Congratulations are in order for our sister publication, Motion Control in southern Africa, on the launch of the much-improved Motion Control Buyers' Guide (MCBG). Under the editorial guidance of SAI&C's editor, John Gibbs, the revamped guide provides the mechanical power professional with an easy-to-use directory of relevant suppliers, brands and products. As with all Technews' directories, MCBG has a comprehensive online version - www.mcbg.co.za. A subscription to the print version of the quarterly Motion Control magazine gets the subscriber a free copy of the print version of the buyers' guide - [email protected].
Congratulations to Cornu Perold on his appointment as SAIMC president for his second consecutive term in office. See 'From the president's desk' for the latest SAIMC news, as well as details on the launch of the new SAIMC website - www.saimc.org.za.
The recently held SAIMC National AGM (2005) was well supported. As is customary, a technical presentation was included in the evening and this year representatives from Vodacom gave thought-provoking presentations on the application of 3G, GPRS and Blackberry technologies. In the more established European and North American markets, Blackberry has become synonymous with mobile e-mail delivery. Using a combination thin-client server and proprietary compression algorithm, e-mail (including attachments) is delivered to the recipient's handheld with alleged 'seamless ease'. The data is delivered, (at an 'affordable' and fixed monthly cost), via the service provider's pervasive GPRS network, not the fledgling and still incomplete 3G network. No doubt the automation industry will jump at this technology with enormous enthusiasm... the possible industrial applications are endless.
It appears that Blackberry was smart enough to license their technology so that it can be used on other 'Blackberry-enabled' manufacturers' phones including Sony Ericsson, Nokia and Siemens. Sadly, the local market has been somewhat restricted by Vodacom's decision to not support Blackberry e-mail delivery for these other hardware manufacturers (yet).
Vodacom has also announced that video calls will cost the same as voice calls. Whilst the picture quality is certainly not high-definition and the frame-rate is little more than a few frames a minute, this is still rather remarkable... just think of the possible industrial applications. A word of caution to those of you that plan to monitor your factory in action/inaction as you travel with international roaming enabled on your phone... the cost of GPRS data delivery varies dramatically from country to country, up to as much as R184 per 1 MB in some countries!
On the subject of travel, in mid-April, Festo and Siemens will again be leading South African tour groups to Interkama, the control and instrumentation industry's premier exhibition and conference. Held in Hanover, northern Germany, Interkama is co-located (to coin an Exhibitions for Africa term) with 10 other industrial exhibitions at the massive Deutsche Messe. This year's melange of exhibitions boasts over 6000 exhibitors from 61 countries with a display area of more than 200 000 square metres. German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will officially open the event on 10 April - testimony to the enormous political and economic importance of the exhibition. To those of you brave enough to attend, be sure to thoroughly plan your visit or you will never find what you are looking for as you wander dazed and overawed through the 27 exhibition halls - www.interkama.com
On the local exhibition front, Penmac Control and Instrumentation Roadshow continues to travel to even the remotest parts of the country ( www.penmac.co.za). Do not forget to diarise the Process Exhibition 2005, held at Kyalami on 17-19 May 2005.
I have it on good authority that Mike Brown, cyclist extraordinaire and author of our regular column, 'The Control Loop' (see 'Problems in a Canadian plant'), will soon be releasing a new CD. If Mike's incredible knowledge and experience of the subject is anything to go by, the disk will provide the instrumentation professional with a wealth of knowledge and guidance in the much-neglected field of control loop optimisation.
A reminder that for the last five years, Technews, the publisher of SA Instrumentation & Control, has been publishing all its magazines on the Internet. This has resulted in a wealth of archived information being stored on a number of highly sophisticated websites. A search query, available from every displayed page, will automatically search across all of Technews' six online technical publications, providing a wealth of information. At last count there were over 21 000 articles available - www.instrumentation.co.za
Graeme Bell
Managing editor: SA Instrumentation & Control
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