OptoBlog

Stacking groov gadgets

Posted by Ben Orchard on Aug 4, 2015 10:06:00 AM

More information in less space.

It is amazing how sometimes similar applications can come back to back….Last week's blog came from a customer asking how to measure the main power grid frequency. And later the same week I had a totally different customer ask me about how he could display upper, lower and current value of the main electrical grid frequency in groov. What are the chances of that!!??

This customer wanted one gadget to display all three values. Why so dense? Because they only use groov on smart phones, no PCs or Tablets. He was polling the data from a bank of UPSes and so needed to display a lot of data. Screen real estate is prime on those devices. What can we do to help?

In this week's blog, we are going to have some adventures in Z-Order.

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Topics: Energy management, groov, Internet of Things, Remote monitoring, Tips, IoT, PACs, OEM, I/O

Measuring the main power grid frequency

Posted by Ben Orchard on Jul 28, 2015 12:34:00 PM

50 or 60 Hertz - Roughly.

Measure the main power grid frequency, he said. It will be fun, he said…. Actually, pretty sure I said something like, “it will be easy”... and I was mostly right, and best of all, it did turn out to be fun!

It seemed like both a reasonable and easy request. The requirements were to measure the mains power grid frequency to a resolution of 0.01 Hertz, and to do it every 125 milliseconds (roughly; it could be a max of 200 milliseconds, but not much longer).

Why? In this case, the chase is better than the catch. It's enough to say the customer had his reasons, and this blog is about the chase.

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Topics: Energy management, Process control, groov, Internet of Things, Remote monitoring, Electronics, Tips, IoT, OEM, I/O

Building a secure automation network with groov

Posted by Ben Orchard on Jun 30, 2015 8:47:24 AM

Layers of security:

I wish there were, but there just isn’t.... There is no one device, hardware, or software that is the single defense for all known and future network attack vectors—including the one critical weakness: humans. You know, some thing or device that you could simply put at your network's front door and have it reject all the bad guys, but allow the friendlies in without question. Secure and easy is still a wish.

The solution then really comes down to layers. Adding layers that each will take a lot of time and a lot of effort to peel back, so much so that most attackers simply give up and move on.

The past few blog posts have talked about some of those layers, so let's now put it all together and see just how we might go about building a very robust mobile-accessible industrial automation network.

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Topics: Process control, Discrete control, groov, Internet of Things, PLCs, Remote monitoring, Electronics, Tips, IoT, Machine builder, PACs, OEM, Integrators, Networking

OptoNews: Choosing I/O modules for temperature monitoring

Posted by Jean Femia on Jun 17, 2015 4:31:00 PM

Do you monitor temperatures?

A lot of control engineers do, especially in fields like water treatment, refrigeration, thermoforming, refining, food processing, and energy or building management.

There are a variety of temperature sensors on the market—ICTDs, thermocouples, RTDs, thermistors, infrared sensors. Accuracy, cost, wiring complexity, and environmental conditions are some of the factors that determine which one is best for your application.

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Topics: Energy management, Process control, Food & beverage, Water & wastewater, Machine builder, optonews, OEM, Integrators, OptoNews 2015-06-17

OptoNews: groov Box creates its own WiFi network

Posted by Jean Femia on Mar 4, 2015 4:27:00 PM

groov Box becomes a WiFi access point with Netis antenna

Here's a cool new feature for your groov Box, available now: you can create your own private groov WiFi network with WPA2-PSK security.

That's right, the new groov Admin v1.570.39 includes a SoftAP option for GROOV-AR1 and GROOV-AR1-SNAP.

So even if there's no wireless network available, when you're close to the groov Box you can still connect your mobile device to groov and securely use the operator interface you've built.

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Topics: groov, Updates, Remote monitoring, Machine builder, OptoNews 2015-03-04, OEM

OptoBlog

Stacking groov gadgets

Measuring the main power grid frequency

Building a secure automation network with groov

OptoNews: Choosing I/O modules for temperature monitoring

OptoNews: groov Box creates its own WiFi network

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