Ah, the “wireless wars” are back. Good. I need something controversial to write about when there is no Invensys news. (OK, I’m just poking fun.) I received a message on LinkedIn from Soroush Amidi, Manager, Product Marketing at Honeywell Process Solutions in the Montreal, Canada Area. “Automation World does not allow folks to comment on your blog…. I have brought a bit clarification regarding your December’s blog in my blog…. I don’t see those many WirelessHART vendors in shows nor see their products listed on their web site…”
Note that he’s a Honeywell marketing person. Things have been very quiet on the Honeywell (and Yokogawa, ISA100) versus Emerson (and many others, WirelessHart) front. His blog to which I linked talks about ANSI finally approving ISA100. He says it took a long time to complete the specification because ISA100 is democratic–implying that WirelessHart isn’t. Well, I wish he wouldn’t bring up that sort of argument. It’s false. His other comment is that I talked about many products with WirelessHart–he only found a few on the Hart Communication Foundation Website.
In my discussions with instrumentation companies, I find that most are developing for WirelessHart and few are developing for ISA100. There is another stumbling block for ISA100 and that is the certification process. We’ll see how that one plays out–who is running it, will it be fair, etc. I don’t know, yet.
I’m hoping that the instrumentation companies can stop their bickering and striving for competitive advantage through manipulating a standard and compete on the quality of their instrumentation. Therefore, I hope that the ISA100 subcommittee on standards convergence finishes its work soon. Check out Renee Robbins Bassett’s excellent report on the situation.
I was shown a working demo of ISA100, and the presenters acted as if they thought I’d be surprised that it worked. Of course I wasn’t. I expect it to work. Heck, I was building radio circuits when I was 15 and stringing ham radio antennas in the trees figuring out relationships of wire length and wave length. (OK, I learned electronics before electrical engineering.) I’m sure both ISA100 and Wireless Hart work. The problem is this trying to squeeze out the competition in a standards committee. I’ve been on those committees in my life. Makes you wonder about standards at times, right?
Oh, and I’m sorry about the lack of commenting. I was told by our Web design team that the new Website would offer good commenting. I’m sure it is coming.
Meanwhile, Soroush, please add your comments here.
