by Gary Mintchell | Jun 2, 2017 | Automation, Networking
The Time Sensitive Network (TSN) standard is in development by the 802 committee of the IEEE. This is the Ethernet committee as TSN is a set of standards (some have been adopted) extending Ethernet into the realm of determinism. One driving force behind development and implementation of the standard is the Avnu Alliance.
First, a quick look at the standard. Three relevant standards exist. IEEE 802.1AS (IEEE 1588)—Timing & Synchronization; IEEE 802.1Qbv—Forwarding and Queuing; IEEE 802.1Qcc—System Configuration. These deal with a synchronized clock, deterministic packet delivery, and system setup.
Now the news. Members of the Avnu Alliance, the industry consortium driving open, standards-based deterministic networking, actively endorsed Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) and advanced the TSN device roadmap at Hannover Messe from April 23 – 27, 2017 and Deterministic Ethernet Forum (DEF) from April 27 – 28, 2017. Members across the industrial and automotive markets participated in presentations and trainings, as well as product and testbed demonstrations at the events.
“The business value of TSN for industrial and automotive applications was a theme in the presentations and panel discussions at DEF this year. It is more clear than ever that Avnu Alliance is the place where leading manufacturers are working together to ensure we have a common, interoperable infrastructure for TSN and a future-proof network,” said Kevin Stanton, Avnu Board of Directors Chairman.
A key demonstration at both events was the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) sponsored TSN Testbed that Avnu Alliance and many of its members participate in. As the world’s first testbed for TSN, it was developed with two major goals – to show TSN’s readiness to accelerate the marketplace; and to show the business value of TSN in converged, deterministic IIoT networks. At Hannover Messe, the TSN Testbed was on display in both the IIC booth and the OPC Foundation booth for attendees to see demonstrations of a real-world TSN network with numerous Avnu member products and prototypes from companies including Analog Devices, Belden, Bosch, Cisco, Hilscher, National Instruments, Renesas, Schneider Electric, and TTTech.
The testbed highlighted the ability for the IIoT to incorporate high-performance and latency-sensitive applications. The work coming out of the TSN Testbed is already having a direct impact on suppliers and manufacturers who see the technology as a value add for their system structure.
Avnu members Cisco and Belden both made TSN announcements at Hannover Messe. Cisco announced that it has added TSN support to the IE4000 Switch family of products. Belden in turn presented the company’s TSN upgrade path for select products from its industrial switch portfolio, starting with the RSPE35 and RSPE37 switch family. Analog Devices also showed TSN at the PROFINET International and ODVA stands at Hannover Messe. These demonstrations showed TSN compatibility with existing Industrial Ethernet protocols as well as convergence of TSN with standard Ethernet traffic. Later the same week at the DEF hosted by TTTech, Avnu Alliance leadership delivered the welcome address and members led discussions around topics such as, “How the IIC Testbed Drives Vendor Interoperability” and “Deterministic Ethernet Will Help to Meet the Need for Speed for Future Automotive Applications.”
Standards are just nice ideas unless there is a conformance test and a test and certification agency. For example, such a system assures WiFi device compliance to that standard.
In 2017, Avnu Alliance will continue work towards Avnu certification of TSN devices and offer collective multi-industry experience and networking expertise to manufacturers looking to expedite advanced networking implementations, ultimately leading to a faster path to market for industrial manufacturers. “With IIoT, there is a strong reliance on open standards to enable secure, predictable, reliable, and uninterrupted flow of information from sensor to cloud. Avnu members influence and shape the evolving standards; thus enabling them to deliver the value of TSN for customers and instil confidence in the stability of the technology. With the rapid adoption of TSN as a foundational technology for automation, the community is increasingly counting on an interoperable set of network services and infrastructure. The conformance testing and certification provided through Avnu will be critical to provide the needed interoperable network for the IIoT,” said Todd Walter, Avnu Alliance Industrial Segment Chair.
Industry Support for TSN and Avnu Alliance:
“Open standards are key to enabling the data-centric applications of Industrie 4.0 and the IIoT.” said Dr. René Hummen, senior architect technology and innovation at Belden. “IEEE TSN is an important piece in this puzzle by providing for deterministic and reliable data transmissions, converged data networks, and continuous data access without gateways. Avnu certification of TSN will ensure interoperability of the various end-systems and network infrastructure devices that IIoT applications rely on.”
“Great interest in TSN became apparent at Hannover Fair in the IIC Consortium, OPC Foundation and TTTech booths. There was encouraging feedback we received around the broad possibilities TSN offers for the different industries. These possibilities were also on the agenda at the successful Deterministic Ethernet Forum in Vienna, with 250 participants from 23 countries, representing industrial and automotive companies, consortia as well as semiconductor companies,” said Markus Plankensteiner, VP sales industrial North America and global alliance manager at TTTech Computertechnik AG. “The tremendous progress of TSN in the last months was conveyed with presentations from industry experts. Also, concrete products utilizing the technology were announced, among them a variant of the Intel Cyclone V SoC, featuring TSN switching functionality by TTTech. It is crucial to use the momentum of the technology to start building great products that will increase the acceptance of TSN even further.”
“Hannover Messe is an enormous trade show and this year TSN seemed to be everywhere – much more than in previous years, “said Tom Weingartner, Marketing Director, Deterministic Ethernet and IIoT Communication Technology for Analog Devices. “We received positive feedback from the demonstrations of TSN we gave at the show. Interoperable networking protocols like TSN make convergence on the network seamless and help ensure that as the IIoT expands, there is a strong infrastructure supporting it.”
The Avnu Alliance is a community creating an interoperable ecosystem of low-latency, time-synchronized, highly reliable networked devices using open standards. Avnu creates comprehensive certification programs to ensure interoperability of networked devices. The foundational technology enables deterministic synchronized networking based on IEEE Audio Video Bridging (AVB) / Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) base standards. The Alliance, in conjunction with other complimentary standards bodies and alliances, develops complete solutions in professional AV, automotive, industrial control and consumer segments.
by Gary Mintchell | May 31, 2017 | Standards
Joint working groups to develop companion specifications has been a great method to advance interoperability. Here is an announcement of one where you can still get involved if you have expertise in one or the other. Note: I am chief marketing officer of MIMOSA and I also have done some work with OPC Foundation.
MIMOSA (an operations and maintenance information open system alliance) and the OPC Foundation have announced a joint working group to develop a companion specification for MIMOSA’s CCOM standard and OPC UA.
MIMOSA is a not-for-profit trade association dedicated to developing and encouraging the adoption of open information standards for Operations and Maintenance in manufacturing, fleet, and facility environments. MIMOSA’s open standards enable collaborative asset lifecycle management in both commercial and military applications.
MIMOSA CCOM (Common Collaborative Object Model) serves as an information model for the exchange of asset information. Its core mission is to facilitate standards-based interoperability between systems: providing an XML model to allow systems to electronically exchange data.
OPC Foundation is a not-for-profit association dedicated to providing the interoperability standard for the secure and reliable exchange of data in the industrial automation space and in other industries. The OPC UA (Unified Architecture) is platform independent and ensures the seamless flow of information among devices from multiple vendors.
The OPC UA standard is a series of specifications developed by industry vendors, end-users and software developers. These specifications define the interface between Clients and Servers, as well as Servers and Servers, including secure access to real-time data, monitoring of alarms and events, access to historical data and other applications. The standard includes the ability to securely transport any information model between the systems. It is a key standard for Industry 4.0.
The joint MIMOSA and OPC Foundation CCOM OPC UA Working Group will develop an OPC UA Information Model for CCOM. The information model specified by CCOM will be defined in a UA companion specification using OPC UA constructs for the purpose of exposing CCOM information to OPC UA applications, with an initial focus on existing Use Cases relating to information exchange to and from the control system. This will combine existing strengths of each organization for some near-term wins, where OPC UA is used to bring information from the factory floor and where MIMOSA plays its traditional role in Asset Management.
The working group will deliver the following:
• OPC UA Information Model for CCOM (Standard OPC UA companion specification, Nodeset file and prototype implementation)
• A write up for the OPC Wiki describing the Companion specification
• Trade show demonstration and information material
Anyone who would like to contribute to this industry specification please contact Alan Johnston [email protected].
by Gary Mintchell | May 3, 2017 | Automation, Data Management, Networking, Operations Management, Security, Technology
OPC UA was everywhere in the Digital Factory and automation areas of Hannover Fair 2017. Not only was the expanded OPC Foundation stand busy, an “OPC Wall” at the Microsoft stand was constantly packed. Microsoft executives took attendees on a digital path using OPC UA from the factory to the Azure cloud.
Spokespeople pointed out that OPC UA was crucial to a solution that was open, secure, and agnostic. While waiting for the finalization of OPC UA pub/sub (publish / subscribe), they wrote a transport in JSON and AMQP to get there.
The OPC Foundation announced an open-source implementation of the OPC UA technology, available on GitHub to truly enable the OPC community successful adoption of OPC UA across all markets and all platforms.
Microsoft contributed a huge amount of lines of code to this open source effort.
OPC UA is the set of standards for multivendor multiplatform secure reliable interoperability for moving /information from the embedded world to the cloud. The testimonial to the standards is a complete reference implementation that is now been posted as an open-source implementation, replacing the original OPC Foundation .NET deliverables that were developed and maintained for the last 10 years.
The original OPC Foundation .NET OPC UA reference implementation has been available to OPC Foundation members and last year was provided as an open-source implementation on GitHub. This version was targeted and limited to Microsoft Windows only.
The new OPC Foundation reference stack, based on the new .NET Standard Library technology, was developed and optimized by Microsoft to serve as the complete platform-independent infrastructure, from the embedded world to the cloud. This new version is enabled on the following supported platforms: Various Linux distributions, iOS, Android, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows Phone, HoloLens and the Azure cloud.
One of the important features of the .Net Standard stack is the expansion of the security features to meet the needs of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications, as well as the requirements of “Plattform Industrie 4.0”.
Additional benefits of the OPC UA .Net Standard Stack include:
- The .Net Standard stack is cross platform specifically enabling OPC UA applications.
- The .Net Standard API portability strategy is all about developing once and running everywhere: No need to special-case OS-specific functionality.
- The architecture of the .Net Standard stack focuses on managed code, which translates to rapid application development.
- Microsoft deliberately enabled the creation of NuGet packages, which allows suppliers to quickly integrate OPC UA support into their application with a few simple clicks.
- The .Net Standard stack includes increased security inclusive of support for SHA512.
- The .Net Standard stack enable support for cross-platform UI design tools through Xamarin.
- Microsoft has provided, in conjunction with the OPC Foundation, an extremely rich set of sample applications, inclusive of reference clients, reference servers, an aggregation server, an OPC classic wrapper and a web application to quickly display OPC UA telemetry data sent to the cloud.
- Microsoft has also provided, in conjunction with the OPC Foundation complete samples demonstrating Azure connectivity leveraging the OPC UA publish/subscribe technology (the specification of which is currently being finalized).
Microsoft’s Sam George, Director of Microsoft Azure IoT said “OPC UA has truly established itself as the interoperability standard for Industrial IoT. We are honored to work with the OPC Foundation on the continued evolution of the standard. The response from the Industrial IoT community to our .Net Standard reference stack contribution has been very positive.”
OPC Foundation’s President Thomas J. Burke said, “The Microsoft commitment to open standards, and specifically to the OPC Foundation is absolutely amazing. Microsoft is clearly a pioneer and a leader in developing and bringing to market the best technology that truly enables multivendor information integration and interoperability. It has been a pleasure to work with the Microsoft development team, and how they are enabling so many of the suppliers to have seamless connectivity to the Azure cloud, through their development and commitment providing an open-source implementation of the OPC UA technology”.
Stefan Hoppe, OPC Foundation’s Vice President said, “Microsoft is the strongest open-source contributor to the OPC Foundation’s industrial interoperability standard, OPC UA. Microsoft’s integration of the OPC UA code with Microsoft Azure IoT as well as Windows IoT allows companies to bring millions of devices and apps to the public cloud and manage them with one single application, no matter if the devices run on Windows, Linux, iOS or Android. Using this OPC UA implementation, IT and Manufacturing will merge seamlessly”.
Siemens’ Thomas Hahn said: “As a founding member, Siemens has supported the OPC Foundation for years. For us, open connectivity – from shop floor to the cloud – is a must. We therefore appreciate the availability of OPC UA technology as open source!”
The OPC Foundation will continue to develop, maintain and extend this new .NET technology as the new OPC Foundation endorsed open-source .NET reference implementation. Some of these significant new features to be added include the publish/subscribe extensions as well as support for important IoT protocols like AMQP and MQTT.
by Gary Mintchell | May 2, 2017 | Internet of Things
Internet of Things platforms were all over Hannover Fair last week as I put on more than five miles a day walking checking out as much as I could see.
A few years ago, Industrie 4.0 was unveiled. Last year it was Digitalization. This year Industry 4.o is assumed. Internet of Things is assumed. The race is on for the platform for Internet of Things this year.
One consistent technology, though, that almost all platforms tout–OPC UA. You saw that logo everywhere. [Note: OPC Foundation paid most of my expenses to attend.]
What do I mean by platform? It is the central technology by which everything connects. Most of the time it is what we call proprietary, that is, controlled by one company. It builds a database with connectors to the world. All protocols (they encourage everyone to participate in their own system) bring in data. Sometimes the provider does all the analysis and provides all the applications. Sometimes the provider allows connection to other apps, as well.
I’ve written about the Dell / Linux Foundation effort–after I got through the hype and found the meat. This effort is all open source allowing tie ins with individual company applications.
Microsoft also has an ecosystem or platform that is open with some open source. It relies heavily on OPC UA for data input. Microsoft has its Internet of Things applications but can allow connection to others.
Siemens has its platform called Mindsphere. Siemens is a major proponent of OPC UA.
GE Digital has Predix. It likes OPC UA, too.
SAP is building a platform entirely within its umbrella but encouraging other companies to join it and allows the other apps to run. It also employs OPC UA.
A company I just got a deep dive with for the first time is Exosite. It is a database/analytics developer. At present it is not as broad as the others, but it has the desire to grow to that status.
And then there is Cisco. Yes, the company that builds the network components and OS that control the flow of all your data. Since they know where your data is, it can tap into it and it also has an IoT platform, database, and analytics engine.
By comparison, Rockwell Automation’s Connected Enterprise is totally inbred to Rockwell. I’m sure that in places such as North America where it has huge market share the connectivity works well. It will use some OPC UA next year, so a spokesman told me.
If this is any indication, the Internet of Things has become a “real” thing. Many of these platforms more or less existed before. But Internet of Things adoption obviously is attracting such good things as competition and innovation.
More from Hannover the rest of the week. I’m still compiling notes.
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 25, 2017 | Automation, Internet of Things, Operations Management
Let’s talk augmented reality and Internet of Things (IoT) today.
The first day of Hannover Fair began with much buzz about the Dell / Linux Foundation announcement (see yesterday’s post) about the open source “unify the IoT” project. But that buzz died off after people digested the news and determined that for the time being it was not going to disrupt the industrial world.
I have only a little time between appointments today, so I’ll do a quick recap of some highlights.
OPC Foundation has brought me along to investigate and write about what’s happening with OPC UA and especially with Time Sensitive Networks (TSN). This will not be easy–I see the OPC Foundation logo everywhere. More on this later.
I devoted much time to the Microsoft stand yesterday and again already today. It had the “OPC wall” showing a number of products serving OPC data. Microsoft’s play is moving OPC UA to the Azure cloud. It also showed integration with Time Series Insights, a real-time data base. It also has an IoT suite and recently added IoT Central which is an SaaS application that walks customers through the process of setting up analysis and visualization of the operations data through the OPC UA connection to Azure.
Microsoft had many partners showing authentic working applications of its Hololense augmented reality product–mostly for the enhancement of service technicians including TetraPak and Thyssen Krupp among others.
SAP took me for a walk around its IoT wall. It is building a system where, if all other suppliers opt in and put all their documentation and data into the SAP cloud, then it can serve up a variety of operations and predictive information to operators and maintenance.
ABB announced a partnership with IBM Watson to help customers improve productivity.
Parker has brought all of its products into a network uniquely called Voice of the Machine–an interesting take on IoT.
There’s more, but I’m late for another appointment.
