the US. Unfortunately, they are pretty well booked all the way through 2009. You’ll have to get in the “queue”, as they say over here, if you’d like Liam and Shane to do any embedded work for you. And best of all, they’ve used RTA products in their development so they’re familiar with our team. 

Visited the Waterford Crystal factory yesterday. The tour shows you the Master Craftsman making Waterford Crystal the old fashion way and it is very impressive. These people are supreme artists and technicians; A Master Blower that blows air into the crystal to form it, a Master Shaper that adds handles and bases to the piece and Master Engravers that add beautiful artwork to the pieces. These people serve up to 15 years as apprentices before they can do this work. The part of the factory where they make custom pieces in the old fashion way is just incredible.

What they don’t show you on the tour is the rest of the factory. In this part of the factory they turn out thousands of standard pieces with new, modern equipment on a sophisticated assembly line process. That’s where the automation is and I missed that. But I did hit the gift shop and am shipping home some $500 of crystal clocks, shamrocks and other gifts. 

A couple other interesting Ireland notes:

1. Like everywhere else, the cab drivers are fascinating sources of information. I sometimes just get a cab to see what I can learn.
2. There is apparently still some trouble in Northern Ireland even though we don’t hear about it in the states. Eddie, last nites cabbie, thinks it will take another 2 or 3 hundred years to resolve!
3. The Irish country side IS the most beautiful shade of green I’ve ever seen.
4. Even though the country is experiencing negative economic news, there is still lots of commerce going on and people are continuing to buy.

Oh, and one more note. I’ve been trying to catch a leprechaun during this visit. I figured out early in my visit that I’d have a much better chance catching a leprechaun than one of these very pretty blonde Irish lasses!

Spending a few days over here in Merry Olde England! Besides drinking Strongbow and eating Pastys and Beef with Yorkshire pudding to my hearts content and my stomachs sorrow, I’ve met with some customers and talked about the direction that Ethernet seems to be taking. 

The only thing that’s not in doubt is that for systems using a Rockwell Logix processor (Control Logix or CompactLogix) the gig goes to EtherNet/IP. That the easiest one to integrate, it’s where there is the most support and the most available products. No brainer for that.

After that it gets mighty confusing. Profinet is just not taking off like we expected. My customer here in England reported to me that they had 3-4 customers a quarter calling about Profinet a year ago and NONE NOW! Yes, none. I suspect that device makers aren’t converting their huge line of Profibus products to Profinet. It’s just too darned expensive. Instead, they’re continuing to sell Profibus and using the Proxy to put the data on Profinet. It’s not a bad solution at all for the customer. The installed base of devices is on Profibus. You can link a whole bunch of Profibus networks through a Profinet link. 

Siemens continues to confuse the picture. I hear that all new processors are going IRT. If that’s true, why should anyone invest in Profinet IO? You’d be obsolete before you started.  

Another factor is all the companies like Softing and Hilscher and all the rest selling hardware solutions. I don’t have anything against them, in fact, I’d be glad to quote you on developing a solution for you; but no one really wants to add their ASICs to their boards. More space, more money and single source issues to resolve.

Oh and what is my customer hearing about from his customers; ETHERCAT! Maybe with the confusion that’s reigning in the Profinet market, people are saying the hell with Rockwell and Siemens, let’s choose EtherCat. Time will tell…

I get calls all day long from people who are confused about what Profinet is and what it isn’t. Here’s my top 10 list of the things I’ve heard over the last few weeks:

Misconception #10: Profinet Does Not Play Well With The Other Networks. No, not at all. In fact, Profinet integrates other networks better than any other network I know. It can easily accommodate DeviceNet devices, EtherNet/IP devices, Profibus devices and many others.

Misconception #9: The ERTEC Controller is Exclusively for Profinet IRT. No, not true at all. The ERTEC 200/400 can be used as a standard Ethernet switch.

Misconception #8: I Need to Have IEEE 1588 Time Synchronization to Use Profinet. No, not true. Both Profinet CBA and Profinet IO do not use the 1588 Time Synchronization.

Misconception #7: Profinet Doesn’t use Standard Switches. No, not true. Any Ethernet switch can be used to carry Profinet IO and Profinet CBA traffic.

Misconception #6: Profinet Is Incredibly Complex To Use. No, that’s not true for a user. If you know your data representation (how your data is represented to the network), it is not hard to connect a Profinet device to a Profinet network. Now, for the automation developer integrating Profinet into a device…well, that’s another story.

Misconception #5: Profinet Developers Have to Use an ASIC. That’s only true if you’re doing Profinet IRT. If you’re doing Profinet IO or CBA, there is source code available. There are lots of challenges to it but it is available.

Misconception #4: Profinet is only used in Europe. OK, that might be kind of true. A lot of Siemens PLCs are equipped with Profinet and Siemens dominates Europe. But we know that a lot of machines coming to the US from Europe with Siemens PLCs will have Profinet devices. And some US manufacturers are beginning to use Profinet as their base network so this may change over time.

Misconception #3: Profinet only works with Siemens Controllers. Sorry Sherlock, but that’s not true either. Profinet CBA for example doesn’t use a controller at all. True that most Profinet IO and IRT applications will use Siemens controllers but you’ll shortly see PLC from Rockwell and others that can scan Profinet IO.

Misconception #2: Profinet IO Requires special hardware – Lots of people think this because Profinet IRT requires an ASIC and there are a lot of vendors selling FPGA solutions. The truth is that if you have the source code both Profinet CBA and Profinet IO can run in any Ethernet processor that supports Ethernet without any special hardware.

And now the drum roll, please….The Number 1 Profinet Misconception is:

Misconception #1: Profinet is just Profibus on Ethernet. No, it isn’t. The truth is that the device representation is the same. Both Profibus and Profinet use network representations that rely on the Rack/Slot/Module kind of data representation. That means that all data has some sort of designation in that format but that’s where the similarity ends.

Different:

• EtherCAT is probably the first Ethernet network to achieve prominence that was designed from the ground up as a ring architecture.
• Messages move completely around the ring. When a message completes the cycle all nodes have been updated with the latest data from the Master.
• A massive amount of data can be transferred. Slave nodes simply look like a big chunk of memory to the Master.

Novel:

• Any node can be the terminal node in the ring. If there is a failure at the next node, a node will close the ring automatically.
• The ring technology allows node propagation to be measured through individual nodes as the propagation through the network can be measured for any node simply by removing it and comparing the propagation before and after.

Surprising

• Nodes can be built  with up to 32 discrete I/O points without a CPU
• Time synchronization between slaves is better than 1uS. One slave (not the master)  is designated as the time reference node.
• This is not a network you can share with your office net.  EtherCAT as such a high utilization of the Ethernet bandwidth that it will take down your office network. 

Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to do things differently. I’m the kind of guy that likes to have a good time, laugh a lot and have a lot of fun at work. I’m just not that serious. My family claims that I don’t take anything seriously.

I just laugh at everything and present RTA information in an interesting and enjoyable way for the audience. For example, last month I started a meeting with a very high profile group of Engineers in North Carolina by telling them that it’s Vladimir Putin’s Birthday and I came there at great sacrifice as my family usually gets together and has a cookout to celebrate Vlad’s Bday. I went on and on about how we all smack the Vlad Putin piñata and drink Russian Vodka (except for Uncle Jerry, of course) and how much I was missing out to be with them. It got everybody loose and really set the right tone for the presentation.

Well, know I’ve been silenced. Shut up forever. And I’m not all that happy about it. It used to be that at the Profinet Developers seminars each vendor would have 15 minutes to describe their products. Well you can imagine what it’s like for the audience to get 8 presentations full of gigabytes, megahertzes and milliamps from some of the most monotoned people on earth. A complete sleep fest. Except for mine of course. My 15 minutes was filled with stories of 8-bit Japanese codes (different than US codes), cubical days at Allen-Bradley (more magazines read in a day than anywhere else in the world), idiotic managers from Kimberly Clark (well, they fired me, duh!) and how I promise to lay off anyone who brings a donut to work (no will power). Rapt attention to me and higher retention of my message.

But that’s all over now. The other vendors convinced the Profinet powers that we shouldn’t do the presentations. That it wasn’t effective. They couldn’t compete with me so it’s over. I’m silenced. Never to emerge again with only this blog to get my sometimes funny, sometimes idiotic point of view across. I’ll live but I’m not happy about it.

I’m at the EtherNet/IP ODVA meeting in Charlotte today. One of the biggest questions at the meeting is the definition of jitter. Many people are very unclear on the meaning of Jitter. In very simple terms, network jitter is simply the deviation between the time when a device is expected to issue a message and when the message is actually transmitted. For example, if a DeviceNet or EtherNet/IP device is expected to issue cyclic messages every 10msecs (very typical cycle time) and sends them between 9 and 11 msecs then we have 1 msec of network jitter.

So what’s good? Well, anything less than 50% jitter is acceptable. So, in our previous example, a device could send the next cyclic message between 5 and 15msecs of sending the last one. Unless you have a very high speed, timing critical application network jitter like this is acceptable. Once the device gets over 50% jitter though, the Client or Master device might begin to detect missing messages. If the jitter gets bad enough, the Master (Client) might even shut the device down and try reconnecting to it causing a loss of data or worse.

A good question that came up at today’s meeting was about Ethernet switches. What is the impact of the switch on network jitter in an EtherNet/IP network. Well, it turns out that it is nearly nothing. As switches receive a packet they analyze the first few bytes of the packet to identify the outgoing port and immediately start to send message out that port, even before the end of the message is received. At this speed the switch adds almost nothing to network jitter.

What’s the COCO object you might ask? Well, for the past 8 years the only way to configure an EtherNet/IP Scanner was to use some proprietary way of entering the list of devices to scan. In ControlLogix you used RsLogix. You added devices to the EtherNet/IP device table one by one. Unless, of course, the devices were RA devices or special partner devices and the data was already all known to RsLogix.

Well now, there is an Object that is defined that allows configuration of the EtherNet/IP Scan Table over the network. Now, standard EtherNet/IP tools can be used that can read and write the COCO (Connection Configuration Object, Object Number F3 Hex) using EtherNet/IP Explicit messaging. It may not seem like a big deal but this really matters and it going to be great for all the non RA Scanner guys. 

The next enhancement which some smart guys are already working on is an EDS connection. A tool should be able to read an EDS, let the user connect to the device, configure it and then load the appropriate information on the device into the COCO object of the scanner that will be using that device. That kind of tool is going to save users lots of work.  

The COCO document from the ODVA defines all the instances, attributes and behaviors of this new object. I’ll send it to you if you’re interested.

John

PS: If you’re interested in EtherNet/IP, you should take a look at our Instant EtherNet/IP IC solution. It is the absolute, hands down best way to get a server device EtherNet/IP enabled. Here’s the Instant EtherNet/IP solution.