Austin TX, USA — The HART® Communication Foundation announces that, due to the collaborative efforts of the Wireless Cooperation Team (WCT), specifications for transducer blocks for HART and WirelessHART® devices have been added to the latest Foundation™ fieldbus (FF) technical specifications.

This addition enables full integration of HART and WirelessHART device information, including device diagnostics, into a Foundation for ROM (Remote Operations Management) system.

"The Wireless Cooperation Team was formed to help facilitate the acceptance of wireless technology in the manufacturing and process industries,” says Ron Helson, HART Communication Foundation Executive Director.

“We are seeing one of the first positive results of this unprecedented collaboration—now users can incorporate HART, WirelessHART and FOUNDATION fieldbus information into one standard environment for data and device management.”



Read full article: 'HART Communication Device Information Can Now Integrate into FOUNDATION fieldbus'

Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA – The ISA100 Wireless Compliance Institute (WCI) today announced the completion of another successful interoperability trial in which it verified its new Generic Client Interface (GCI) specification, which is applicable to ANSI/ISA-100.11a based gateways.

Conducted at ISA headquarters in North Carolina, gateways from Yokogawa, Honeywell and Nivis successfully demonstrated interoperability with a WCI test client. The first production client to use GCI will be GE’s System 1® product which was also successfully tested during the trial.

System 1® is GE’s patented conditioning monitoring software platform for real-time optimization of equipment and selected processes, condition monitoring and event diagnostics that enables plant personnel to quickly identify important events, evaluate the situation and respond, leading to increased equipment availability, reliability and reduced maintenance costs.

ANSI/ISA-100.11a is flexibly designed to support legacy and/or proprietary protocols and the GCI is an example of how the ANSI/ISA-100.11a wireless standard can deliver that result.


Read full article: 'ISA100 Wireless Compliance Institute Conducts Successful Interoperability Trial'

WirelessHART products fulfill users’ requirements for simple, reliable and secure wireless automation
Austin TX, USA – The HART® Communication Foundation announces that two WirelessHART® products have been named by industry users as the best among automation, control and instrumentation products introduced during 2011.

The products, recognized as being exceptional for technological advancement, service to the industry and market impact, are the Rosemount 708 wireless acoustic transmitter from Emerson and the RAD-WHA-1/2NPT WirelessHART adapter from Phoenix Contact.

“We are pleased by users’ recognition of these WirelessHART products and by the overwhelming industry acceptance that WirelessHART technology is receiving around the world,” says Foundation Executive Director Ron Helson.


Read full article: 'WirelessHART Products Named by End Users as Best in Automation'

WirelessHART standard achieving widespread acceptance throughout industry
Austin TX, USA – More than 8,000 WirelessHART® networks are currently installed in major manufacturing sites around the globe signifying the widespread acceptance of the WirelessHART standard (IEC 62591; EN 62591) by the process automation industry.

Tens of thousands of WirelessHART devices are at work in a variety of process applications including rotating equipment, pipeline monitoring, storage tank farms and many others.

Major companies such as Bayer, BASF, BP, Celanese, ConocoPhillips, Evonik, PEMEX, Shell, Statoil, and others are realizing the benefits of WirelessHART technology at process manufacturing sites worldwide.


Read full article: ' More Than 8,000 WirelessHART Installed at Major Manufacturing Sites'

NIWOT CO, USA --(Marketwire) - Informtest, Ltd. and STAr Technologies, Inc. have recently joined the AXIe Consortium.

AXIe (AdvancedTCA extensions for instrumentation and test) is an open modular test standard that enables a robust ecosystem of components, products and systems for general purpose instrumentation and semiconductor test. The AXIe Consortium, Inc. was launched in November 2009 to create a global infrastructure to develop and promote the AXIe standard.

AXIe promises a number of benefits for these new members of the consortium that will improve their ability to meet the demanding test requirements from next-generation electronic products. AXIe offers higher performance per rack inch, greater scalability, easy integration with PXI, LXI and IVI, more modularity, more flexibility, and significant reduction of development and unit costs.

"We welcome the demonstrated technical foresight of Informtest and STAr Technologies in helping us advance the AXIe specifications. In FY2012 we have increased our membership 50%. We expect to see the number of AXIe-based products steadily increasing in the next year. Already AXIe products have offered unrivaled performance to the marketplace," said Von Campbell, chairman of the AXIe board of directors.


Read full article: 'Informtest and STAr Technologies Join the AXIe Consortium '

Comprehensive, detailed testing essential to achieve real interoperability between HART DD host products


Austin TX, USA – The HART® Communication Foundation announces the release of the new enhanced HART DDL/ EDDL (Electronic Device Description Language) Host Test Suite v.2.0.

The test suite is used by suppliers and developers of host products to test compliance of their HART implementation and is used by the Foundation to verify and validate compliance of host products submitted for HART Registration.


Read full article: 'New Enhanced HART DDL/EDDL Host Test Suite '

SCOTTSDALE AZ, USA –- COX Flow Measurement, a division of Badger Meter, Inc. has been named a Commercial Calibration Laboratory for Sandia National Laboratories.

As a Commercial Calibration Laboratory, COX Flow Measurement is certified compliant to the U.S. National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP) and ANSI/NCSL Z540, and accredited to ISO/IEC 17025:2005.

COX will provide calibrations on all flow meters submitted by Sandia National Laboratories. All calibrated items will be managed through Sandia's Primary Standards Laboratory, which offers on-site services for calibration and maintenance throughout the laboratories.

COX Flow Measurement delivers highly documented, NIST-traceable calibration services for every type of modern flow measurement device.


Read full article: 'COX Named Commercial Calibration Laboratory for Sandia Labs'

New Laboratory to Offer World-Class Performance

Boulder CO, USA -- The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is building a new advanced research and measurement laboratory on its campus in Boulder, Colo.

The Precision Measurement Laboratory (PML) will help NIST better meet the needs of U.S. industry and science in key national priority areas such as nanotechnology, new energy sources, enhanced telecommunications, and radically new information technology such as quantum computers.

Designed as an extension to the existing Building 1 on the Boulder campus, the laboratory will be one of the most advanced in the world.

NIST scientists need the new facilities for precision research such as measuring properties of individual atoms, building new atomic clocks that would have to run for billions of years before they would gain or lose even one second, and exquisitely controlling individual particles of light (photons).


Read full article: 'NIST Boulder's New Precision Measurement Laboratory'

Third Party Certification Seen as Crucial as Oil and Gas Companies Look to Enhance Equipment Safety for Workers and the Environment

HOUSTON TX, USA —— Demonstrating a commitment to help industrial customers ensure the safety and security of their energy delivery and production equipment and facilities, GE has announced its Becker Emergency Shutdown Valve (ESD) offering has received an important safety certification, the IEC 61508 Safety Integrity Level 3 (SIL 3).

Attention to safety has intensified in the oil and gas, petrochemical and other process industries over the past decade, driving the global demand for safer systems to protect both workers and the environment.

Consequently, operators in key regions around the world, from the US to Europe and China, are looking to improve the safety of their equipment and reliability certifications such as the SIL3 are increasingly important.


Read full article: 'GE's Emergency Shutdown Valve Product Line Receives SIL 3 Safety Cert'

Geretsried, Germany -- BYK-Gardner has announced a new feature in their data analysis software smart-chart: distribution of digital master standards within the whole supplier chain.

Up to now color standards had to be measured by each individual color instrument meaning the involved parties used diverse master panels or had to meet at one location to read the same panel. That was very time consuming and introduced a source of error because of poor or varying master panels.

Thanks to the outstanding inter-instrument agreement of the BYK-mac, proven by all major automotive makers, this has changed!


Read full article: 'BYK-mac and smart-chart enable the use of Digital Color Standards'