WirelessHART products out and on the way

Wireless devices based on the WirelessHART standard are just beginning to hit the market now, with a bigger push by suppliers to get more out later on this year.
“We launched WirelessHART products in March and we have a new pipeline of products that support WirelessHART on the way,” said David Dunbar, president of Emerson Process Management in Europe during a HART Communication Foundation press conference today here at Hannover Fair in Hannover, Germany.
The WirelessHART standard won approval in June 2007 and released in September 2007, said Ron Helson, executive director of the HART Foundation. Since then staffers have moved to create test specifications and testing tools for products.
One of the benefits with wireless, Helson said, is a user will gain new connectivity to intelligent device information. Essentially the wireless device, through an adapter, can pick up data from an installed HART device. HART has over 24 million devices installed throughout the world.
“We see wireless moving industry to provide information by getting access to existing HART devices,” Helson said.
“We very much support the idea of creating a single standard for wireless,” said Hans-Georg Kumpfmuller, division president for sensors and communication at Siemens.
“We didn’t want wireless to have proprietary technology,” said Dr. Gunther Kegel, chief executive at Pepperl+Fuchs. “In the wireless world, we need interoperability with a wireless standard.”
Down the road, Kegel said, the next step is for the industry to figure out the power consumption issues for wireless devices.
Meanwhile, HART is also part of a new wireless cooperation team to create an interface specification for a gateway between WirelessHART and Foundation Fieldbus, Profibus and Profinet communication technologies.
They want to create a common set of compliance guidelines to incorporate into product registration procedures.