Leslie Gordon is a former Senior Technical Writer on Control, Control Design and Industrial Networking magazines.
Control Design's quarterly section highlights some of the latest online tools and resources for various technologies. In this case, it covers wireless sensors.
Many of these kinds of sensors work on a wireless sensor network (WSN) as spatially dispersed and dedicated devices for monitoring the physical condition of industrial and process environments. The data they collect is organized at a central location, where it can be analyzed to optimize processes or used to monitor errors, so operators can take timely action. There are numerous types of wireless sensors, ranging from temperature to impact, strain, pressure, level, vibration and more.
A Simple Way to Add New Sensors?
WirelessHART is pertinent to the wireless sensors topic because all those sensors have to connect to a control system somehow, and WirelessHART is an important way of doing so. Most plant expansions entail adding more I/O, which can easily be brought about by using WirelessHART. A handy booklet titled System Engineering Guidelines can help you in this endeavor because it describes the application of WirelessHART technology in different project execution stages, starting from conceptual design through to the operation phase. The booklet explains in detail the various terminologies, and provides technical guidelines.
Eye of the Volcano
Industry is now placing Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) sensors on the factory floor. This eliminates the need to put costly custom-built HMIs on a machine, instead letting an operator with an iPad employ their tablet as a virtual HMI, using short-range communications to their device over Bluetooth LE. Read more about B&B's wireless sensor technologies at B&B Electronics.
Seeing is Believing
Posted on YouTube on Jan. 22, 2014, this video entitled, "Introduction to Wireless Sensor Networks, Quick Start!" explains almost everything you need to know about wireless sensor networks. Learn how to set up and start monitoring your own wireless sensor network with this step-by-step guide. Find out how to connect sensor nodes to the cloud by ZigBee, 802.15.4, 6LoWPAN, WiFi, 3G or GPRS. Watch it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=urWv-_EqS9M.
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