ENTELEC transformed your typical conference and trade show event with the Innovations Lab.

It started out as a brave idea: What would make this conference more fun? How about a multi-vendor, collaborative lab of innovation!

A look at how edge devices and interoperability standards are paving the way for the fourth industrial revolution.

As we enter the so-called fourth industrial revolution, which aims to finally close the gap between distributed automation systems and business systems, let’s take a quick look back at some of the developments that got us here and where they point for the future. 

Best practices for cybersecurity and more from the groov EPIC v3.2 update to help you get sign-off on critical security upgrades.

Solarwinds, Oldsmar, Colonial, JBS—with all the cybersecurity news filling our inboxes, news feeds, and social channels, your customers may finally be ready to talk about a more rigorous security strategy.

So I figured this was a relevant time to share our recently updated tech note, “groov EPIC Cybersecurity Designs and Best Practices.” It details the mindset and specific actions that can change your automation from a security vulnerability into a security asset.

See how groov EPIC and groov RIO can solve industry problems and help you get an edge in your automation and IIoT/digital transformation projects.

I recently presented a live webinar discussing industry problems we all face in building the next generation of automation and digital transformation architectures. 

To our delight, over 500 of you registered to attend!

Opto 22 is making the best of the new normal. 

Like most of you, it seems I’m doing all of my communicating through my computer or mobile device, whether at home or at work. I find myself longing for face-to-face meetings and wanting to visit you and your facility, plant, or remote site to learn more about how you apply Opto products in your applications.

The recent announcement of security vulnerabilities discovered in the Wind River® VxWorks® IPnet TCP/IP stack has prompted questions from Opto 22 customers about what impact this discovery may have on TCP/IP-based products developed and manufactured by Opto 22.

Opto 22 would like to reassure our customers that, after careful and thorough review, we can state that none of our hardware or software products contain the VxWorks IPnet TCP/IP stack or variants of that software and are, therefore, not directly exposed to any attacks that might target these vulnerabilities. This statement applies to the recent Opto 22 product family groov EPIC® (edge programmable industrial controller), the groov® Edge Appliance (groov Box), the SNAP PAC® System, and SNAP Ethernet I/O® products.

These security vulnerabilities, dubbed URGENT/11 by Armis, an enterprise IoT security firm that made the discoveries, have far-reaching implications and affect an extremely large array of industrial, medical, and enterprise environments. These include mission-critical systems such as SCADA, industrial controllers, PLCs, PACs, and more. Other systems outside traditional industrial devices like patient monitors and MRI machines, as well as firewalls, routers, modems, VOIP phones, and printers are also affected.

Ready to see groov EPIC in action? Have some holiday fun by taking control of our lobby Christmas Tree lights and Lionel Train.

Visit our live groov demo site and you'll find a section dedicated to Holiday Lights.

Your industrial plants and facilities produce a lot of data that you could use for improving processes, reducing maintenance costs, and making better business decisions. But securely getting that data from the sensors, transmitters, and analyzers that produce it to the people who need it can be difficult.

This is EPIC!

Join Martindale Associates and Opto 22 on June 27th for an all-new webinar. Learn how to simplify your automation and IIoT projects and improve security and performance, with little reliance on IT personnel.

UPDATE: This post has been updated to reflect changes in the most recent Raspbian Jessie Lite image (no longer includes Node-RED or node.js) and to use the new Digital I/O for Raspberry Pi Starter Kit for I/O hardware (new code, photos, and video).

The Raspberry Pi^® is an unquestionably powerful computer for just $35. And it really is just that: a computer. That means the Pi is capable of many tasks and perfect for many automation applications.

Couple the Pi to industrial, solid-state digital inputs and outputs, and you can build compelling and cost-effective solutions for commercial and industrial applications, too.

One of the easiest and fun ways to quickly build software applications is with Node-RED, the free, open-source software tool designed by IBM Emerging Technologies and used for wiring together hardware devices, APIs, and online services in new and interesting ways.

However, Node-RED is only included in the full PIXEL GUI version of the Raspbian Jessie Operating System, available from raspberrypi.org. Their latest 2017-07-05-raspbian-jessie-lite.img build for headless operation (no monitor, keyboard, or mouse required) is no longer bundled with either Node-RED or the required software tools node.js and npm.

The purpose of this post is to guide you through creating a headless Raspberry Pi computer with the latest versions of Node-RED, node.js, and npm, building a Node-RED application, and controlling and sensing GPIO connected to industrial digital I/O, quickly and simply. (For a sneak peek at the result of this build, see the video near the end of this post.)

Image: New Opto 22 Digital I/O for Raspberry Pi Starter Kit with Raspberry Pi 3 Computer