The New Sneakernet: USB Thumbdrives

First we had the original sneakernet. Moving files from 0ne computer to the other. Some of us were using 90K floppies, which seemed reasonable enough when one concidered that the microcomputers at the time only supported 64K of memory. Although floppy sizes grew it didn't take long to figure out that floppy disks just didn't have a enough capacity to do the job. Along the waythere were bernoulee drives, optical drives, zip drives and superdrives. The problem was the the drives were expencive and proprietory, none ever achieved a real acceptance among most users. CDs and CD worked somewhat. They have 720 Megs of storage and the media is relatively cheap. The problem is that burning to them is time consuming ,requires special software and the software isn't always compatable. Anyone who has burnt CDs has been a victim to Nero, or the Adaptec/Roxio suites. Somes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. It never seems to work right when you are in a hurry and is troublesome if you want to run real applications that might need read write access. even RW CDs are primarily a write once read many media.

Flash memory disks are nothing new. PCMCIA flashcards have been around forever, and they have a standard inerface in most Laptops. We at PCO installed such a flashdrive run system in MEPS 2 A bootable flash drive using DOS 6.22 and another drive that accepted flash cards that ahd the programs, experiment procedures and the collected data. A sneakernet at its finest hour.

USB thumb drives have evolved with the realization on how handy Digital camera memory can be. They are getting cheaper every day. It used to be I took a laptop with me every where I went along with a box heaped full of floppies. The Texas heat and humidity helped assure that the files could be read from the floppies only every once in a while. The Laptop assured that I had all my utilities well in hand and carting it around was pretty good for body building. It also had my email programs with my contact information. I did use a handheld PCs work pretty good a Personal Information Manager, but they don't work to well for sneakernet functions.

USB thumbdrives are not only a good method of moving files around though. They can be a pretty powerful tool. Fer instance.

1. We enter a control room and the Unix based system needs to have some of its configuration and script files restored. We ask to borrow an networked PC. I plug in a USB drive.
   
2. open up Firefox. Thunderbird, or FTP program on the USB drive. Fetch the file into my thumb drive.
3. unzip the file and use the command file2disk.exe to make a tared floppy.
   

What's significant about this is the only thing I needed to bring into the control room was 1 thumbdrive. and perhaps the blank floppy. None of tools I used left a footprint. there is no install process. The programs are all "portable". meaning there is no installation procedure, and no writing to the registry. and No passwords are left behind, because the programs are portable.

A good place to start looking for portable programs would be. at PortableApps.com There a suite of programs can be found, and a whole pile of other applications. Most notably OpenOffice.org Portable. This is a full featured office suite. Presentation, SpreadSheet, Word processor and more and compatable compatable MS Office documents. Its free as is a lot of portable programs don't let the price fool you. Its very good and compares well to the high priced app.

An invaluable tool to me is Calc98, This is a scientific calculator that not only has any practical function I am ever going to use but has a great units conversion feature.

File2dsk & dsk2file Useful for storing Tarred Diskettes to pc files and back again. These are command line programs.

There are also versions of Thunderbird, and Firefox.


These days I find my self running around with a few thumbdrives in my pocket. Some for data backups. A couple for specific software installs. A couple to run a few utilities while "borrowing" a computer and even a couple for crash recovery.

Houston ISA Show on a Smaller Scale

I didn't make it this year, because a last minute project kept me away. Reports are it was on the small side this year. Lots of remote instrumentation with bluetooth and Wifi. I don't know how much this is catching on, but seems to me that it it is an apropriate technology for difficult to physically access locations. A further implication is that we will be seeing more ethernet LAN based I/O. Its fast cheap and non propriatory.

Oh well We are lookining forward to a bigger show in 2008 maybe then the venders will hungrier and more willing to come out.

Coal-based jet fuel ready for take off

Energy producers are finding alternative fuels might make more sense. Perhaps we will see some startups on Coal-based jet fuel soon.

Jet fuel derived from at least 50% coal and comparable to Jet A or military JP 8 has successfully powered a helicopter jet engine.

"Because the fuel is 50% derived from coal, it could reduce our use of imported petroleum for this purpose by half," said Dr. Harold H. Schobert, professor of fuel science and director of Penn State's Energy Institute. "We have shown in tests that the mix can go to at least 75% coal."

Schobert said they can produce the fuel, called JP900, by using light cycle oil, which is a petroleum byproduct, and coal-derived refined chemical oil, a byproduct of the coke industry. The researchers mix the two components and add hydrogen. When distilled, jet fuel comes off as a distillate. The process can occur in existing refineries with some retrofitting, and small amounts of the leftover components will feed into various portions of the petroleum stream. The lighter portions will go to the pool of chemicals that make gasoline, and the heavier ones go to the diesel or fuel oil streams.

Nontraditional fuel production such as this will be demanding more engineering and processing, 70 dollar pluss a barrel fuel make such projects more feasable.

BP Signs up Emerson as Primary Automation provider

BP anounced that Emerson will its primary DCS provider for its three U.S. refinerys.

Emerson Process Management, a business of Emerson, and BP International Ltd., one of the largest oil and gas producers in the United States, announced a contract naming Emerson as the main automation contractor for the replacement of aging process automation systems at BP's three largest U.S. refineries.

The contract covers 18 units at three BP U.S. refineries -- Whiting, Ind., Texas City, Texas, and Carson, Calif. Combined, these facilities refine about 1 million barrels of crude per day, or about 7 percent of total U.S. refining capacity. The upgrades are part of BP's ongoing commitment to improving facilities in North America.

Under the contract, new digital automation and control systems will be installed in 18 different production units at these refineries, resulting in improved efficiency and reliability in the refining process. Critical units to be upgraded include fluid catalytic cracker units, cokers, ultracrackers and alkylation units.

An Opportunity for Emerson may exist in BPs ambitious plan to covert coke to enough hydrogen to power a 500 Megawatt power plant. The plan includes pushing the byproduct Carbon Dioxide gas into old oil wells to premenently trap the greenhouse gas and stimulate more oil production.

Oil giant BP and Edison International said Friday that they would spend $1 billion to build a one-of-a-kind hydrogen power plant in Carson to supply the region with badly needed electricity without polluting the air.

Slated for completion in 2011 next to BP's Carson oil refinery, the 500-megawatt facility would be the world's largest hydrogen-fired power plant, churning out enough electricity to serve more than 300,000 average homes, executives said at a news conference that drew Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other state officials.
But what sets the project apart is the unique way it would make electricity by using the refinery's leftovers while capturing the resulting carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas linked to global warming, so the environment isn't harmed, the executives said.

BP America Inc. President Ross Pillari called the planned facility "the cleanest and greenest power plant in the United States." Alan Lloyd, secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, told the gathering that the plant would be so nonpolluting that "the only emissions are water vapor."

A very green project for the folks in California.

RFID for Industry

RFID tagging is familiar to many as means of identification. It is commonly used in automated gate pass and personnel accounting systems in many plants. Small rice grain sized units may be injected into animals for identification. Recently they have even inserted them into people as a security measure. The people doing this may not be getting all the security they were expecting. Jonathan Westhues has demonstrated and provided step by step instructions on how to clone implantable RFIDs. Apparently the Verichips aren't password protected, although that might not be much help. Adi Shamir a highly respected crypographer, the 'S' of RSA has demonstrated how analyzing environmental power consumption can yield passwords.

In recent weeks, Shamir used a directional antenna and digital oscilloscope to monitor power use by RFID tags while they were being read. Patterns in power use could be analyzed to determine when the tag received correct and incorrect password bits, he said.

"The reflected signals contain a lot of information," Shamir said. "We can see the point where the chip is unhappy if a wrong bit is sent and consumes more power from the environment…to write a note to RAM that it has received a bad bit and to ignore the rest of the string," he added.

"I haven’t tested all RFID tags, but we did test the biggest brand and it is totally unprotected," Shamir said. Using this approach, "a cellphone has all the ingredients you need to conduct an attack and compromise all the RFID tags in the vicinity," he added.

Shamir said the pressure to get tags down to five cents each has forced designers to eliminate any security features, a shortcoming that needs to be addressed in next-generation products.

The future of RFID tagging may not be in secure identification but in tagging and identifying product. There were 2 announcements by fabricators that show the industry is moving toward this direction this direction. Hitachi announces a very tiny chip that can be embedded in paper as a watermark. Phillips has a plastic RFID circuit which promises to be inexpensive. Both these technologies hold promises to improve the way we manufacture.

RFID tagging can enhance manufacturing quality and tracking, by tracking parts, from their source to final assembly automatically. A QC operator would be able to track the history of any part to its origins and manufacturing process. The same devices can be used track the finished products through transportation and distribution to the final retail sales.

Oil and chemical industries might find that tagging their product with the tiny tags will be a way of controlling inventory and marking batch lots. Addressing quality concerns sometimes involves knowing where the source of a product and its history. RFID with readers and basic database technologies will offer a lot of opportunities in the not so far off future.

Control on a Smaller Scale

Process control is sometimes done at a very large scale. Monering 10s of thousands of points and controling many thousands of points. Large DCS systems such as Invensys, ABB, and Honeywell are used to control monitor, and provide a Human interface. These systems can cost millions of dollars to purchase and impliment.

Sometimes a smaller solution is needed. PLCs often provide a good solution, GE Fanuc, Allen Bradley, and Modicon have solutions that often tie in to DCS or PCs. The PLCs often often scale to such a size that they are indistinguishable in size to a good size DCS system. National Instruments and Measurement Computing offer an even smaller scale of Monitoring and control. I've used Measurement Computing products to provide small scale solutions using their USB devices and SoftWire. Using the cheap USB device and Softwire I have been able to develop quickly a pump control scheme to perform some scientific experiments. The resulting user interface displays trending and allowed automatic pressure control. Using an existing PC the cost including development is pretty inexpensive.

Even smaller solutions, are needed and used internally to a lot of equipment. Most of us have lots of controllers in homes and work. Places where one might find one of these minature CPUs are in televisions, microwaves, thermostats, and automobiles. The technology , often called embedded, is often concidered out of reach to use in a small number of items. Development can be tedious and expencive.

Keys to easier development are finding a processor that is optimal to the desired use, and a good development system.

A processor should have as many of the supporting functions builtin as possible, not only does this reduce parts count but it also standardises and simplifies usage. making both hardware and software development easier. Of course one doesn't want to pay for features and peripherals one will never use. Some proccessors include flash memory, static memory and/or EEPROM. If one has to use external memory this can tie up chip pins that one can't easily use for other purposes. Other conciderations may be clock speed, power usage, and voltage requirements.

The software, and hardware platforms to program these things can cost thousands of dollars, learning to use the tools can be very time consuming, particularly if there is no available support. Hopefully there will be easily available sample code and schematics on how how they are to be used. Documentation that is readable, yet specific enough is a must for quick development.

A project that I'm undertaking is to use, will be doing input out put and displaying out to a LCD. I haven't done Assembly language programming in 20 years, and my past programming in it is as a traditional hacker. I will be using Atmel AVR series 8 bit processors. These are pretty powerful MPUs and come in a pretty large variety of flavors. They come in with devices handling from 1 Kbyte to 256 Kbyte of code and packages with 8 to 100 pins. I am using the free AVR 4 along with the SK 500 to develop the software and tryout the hardware. There is lots of help and examples from the AVR Freaks Site and Atmels Applications page. There isn't any OS or for these, so one needs to keep in mind that the programer has to pay attention to all the details. Gnu C is availaible in the form of WinAVR and it gets installed right into Studio 4. Although its easy enough to use its not as tempting to use as one might at first think. One really has to understand how the processor works anyway to write good code and to access the different I/O. These things can be pretty tight with code space and assembly does create much tighter code. Still when it comes to handling math and other complex functions it just might serve to change to C.

I've got a ways to go before I reach a real profficiency, but I'm finding it pretty easy to read switches and light up LEDs. I'm hoping to work on a few projects using these. From both a hardware and software point of view these seem to be an easy way to create controllers in the small scale. Some of the uses for these things are:

• Controllable Power Suplies
• Programable Thermostats.
• Robotics
• Motor controllers
• Digital Meters.
• Remote IR Transmiters and Receivers.
• Clock timers for things lik Microwaves and Coffee pots.
• Just about anything where computer control is useful for timing and sequencing

NI aquires Measurement Computing

Measurement and Control has been the David vs Goliath for quite a while. Their motto "The only difference is the price" for their NI cloned DAQ boards.
The National Instruments (Nasdaq: NATI) announced today that the company has acquired the operating assets of Measurement Computing Corporation, a provider of low-cost data acquisition products. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

"The acquisition of Measurement Computing is another step in NI's long history of providing very high value-added alternatives to traditional instrumentation," said Dr. James Truchard, National Instruments CEO and cofounder. "For more than 20 years, National Instruments has leveraged commercial technologies to provide low-cost data acquisition solutions for our customers, as illustrated by our latest USB and M Series products. This acquisition will strengthen both our hardware and software positions and further our goal of bringing our virtual instrumentation vision to millions of engineering applications worldwide."

"Measurement Computing has been a pioneer and leader in low-cost data acquisition, and our products are already supported by the industry-leading NI LabVIEW software," said Ben Bailey, Measurement Computing CEO and founder. "NI, like Measurement Computing, is committed to providing users with a low-cost alternative to traditional instrumentation -- and now our products will benefit from a leading, global organization."

The Measurement Computing business, as a wholly owned NI subsidiary, will continue to run its operation as is out of Middleboro, Mass. Measurement Computing will sell and support its products through its existing channels. The companies will look to gain operational leverage in a variety of areas and greater access to global markets.

We hope the health and well being of Measurement Computing continues well into the future. It does sound like NI is willing to let them run somewhat independantly. Both companys are high customer service companys that are real pleasant to work with.

Hobby gets WiFi

Hobby Airport gets wi-fi

Hobby Airport now has wi-fi:
Hobby travelers can use the new high-speed wireless service throughout the airport, including gate areas, restaurants, ticketing and baggage claim at speeds up to 100 times faster than standard dialup.
[snip]
Customers...

 

Hobby is primarily host to SouthWest Airlines, who makes lots of short hops, and Hobby is a hub of sorts for them. This is great for those who want to check gate times with their Pda's and computers.

New Softwire 5.1 Released

The new Softwire is released, it is free, and now supports analog outputs.

LCD Monitors

It's amazing how many CRT's are still being used in the industry. LCD's can replace almomost any raster scan Monitor being used today. While one usually can't simply replace a glass monitor with a standard LCD monitor. PCO is expert at converting signals to work with the new LCD displays. The result is a clear sharp monitor. Low glare and sharp clear graphics bring new life to older DCS sytems.

Beginnings

We have to start somewhere and this is our beginning. We plan on this to be an on magazine that will help serve the DCS, proccess equipment, and general electronic/computer industry. This will be an industry resource for news, and information.