Industrial Automation Magazine India

Smart sensors need a CPU to process the information

Published on : Monday 12-09-2022

Rupesh Desale, Director, Jumo India Pvt Ltd. 

Smart Sensors do find it an uphill struggle to displace conventional sensors. Is this true and what could be the reasons for this?
Smart sensors need a CPU to process the information, this is a cost factor. Without a significant USP of a digital sensor, there is no reason to use it instead of an analog sensor, and this is where JUMO's work starts

What are the technical issues in installation, commissioning and constant calibration of smart sensors? What are aspects to consider in remote maintenance?
The staff obviously needs to be better trained, as the additional intelligence of the sensor also needs to be handled. This know-how is necessary for installation, commissioning, and calibration. The personnel's training generates costs, which in turn must lead to a return on investment. Here, too, a manufacturer such as JUMO must think about how this training effort can be minimised as much as possible through intuitive products.

From sensors to the cloud – is this just a slogan or is it happening really? What are the practical issues? Do you expect 5G to bring in a big change?
Cloud solutions are becoming more and more important, that’s why JUMO started its own cloud product "JUMO Cloud" in 2020.

This year JUMO started with the presentation of its first product, JUMO hydroTRANS: a temperature, humidity, and CO2 transmitter with a Single Pair Ethernet (SPE) interface. The new solution was presented at the premiere at the trade fair ACHEMA 2022 in Frankfurt/Main, Germany.

It delivers the user a full Ethernet-based communication experience between the sensor (JUMO hydroTRANS) and cloud (JUMO Cloud). This way, the number of needed components in an application can be reduced to a minimum so ‘from the sensor to the cloud’ is not just a slogan, for JUMO it is already a reality today.

Since sensors are intelligent devices with possibility to connect to internet, how would the cybersecurity aspects get addressed?
Any device that hangs freely on the Internet must have appropriate security measures in place; otherwise, it is a security breach and can become a major problem. In order to take the right steps here as a manufacturer and user, there are corresponding standards in Germany, of particular interest here is IEC 62443, which all well-known manufacturers follow as a result.

How do you service existing brownfield plants? Is it possible to have a mix of conventional sensors and smart sensors in one system without expensive interposing devices and gateways?
Today, existing brownfield plants have installations for common sensor signal types like 4...20 mA. With the new interface SPE for new sensor products, many of the existing wire installations can also be used in the future because SPE just needs a single pair of wires for digital communication via protocols like MQTT or Modbus TCP.

Also, the power supply works over this single pair (PoDL = Power over Data Line) which means that the need for new wire installations in brownfield applications is reduced to a minimum.

It is possible to have a collection of analog and smart sensors in a higher-level system, such as a PLC, if the PLC has appropriate collection capabilities. This essentially means that analog values (e.g., 4-20mA) and also digital values (e.g., Ethernet with protocol) can be acquired via corresponding I/Os. According to our estimation, the evolution will look like this, the first solutions with gateway will be realized and in the next step integration in PLCs will take place.
 
(The views expressed in interviews are personal, not necessarily of the organisations represented)

Rupesh Desale has over 20 years experience in the field of Instrumentation Engineering and Sales. His speciality is to find good opportunities in new market, identify gaps, analyse data and make solutions with effective business and technical strategy. Rupesh is very much interested in taking up new opportunities and work out more efficient ways for achieving it by leveraging my skills at a better level, both on a professional and personal level.