MooreHawke and Pepperl+Fuchs are the first vendors to have products registered under the Fieldbus Foundation's fieldbus H1 device coupler registration process. The process determines compliance with the FF-816 FS 1.5 Physical Layer Profile and IEC 61158-2: 2003 standard, as well as whether a device coupler is fit for its intended purpose of preventing spur short-circuits from disrupting a fieldbus network. The registration program covers both device couplers designed to connect multiple field devices to a fieldbus segment, as well as simpler wiring blocks providing a minimum of one-trunk input and one-spur output. Registered devices include MooreHawke's TrunkGuard Series 200 and 300 fieldbus device couplers and Pepperl+Fuchs' R2-SP-N device coupler and modular segment protector.
The Foundation has also released its updated Host Test Kit (HTK) DD application module, which includes hardware and software for testing the functionality of a fieldbus host and its conformance with the Foundation host profile specifications. The updated test kit incorporates field diagnostics which allow any EDD-based system to access and configure the diagnostics in fieldbus devices. These comply with the NAMUR 107 recommendation and allow fieldbus users to specify the diagnostics most important for a given operation or process area.—reported by Andrew Bond
