Industrial-Grade Monitors

What differentiates industrial-grade monitors from their consumer- and even commercial-grade counterparts? Given that price is often the primary driver of so many of our consumer-technology purchases these days, the temptation to carry that habit into the industrial arena can feel irresistible. For example, I received a Black Friday email promotion last week tempting me with…

Advantech’s Latest Industrial Panel PCs with i7 Processor

Intel’s Core i7 processor is now available in two of Advantech’s newest industrial-grade panel PCs, the 15-inch IPPC-9151G and the 17-inch IPPC-9171G. When I first read Advantech’s press release announcing the introduction of the Core i7 into its Panel PC line, I already knew the processor to be the flagship product of Intel’s premier processor…

iBuilding Series – The Intelligent Office

My previous posts covering the Advantech Intelligent Building Solution (AiBS) focused on the first three of its four major iBuilding scenarios: Intelligent Parking, Intelligent Reception, the Intelligent Meeting Room and the Intelligent Office – scenarios that were specifically considered by Advantech to encourage and facilitate development of system refinements that building-automation planners might otherwise miss….

iBuilding Series – Intelligent Reception and Intelligent Meeting Rooms

My previous post covering the Advantech Intelligent Building Solution (AiBS) focused primarily on its Intelligent Parking scenario, just one of the four major scenarios that help define this comprehensive approach to iBuilding design and management – scenarios that were specifically considered by Advantech to encourage development of refinements busy enterprise engineers might otherwise miss. AiBS’s…

iBuilding Series – Intelligent Parking

Recently, I wrote about the general concept of Intelligent Buildings, noting that the focus of intelligent-building systems now encompasses advantages that go well beyond traditional considerations of energy efficiency and the basic building subsystems that control access, lighting, HVAC, communication, etc. Indeed, intelligent-building concepts are being rapidly refined in ways never imaginable until the proliferation…

Smartphones in Industrial Environments – How Does Price Rank as a Consideration?

In an earlier note on Honeywell Scanning & Mobility’s white paper, Are Smartphones and Tablets Suitable for Use in Warehouse and Distribution Center Operations?, I admitted my surprise at a survey conclusion that “user acceptance” (83%) was exceeded only by ruggedness/durability (90%) and uptime/minimal downtime (89%) in rank of concerns about deployment of consumer smartphones…

Is Platform Polarization a Barrier To Industrial Deployment of Smartphones?

I posted a comment recently on a new white paper from Honeywell Scanning & Mobility entitled Are Smartphones and Tablets Suitable for Use in Warehouse and Distribution Center Operations? and encourage you to read the paper in full for yourself. The survey it discusses provides interesting insight into current thinking on the subject of industrial…

Intelligent Building with Advantech’s WebAccess

In my previous blog article, I talked about the growing emphasis on intelligent building. To summarize, Intelligent Building can automate the following areas: Integrated and Intelligent Systems Energy Management System & Services Service Support & Maintenance Advantech’s intelligent building solution (AiBS) software, WebAccess, can accomplish the tasks listed above. WebAccess is a graphical control SCADA/HMI…

The Growing Emphasis On Intelligent Building

As economies adjust to ever-rising demand for and costs of energy, an increasing range of enterprises are focusing on intelligent-building strategies. Globally, commercial buildings currently consume just fewer than 25 percent of all electricity production, making intelligent, automated management of those resources critical not only to enterprise efficiency, but also to global energy-allocation challenges. While…

Potential For Smartphones In Warehouses and Distribution Centers?

Not to give my age away, but the first PCs I recall installing in a commercial workplace were four IBM XTs with Intel’s 4.77 MHz 8088 processor, 256 kB of RAM, 5.25-inch floppies and 20-MB hard drives. Total price tag, including custom software: ~$24,000.00 in mid-80s dollars, or about $50,000.00 in 2011 dollars. Their proud…