Venue: The HESS Club

The presentation covers the evolution from 4-20mA to Process Control Digital Field-busses. A comparison will show major strengths and differences among 4-20mA, HART, Profibus and FOUNDATION Fieldbus. Attendants will be able to have an idea of the main differences and benefits offered by Open Communication Protocols and consequently be able to make better decisions for their next plant investment. Other issues addressed are: Installation, Control at the field level, segment load (data and physical), intrinsic safe barriers, dedicated devices that help the transition to modern field protocols and save on cost while preserving good legacy devices, FOUNDATION™ Fieldbus link active scheduler (LAS), device description (DD/EDDL), field device tool and device type management (FDT/DTM).

Joe Rondan acquired his Electronic Engineer B.S. in 1978 at the Aeronautics Institute of Technology (ITA) at the Brazilian Air Force in Sao Jose dos Campos, Sao Paulo, and completed Master Degree courses in Digital Communication and Parallel Processing in the Institute of Space Research (INPE) while working in the development of compilers, hardware and dedicated data bus for Satellites.

He has 26 years of experience in process control. He joined SMAR in 1983 and has worked in many positions in the Company, such us; R&D Engineer, R&D Manager, technical sales calls, technical support and Training, CEO and R&D Manager for SMAR Laboratories before the merge in 2004 with Smar International Corporation.

Mr. Rondan has directly participated in the development of a high accuracy measuring devices, standalone Multi-Loop Controllers, Pressure Transmitter, PLC CPUs, various discrete and analog I/O modules, and many control algorithms. He is constantly involved in System architecture definitions involving legacy 4-20mA, Modbus, FOUNDATION™ Fieldbus, Profibus, DeviceNet, OPC, FDT/DTM and other protocols.

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