European alliance to develop FireWire automation

A Nyquist Industrial Control product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Dec 9, 2002

A group of European companies and organisations have come together to form the 1394 Automation Group, following of an initiative taken by Nyquist Industrial Control and Wago Kontakttechnik.

A group of European companies and organisations have come together to form the 1394 Automation Group, following of an initiative taken by Nyquist Industrial Control and Wago Kontakttechnik.

The new group aims to define a solution that will enable different controllers to communicate on the same FireWire bus.

To establish FireWire standards requires knowledge of a range of different technologies like motion, drives, vision and I/O.

This is why Nyquist and Wago approached companies that might be interested in joining them.

They managed to gather a group of inspired companies who believe in the power of FireWire and they are now working together under the name of 1394 Automation.

"From the start, the technical questions were the focus of our work", says Dr Thomas Albers, Technical Director Electronics of Wago.

"No 'political' discussions disturbed our progress.

Right now, we are working on marketing aspects so that we are prepared for opening up the group to a large number of interested companies".

Wago and Nyquist defined the implementation layout, which is as open as possible.

All participating companies will be able to develop products on their own and in such a way that they can all bring in their own unique functionality without interfering with others who are on the same bus.

These criteria are analogous to a road along which trucks, cars, bicycles, and even pedestrians travel, without causing accidents, because they obey a minimum set of traffic rules.

"All the companies that take part in the 1394 Automation group already have experience with FireWire", says Twan Smetsers, Director Marketing and Services of Nyquist.

"Some implement FireWire in their systems like Basler and Nyquist do, other participants develop a FireWire-based product, like Wago and Stober do".

In addition to this, the group wants an independent institute to implement the defined layout for the software.

"This will be the reference implementation for the standard", according to Smetsers.

This standard implementation must then, together with the certification, lead to an accepted interoperable standard.

That means that only the message mechanism will be determined, not the content of the messages.

Albers has high expectations of 1394 Automation.

"Finally, it is a user group where the users of FireWire will find a platform to define the next steps of FireWire in automation.

It must ensure that the dramatic technical progress of this communication tool, driven by the consumer world, is guided in the right manner for the purposes of industry.

The work that has been done up to now, must result in internationally accepted standards, based on the IEEE1394 standard".

Current participants in 1394 Automation are: Basler Vision Technologies, Control Techniques, Moteurs Leroy Somer France, Fraunhofer IPT/WZL Aachen, Kollmorgen Seidel group of Danaher Motion, Lust Antriebstechnik, Maxon Motor, Nyquist Industrial Control, Stober Antriebstechnik and Wago Kontakttechnik.

(This was Engineeringtalk's Top Story on 6 December 2002).