Opto 22 exhibited at the ATX – Automation Technology West show this week in Anaheim. The show was one of five shows held at the Anaheim convention center, all centered around a general theme of manufacturing and packaging technologies. With that many shows under one roof it was a bit overwhelming to try and absorb all of the cool new tech being showed off. I've never seen so many robots under one roof.

Thousands of level sensors, rotary encoders, drives, and meters can use Modbus®/TCP to communicate their data. How would you like to monitor and control them from your smartphone or tablet?

There's a lot of talk these days about using a smartphone or tablet to monitor and even control automation systems and equipment.

Most of us carry around a phone all the time. It's easy and convenient, and we use it for everything: answering email, taking photos, looking up product specs, taking notes, calculating flow, posting on Facebook, calling home, checking a magnetic field.

More and more we find ourselves mixing business and personal uses on mobile, because they're all there in one handy place.

You've heard us talk about how you can control your system on your mobile with groov.

• "Your system" means any industrial automation, building automation, or other system that talks OPC UA. (Check out the list of compatible systems.)
• "Your mobile" means any smartphone or tablet with a modern web browser. (See compatible devices.)

Why this flexibility? Because groov is based on the automation standard for interoperability (OPC UA), and on Internet standards for web browsers (like SVG and HTML5).

Opto 22 engineer Ben Orchard is just like a lot of us—he can't resist tinkering with controls whether he's at work or at home.

So of course he's automated his home: sprinklers (key item in a hot area like Temecula that gets little rainfall), Philips hue lights (atmosphere!), and WeMo electrical outlet switches (safety, convenience).

Ben's got them all set up so he and his family can monitor and control all these from the computer in the kitchen or from smartphones and tablets anywhere. And everything's managed in the same operator interface, which works on any brand PC or mobile device because it runs in a modern web browser like Firefox or Chrome or IE10.

All this talk about the Internet of Things... but what does it really mean to you and me?

At the Internet of Things North America conference this week in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Opto 22's Ben Orchard presented some new ideas on how we can approach these "smart" sensors and devices and equipment so they make sense for us.

Ben starts in his own geeky house, where his Philips hue lights, WeMo switches, and Twitter account (among other things) make up his own personal Internet of Things.

Want to see something cool you can do with Google Glass?

Need to access your groov mobile interface over the web, but not quite sure how to set it up?

Either way you'll want to check out our new groovHeads YouTube channel. A couple of videos are there now and we'll be adding lots more.

Researchers at Michigan State University Foundation's biotechnology research center rely on deionized (DI) water for their experiments.

But with a limited supply of DI water, they sometimes ran out before an experiment was completed.

Facilities Director Phil Hegge knew that the best solution was a costly upgrade to the center's ionization and filtration system. A low-cost temporary solution, however, was to give researchers up-to-the-minute data on the water supply. They could monitor the water level in the tank and know whether to reschedule an experiment.

Now you can easily build mobile interfaces for virtually any automation system.

Allen-Bradley, Siemens, GE, Schneider, Yokogawa, Modbus: with groov 2 you can securely monitor and control these and many more systems—through a groov operator interface that you can use on just about any mobile device.