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Showing posts from April, 2018

Insights from the PROFIBUS wire (understanding equipment behaviour)

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This blog is a by-product of a recent project to investigate and validate the sequence of events on some electrical Switch-gear where the SCADA and Switch-gear communicate over PROFIBUS DP. This was done by examining what was happening "on the PROFIBUS wire" (Actually PROFIBUS DP has two wires, a red one and a green one!). It also brought into focus the idea that analysis of process data as it appears “on the wire” could have many operational and maintenance benefits – achieved without additional loading or complication for the  associated SCADA. While it is true that modern field-bus and industrial Ethernet systems support the use of intelligent field devices which can provide access to configuration and diagnostic information via FDT and similar engineering tools there is a an effortless simplicity to gaining insight on the wire through independent means. This is especially true when comparing events from different sensors or items of equipment to determine cause-and-e