A low week this week, but I have been on the road… I will hopefully have a large NYCBSDCon report up later today, to make up for a skimpy Lazy Reading.
Bit rot, circa 1998. Enjoy looking at the old technology options and prices. (via)
The Industrial Internet of Things. Most of what’s out there that should be wired isn’t, and it’s because the companies making the equipment like to pretend the Internet never happened. Also, modbus is horrifying.
Bluetooth Low Energy: what do we do with you? I’m surprised more people aren’t excited about BLE; it has a lot of potential.
Your unrelated link of the week: a new Cyriak film! Starts cute, ends horrifying, but that’s no surprise.
Ha. I’ll take Modbus most days over some more modern alternatives (I’m looking at you, OPC).
Many of those things aren’t “wired” (more accurately, IP networked) because the risks of doing so outweigh the benefits, at least in the “industrial” realm I work in (admittedly more critical/higher consequences than your average building HVAC). Even in the HVAC business, there has to be some incentive; network interfaces, like variable-frequency motor drives, cost money.
And the industrial realm is a conservative place. Vendors have been hawking digital fieldbuses for years, yet 4-20mA current loop still rules. Wireless standards (ISA S100, WirelessHART) have come on the scene, and while they are used in edge cases where wiring is impractical, you don’t see very many people running an entire plant on them. Simplicity and robustness are still paramount.
Yeah, I know the dangers, but still: at least read-only notifications would be nice. I have a building generator that, if something goes wrong, lights up a little red light on a box in the building basement. There’s no other option, according to the people that installed it. That’s dumb.
A lot of people don’t understand that being conservative with change doesn’t always mean less errors; it means old problems stick around forever. Net result is the same number of issues. That’s a general response to a specific question, but the principle holds.