InSource Solutions Employee Spotlight!  Meet Louis McRae, I2 Infrastructure Specialist

 

Louis and Michele McRaeLouis McRae is an I2 Infrastructure Specialist with InSource Solutions.  Louis has been a part of the InSource team for four years.  He attended Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, GA and says he joined InSource because he “wanted to broaden [his]knowledge of the industrial market with a company that puts the customer first.”  Louis says of working at InSource, “It is nice waking up in the morning knowing that I am going to work with some of the smartest people in the industry.”

 

Born in New London, CT, Louis was raised in the much warmer Daytona Beach, FL.  He and wife of 16 years, Michele, make their home in Atlanta, GA with daughters, Maddie (13) and Molly (7).  The McRae family also shares their home with their mixed breed pup, Bella, and two sunbathing, crazy slider turtles.  Louis likes to spend his free time with his family “doing pretty much anything.”

 

Here are some more fun and facinating facts about Louis.The McRae Family

 

    • Louis was a semi-pro surfer on his way to becoming a pro sufer when he suffered a knee injury. 
    • Louis has always dreamed of being a comedian and says that he likes to think of himself as funny. 
    • His favorite meal is his wife’s pork chops and gravy. 
    • When asked what character or person he would most like to have lunch with, he chose Zaphod Beeblebrox from his favorite book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.  Louis would like to ask Zaphod what it is like to have two heads and three arms. 
    • Louis cites Homer Simpson as his personal hero because “people love him in spite of him being a moron.”

 

 

InSource is excited to have Louis as a part of the team!

 

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Wonderware Compact Panel Computers and InTouch Compact Edition:

A Powerful Team

 

Wonderware Compact Panel Computers combine exceptional hardware with the powerful InTouch Compact Edition of HMI software. Together they are a total solution for supervising and managing production equipment and processes. They are designed to replace proprietary operator interface panels where small form-factor, low price-point HMI visualization is needed. Wonderware Compact Panel Computers are bundled with powerful Wonderware InTouch Compact Edition of HMI software and IO Drivers. These Compact Panel Computers come ready for quick and easy installation and startup.

 

No other HMI can match InTouch software for industry leading innovation, architectural integrity, unequaled device integration and connectivity, uninterrupted software version migration path, and truly legendary ease of use. 

 

Wonderware InTouch Compact Edition software has the ability to connect to multiple IO Drivers simultaneously.  The number of IO Driver connections varies with the Tag size where smaller tag sizes enable one IO Driver and higher Tag sizes enable up to three IO Drivers.

 

Click here to learn more about Wonderware Compact Panel Computers and InTouch CE.

 

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AdvantechAdvantech’s New Fanless PCs

 

The Industrial Automation Group of Advantech offers two new fanless PCs for better industrial computing.  The first is a fanless Industrial Panel PC and the second is a fanless box PC.

 

IPPC-8151S 15" XGA TFT LCD Celeron® M Fanless Industrial Panel PC with Stainless SteelIPPC-8151S

 

Advantech offers vertical focused platforms aimed at the food & beverage sector. The IPPC-8151S is designed with a fully sealed stainless steel enclosure and uses a special tapered & food safe rubber seal between the bezel and the touchscreen. This allows it to satisfy the stringent standards required in food processing, clinical, chemical or pharmaceutical laboratories. Its fully enclosed design without ventilation slots and external fans makes its completely protected against splashed water, achieving a NEMA4 (IP66) grade of protection.

 

Features:

    • 316L Stainless Steel and food-safe seals
    • Robust and fanless design for reliable operation
    • Extreme condition protection against vibration, shock, dust, acid or alkaline
    • Designed with NEMA4 (IP66) & waterproof
    • 15" XGA TFT LCD with chemical resistant touchscreen
    • Supports Intel Celeron M 1 GHz/1 MB L2 Processor with 1 GB Memory
    • Dual Gigabit Ethernet ports for control & monitoring
    • Supports rich I/O and PCI slots
    • Supports VESA/desk/stand mounting
    • Flat sealed stainless steel enclosure with all-around IP66 protection (Optional)  

 

UNO-2173AUNO-2173A/AF Intel® Atom™ Fanless Box PC with 1 x LAN, 2 x COM, Mini-PCIe

 

UNO-2173A/AF is a Fanless Box PC that supports Mini-PCIe expansion, serial communication ports and several other networking interfaces. UNO-2173A/AF supports Windows XP Embedded OS and Windows CE 5.0 & 6.0, which offers a pre-configured image with optimized onboard device drivers. Windows XP Embedded delivers the power of the Windows operating system in componentized form. You can seamlessly integrate your applications into Windows XP Embedded and speed up your system development with an application ready platform that can provide a rich networking interface to fulfill diverse requirements.

 

Features:

    • Onboard Intel® Atom™ 1.6 GHz
    • 1 x 10/100/1000Base-T RJ-45 port
    • 2 x USB 2.0 ports
    • Windows® CE 5.0 & 6.0, Windows XP Embedded, and Linux ready solution
    • Onboard system status LED indicators
    • Front-accessible CF slot
    • Supports Boot from LAN function
    • 1 x Mini-PCIe slot for WLAN card
    • Fanless design with no internal cabling
    • Isolation between chassis and power ground
    • Supports wide operating temperatures (up to 70° C)
    • IP40 ingress protection

 

Click here to learn more about these and other Advantech products on our webstore.

 

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WonderwareWonderware Names Longwatch as Certified Software Partner

 

Wonderware Software Partner's products are endorsed or certified by Wonderware to be applications with proven compatibility with Wonderware software. Certified software partners have access to Wonderware Beta programs, toolkits and senior technical support people so Longwatchthey can integrate and extend Wonderware software on an ongoing basis.

 

The Longwatch Video Surveillance System has been integrated with Wonderware's InTouch HMI, Active Factory, Historian and MES software in several applications. The combination of Wonderware software and Longwatch Video systems allows operators in process control applications to see live and archived video from the plant floor directly on their Wonderware HMI screens. This allows operators to "see" what is going on in a process plant or factory without having to send someone to the scene. The operator can also "rewind" the video to see what happened a few seconds or a few hours before an incident.

 

By integrating with the Wonderware ActiveFactory trend chart object, Longwatch Video Historian software simultaneously shows trend graphs of user-selected variables (displayed as color "pen" lines) with archived video. The video panel and trend chart can be "linked" (synchronized) with the click of a button on the Viewer display. When the user clicks and drags the chart object's time cursor (normally used only for displaying the process variable's engineering units value and status at a selected point in time), the Video Historian also moves the video forward or backward accordingly.

 

"The integration of plant video with Wonderware's powerful and flexible Active Factory chart brings new capabilities for monitoring and controlling manufacturing," said Tom Barczak, Vice President and CIO of InSource Solutions, a Wonderware distribution partner. "In a matter of no time, we were able to interweave the trends of Wonderware ActiveFactory with the video from Longwatch to provide a picture of production and operations that revealed the 'Rest of the Story' and led to more rapid improvement. The applications for Longwatch appear endless for security, operations, production, MES, batch tracking and quality applications. Definitely, it's a technology that delivers rapid results."

 

When Longwatch Operator Console Monitoring software is employed on a Wonderware system, everything that appears on the HMI-and everything the operator enters from the keyboard or mouse-is logged as a video stream, so a plant can "play back" everything that happened during an incident or event for analysis or training purposes.

 

"We are very pleased with the Wonderware certification," says Steve Rubin, president of Longwatch. "We've been working with Wonderware channel partners for several years, and we have several installations in water, power and pipeline systems that combine our video systems with Wonderware HMI/SCADA software. Achieving this certification delivers even more confidence and value with automation and process control end users."

 

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Lesia's Q&A CornerAsk the Infrastructure Specialists!  Lesia’s Q&A Corner

Advantech brings wireless capabilities to Serial with their EKI – 1351 & EKI – 1352 Device Servers while winning an award along the way!

 

In the last few months, the I2 Sales group has been asked, “Do you have a solution that will link my serial devices to my Ethernet network?” The answer is not only “Yes we do!” but this product has also won the Control Engineering China’s “Best Product of the Year” award!

 

Advantech’s EKI-1351 and EKI-1352 are a 1 and 2 port RS-232/422/485 to 802.11 b/g WLAN Serial Device Servers.  They provide end-users an easy way to add 802.11b/g wireless capabilities to RS-232/422/485 devices and equipment on the plant floor while facilitating real-time access to information.  Having COM-port based Windows™ applications make it an easy integration for the user.  In addition, with COM-port redirection software, it allows virtual COM-port access to remote serial devices, just as if they were onboard COM-ports.  With this tool, integration with PC-based systems takes just a few minutes and is transparent to the host application software and connected equipment.

 

With the EKI-1351 and EKI-1352, the user’s existing serial devices can be used with the most current operating systems.  There is no need to write special drivers for specific operating systems. Moreover, you can make serial devices communicate with other devices, peer-to-peer, without any intermediate host PCs and software programming, which saves a lot of cost and effort.  The user can actively request data or issue commands from the RS-232/422/485 side or Wireless Ethernet side. This data can be sent bilaterally. Thus, the EKI-1351 and EKI-1352 are especially suitable for remote monitoring environments including security systems, factory automation, SCADA, transportation and more.EKI-1352

 

The main features are:

    • Link any serial devise to an IEEE 802.11 b/g network
    • Supports wireless LAN Ad-Hoc and Infrastructure modes
    • Provides COM port redirection, TCP, UDP, and pair connection modes
    • Supports baud rates up to 921.6 kbps
    • Provides Web-based configuration and Windows utility
    • Allows a maximum of 5 host to access on serial port
    • Supports Windows 2000/XP/Vista drivers
    • Allows a maximum of 4 hosts to be accessed as TCP client modes
    • Built-in 15 KV ESD protection for all serial signals
    • Supports DHCP protocol

 

Both models supports direct TCP and UDP access for applications, like OPC Servers and HMI systems, that support serial encapsulation.  For more advanced applications, multi-access functions allow a single RS-232/422/485 serial device to exchange data with multiple remote hosts.  The EKI-1351 and EKI-1352 is ruggedized for demanding industrial applications while offering a  compact DIN-rail mount chassis, 4,000 VDC Ethernet ESD protection, dual 12 to 48 VDC power inputs to maximize uptime, and power line surge (EFT) protection of 3,000 VDC.

 

If that is not enough, The Industrial Automation Group of Advantech received Control Engineering China’s “Best Product of the Year” award in the Communication Device category for the EKI-1352!  While receiving high praise from industry veterans, the EKI-1352  was chosen for its quick, simple, and cost-effective way to bring the advantages of remote management and data access to thousands of serial devices in remote monitoring environments such as security systems, factory automation, SCADA, transportation and more.

 

For assistance with your involving serial and Ethernet applications please contact Lesia Bell the I2 Inside Sales Coordinator at 443.683.8031 or email her at lbell@insourcess.com.  For online pricing and specification, click here.

 

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Lunch and Learn Seminar SeriesInSource Solutions presents a Lunch and Learn Seminar Series

InSource Solutions is excited to offer our newest Lunch and Learn Seminar Series.  We will present information on various topics over lunch.  Space is limited, but the possibilities are endless. 

 

Click here to learn more about upcoming Lunch and Learn Seminars.

 

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BookAcronym of the Month

 

Every issue we feature an Acronym of the month, that you may or may not already know, related to industry/business topics and general interest/just for fun topics.  If you have a suggestion for an appropriate Acronym, please email Katie Schauer at kschauer@insourcess.com.

 

Business Related

IDE: Integrated Development Environment

 

Just for Fun!

ROFL: Rolling on Floor Laughing 

 

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WonderwareNew Wonderware Tech Alerts

 

Alert 130 Wonderware Application Server 3.1 SP2 Compatibility Issue with Historian 9.0

 

For more alerts and notes visit the Wonderware website at here.

 

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Upcoming InSource Solutions Webinars

 

Date                           Time                    Topic

 

February 5, 2010        9 AM                     System Platform Part 4 of 4: Web Information Services

February 5, 2010        11 AM                   Wonderware Mobile Solutions: IntelaTrac

February 5, 2010        1 PM                      Wonderware HMI Reports

February 5, 2010        3 PM                      Longwatch

 

Click here to register for a webinar

 

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