Industrial Automation

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/upgrade-coming-to-grid-cybersecurity-in-us Ukraine blackout in December 2015 was a wakeup call for better cyber security. →

There was a street repair work at my way to work. The street the workers put up a set of automated wireless traffic lights to control the flow of traffic during the works (the road was reduced to one line where cars can drive to opposite directions at different times). Here is a closer view →

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/navy-diversifies-ships-cyber-systems-to-foil-hackers Posted from WordPress for Android →

PLCs have a long and storied history, with Allen-Bradley itself coining the term “programmable logic controller” in 1971 when it introduced its version of what was then called the “programmable controller.” For anyone who cut their teeth on ladder logic can testify, PLCs at the time were an elegantly simple solution to an age-old problem: →

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/21/black_hat_2015_32_scada_mobile_zerodays_will_drop/ Posted from WordPress for Android →

https://hbr.org/2015/06/how-industrial-systems-are-turning-into-digital-services Posted from WordPress for Android →

The PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) has been and still is the basic component of the industrial automation world. PLCs are usually pretty expensive pieces of hardware, which led many people who know micro-controllers to come up with their own ideas to implement similar functionality. Arduino is a kind of universal programmable controller, although it is →

In the modern world sensors are used for recording everything from exhaust gas temperatures to the electrical activity in a human heart. Direct wiring methods are commonly used for simple on-off device control, where a circuit is either open or closed. Likewise, digital sensors are usually wired directly to monitoring panels in the world of →

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are used for remote monitoring and control in the delivery of essential services products such as electricity, natural gas, water, waste treatment and transportation. They used to be in closed networks, but nowadays more and more automation and control equipment are connected to Internet. Many of them are →

Inadequate shielding and bad grounding are often blamed when measurements are inaccurate, especially in high-impedance applications. Understanding grounding, shielding, and guarding in high-impedance applications article tells tells that in fact, shielding and grounding problems are frequently responsible for measurement errors, but many test system developers aren’t quite sure why. Many measurement errors can be traced →