More stop!

Carl Henning responded to my post about the Profibus newsletter. I am promoting it to the main blog: When I was a user of automation technology I wanted to know how the technology I chose was doing. I could be more certain of continuing support if I chose a successful technology. So this article would be important to me as a user. But there are a lot of other articles in the newsletter (http://us.profibus.com/newsletters/newsletter_14/issue14.htm). In fact the node count story is one of the smallest. The newsletter also contains information on: + free webinars + free one-day training classes throughout North America + certified training class availability + free PROFINET Developer Workshops + three white papers that can be downloaded + an application story + seven new productsTo me the newsletter seems heavy on informing and educating and light on "puffery."There is nothing "dubious" about the article's statistics. It is not difficult to count the PROFIBUS ASICs which go into devices even though the ASICs come from multiple vendors. The chip vendors report their numbers and we simply add them up.The "market" can call HART useful, helpful for configuration, and helpful for diagnostics"¦ and all that would be true. But by definition it is not a bus. HART is not going away, but to be truly useful it has to be connected to a control system that can take advantage of its capabilities. The overwhelming number of HART devices are not. The fact that they can be connected to such control systems through PROFIBUS and PROFINET networks allows users to take advantage of the HART devices already installed while adding the benefits of a bus.Carl Henning Deputy Director, PTO----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Carl, you can't have it both ways. The majority of Profibus field devices aren't connected to networks either. So Profibus, by your definition, isn't a fieldbus. That's patently untrue. Both Profibus and HART are fieldbusi, whether you want to admit it or not. Now let's stop this and get on with helping the end users. Send me use cases where you show end-users using connected Profibus-enabled devices to make their jobs easier.