’08 Makes an Impact

The Telltale Vision

The standard for power over Ethernet (PoE) helped to power devices like IP phones, but PoE Plus promises to enable a throng of new devices and components.

Ned Lecky, owner of Lecky Integration in Little Falls, N.Y., sees a variety of vision applications that are now possible. “Gigabit Ethernet represents the confluence of so many things for industrial control,” says Lecky. “First, since it is based on standard TCP/IP and UDP/IP technology, software applications are easy to write and deploy. Hubs, network interface cards, cabling and connectors are readily available, low-cost and extremely reliable. Furthermore, at 1,000 Mbps, the speed is fast enough to contemplate moving uncompressed video across the links, as virtually all major industrial camera vendors are now doing. Finally, given the GigE Vision standards from the AIA, software compatibility between camera vendors is highly enhanced.”

For the first time, video images from multiple cameras can be routed to multiple computers, says Lecky. “This feature permits redundancy in both the imager and image analysis hardware, opening up avenues for more reliable vision-based control systems,” he says. “Furthermore, extremely high-speed applications can now easily take advantage of multiple high-speed PCs using round-robin distribution of alternating images from a single high-speed camera to two or more PCs performing image analysis. This puts military-grade architecture and reliability in the hands of the everyday OEM, at a tiny fraction of the cost.”

PoE Security Camera Network Vision and the means to power it broke through in 2008. GarrettCom National Instruments

Integrating all sensor and actuator traffic on a redundant Ethernet network is now possible and allows OEMs to utilize network design skills from the IT department in helping to move data and control information around the machine without making difficult and expensive custom interconnection cables, says Lecky. “We can now build a machine frame, wire it for Ethernet the way we used to do with houses and then attach all of the sensors and actuators as necessary afterward, only routing power cables as necessary to each attached device,” he explains. “Of course, the wired network could be replaced with a wireless backbone, although in many situations this would represent a decrease in reliability and throughput at higher expense, which isn’t a good trade-off.”

In 2008, physical and cybersecurity have been on the priority list for industrial plant managers throughout the world, says Jim Krachenfels, marketing programs manager, GarrettCom.  “IP video arrived, enabling the same industrial Ethernet networking infrastructure that works for control systems to be used for digital IP cameras and plant security,” he says. “And new hardened routers provide cybersecure remote access to industrial facilities.”

PoE technology has made physical security more feasible, and security devices used for access control and surveillance now are being deployed. “They are easily and economically installed since the data and power cabling is the same,” says Krachenfels. “PoE is emerging for use in SCADA applications also, with PoE industrial sensors and control devices becoming available. High-bandwidth industrial-grade Ethernet switches with IGMP and IGMP-L2 technologies and gigabit backbones now support multiple streaming video devices on a single data cable. New Ethernet reliability technologies have emerged to minimize network downtime.  Plant engineers now have advanced network security and reliability technologies available.”