Working for a common bond

Networking is gaining a stronger hold of the industry and the various protocols are now getting their activities ready to go for the next year as the Open Device Network Association (ODVA) kicked off its 12th annual meeting Wednesday for common industrial protocol (CIP) networks in Denver, Colo.
ODVA is an international association comprising members from automation companies around the world. The association and its members support network technologies based on the CIP, which include DeviceNet, EtherNet/IP, CompoNet, and the major extensions to CIP — CIP Safety, CIP Sync, and CIP Motion. ODVA manages the development of these open technologies, and assists manufacturers and users of CIP Networks through tools, training and marketing activities.
Wednesday’s events included a synopsis of standards activities – who’s done what, and their development plans for the next 12 to 18 months.
Presenters such as Paul Didier with Cisco Systems, Rich Harwell from Eaton Electrical and Jorgen Palmhager with HMS Industrial Networks were on hand to give details about the joint special interest group (JSIG) progress in areas such as conformance, DeviceNet physical layer, EtherNet/IP conformance, CIP distributed motion, CIP safety ModBus integrations, CompoNet, CIP software tools and others. The groups go through two cycles of specifications enhancements each year. And each cycle can have as many as 30 or 35 enhancements.
Jonathan Parrott, chair of the conformance JSIG touted his group’s participation. “I was impressed by the amount of people who turned out Wednesday. Since the 11th annual meeting (in 2006), we formed this JSIG,” he said. “A work plan was approved with proposed changes. We’re now requesting support for test plan development from originating SIGs (safety, Modbus, and motion). We want to recruit experts from those groups.” Parrott said the special enhancements are a big driver, and the group is soliciting more member participation for test plan enhancements and beta implementation testing. “We want to develop test plan enhancements based on specification enhancements,” he said.
DeviceNet Physical Layer chair Brad Woodman said his group’s eight meetings over the past year included discussions on extending power supply cables (extending the current six meters to various lengths). “We created a chart for people who needed longer links to their power supplies,” he said. The group also approved a DeviceNet specification enhancement (DSE) for flat II cable and connectors equivalent to CompoNet Type 1. Other approvals included auxiliary power bus-off behavior and test frequency for different input impedance tests. Proposed plans for the next 12 to 18 months include auxiliary power connectors and guidelines, updating planning and installation guides, labeling requirements for indicators and switches, and a mechanical interest climatic, and electromagnetic (MICE) tutorial. MICE is a method for end users to describe their environment – to determine what kind of mitigations they need in harsh environments. “We wanted to put information in a common manual, but it may come out as a technical report so all users and vendors can get access to the technology as opposed to just vendors we put in the specifications,” Woodman said.
Other presentations included the advantages of CompoNet and CIP Motion. In 2007, ODVA released these specifications for the latest in the family of CIP networks. René Heijma, a product engineer in industrial communication with Omron Europe B.V. in The Netherlands, discussed CompoNet. CompoNet’s design allows it to meet other applications’ requirements using large numbers of simple sensors and actuators by providing high-speed communications, configuration tools, efficient construction, simple set-up, and high availability, all on a single network.
-- Ellen Fussell Policastro