System and method for producing a sensor for a processing machine/plant, wherein a digital twin sensor is provided that is related to the sensor, wherein the digital twin sensor is stored in a database (10), wherein the digital twin sensor forms a data model of the sensor, wherein the data model comprises at least one data building block with data for a sensor housing, for an electronic system, for a control and evaluation unit, for a primary sensor element and/or for mechanical components of the sensor, wherein the digital twin sensor is loaded into a construction program for the processing machine/plant, wherein the digital twin sensor is configured in the construction program, wherein the digital twin sensor is adapted to the processing machine/plant and the adapted digital twin sensor is produced as a real adapted sensor.

A field bus module for the operation of actuators and/or sensors with at least one device interface for the connection of a sensor and/or actuator, with at least one field bus interface for connection to a field bus system, and with a processing device for receiving and processing and sending field bus telegrams and also for making available control commands, especially safety-oriented control commands, to the device interface depending on incoming field bus telegrams wherein the processing device is configured to process in different operating modes sensor data that can be made available at the device interface and/or field bus telegrams that can be made available at the field bus interface, wherein an operating mode memory is allocated to the processing device for the optional provision of one of at least two different operating mode data sets at the processing device depending on an incoming field bus telegram.

A device management apparatus that manages a field device includes: a processor that communicates with the field device to acquire device information that includes identification information that identifies the field device and an additional information set in the field device and generates, using the identification information and the additional information, an identification key that identifies the device information; and a memory that stores the generated identification key and the device information in association with each other.

A distributed big data device in a process plant includes an embedded big data appliance configured to locally stream and store, as big data, data that is generated, received, or observed by the device, and to perform one or more learning analyzes on at least a portion of the stored data. The embedded big data appliance generates or creates learned knowledge based on a result of the learning analysis, which the device may use to modify its operation to control a process in real-time in the process plant, and/or which the device may transmit to other devices in the process plant. The distributed big data device may be a field device, a controller, an input/output device, or other process plant device, and may utilize learned knowledge created by other devices when performing its learning analysis.

A system comprises a cluster of field devices that each have a signal generator assigned to the respective field device. The system includes a communication interface and a data processing device for the provision of system values, diagnostic values and/or process values. The system is configured to selectively choose at least one corresponding system and/or diagnostic value and/or process value of the respective field devices on the basis of a common selection criterion. The system is further configured to determine status information for the respective field device on the basis of the at least one respectively selected system and/or diagnostic value and/or process value and to output the status information using the associated signal generator. The invention further relates to an appropriate method of selecting and identifying field devices from a plurality of field devices.

An intelligent actuation device is described herein. The device includes an actuator, and includes both local and cloud based control facilitated by motors and actuators in each actuation device. Each device further includes a processor with settings stored in memory that direct a controller. Sensors send both local and remote sensor data along with real time weather data to a processor. The processor uses this sensor data to update charts and schedules in memory, then sends commands to the controller based on these updated charts and schedules according to user defined and factory set parameters. Additionally, each actuation device includes a network device and wireless transmitters enabling connection via a mesh network, the network controlled by one or more mobile devices which receive user input.

A device supporting big data in a process plant includes an interface to a communications network, a cache configured to store data observed by the device, and a multi-processing element processor to cause the data to be cached and transmitted (e.g., streamed) for historization at a unitary, logical centralized data storage area. The data storage area stores multiple types of process control or plant data using a common format. The device time-stamps the cached data, and, in some cases, all data that is generated or created by or received at the device may be cached and/or streamed. The device may be a field device, a controller, an input/output device, a network management device, a user interface device, or a historian device, and the device may be a node of a network supporting big data in the process plant. Multiple devices in the network may support layered or leveled caching of data.

A data pipeline is used as a fundamental processing element for implementing techniques that automatically or autonomously perform signal processing-based learning in a process plant or monitoring system. Each data pipeline includes a set of communicatively interconnected data processing blocks that perform processing on one or more sources of data in a predetermined order to, for example, clean the data, filter the data, select data for further processing, perform supervised or unsupervised learning on the data, etc. The individual processing blocks or modules within a data pipeline may be stored and executed at different devices in a plant network to perform distributed data processing. Moreover, each data pipeline can be integrated into one or more higher level analytic modules that perform higher level analytics, such as quality prediction, fault detection, etc. on the processed data. The use of data pipelines within a plant network enables data collected within a plant control or monitoring system to be processed automatically and used in various higher level analytic modules within the plant during ongoing operation of the plant.

The present disclosure relates to a method and an apparatus for controlling a smart device. The method includes: when a screen of the terminal is locked and it is determined that a user performs a first preset operation on a control key on the lock screen of the terminal, acquiring information regarding at least one smart device through a preset smart-home Internet-of-Things (IoT) protocol and displaying the acquired information on a control interface of the terminal; and when it is detected that the user performs a second preset operation related to a smart device displayed on the control interface, controlling, according to the second preset operation, the smart device through the smart-home IoT protocol.

Methods and apparatus for communicating alert notifications using discrete input channels are described. An apparatus includes a field device to control a process of a process plant. The field device has a digital valve controller including a process parameter monitor to monitor a process parameter of the field device and an alarm determiner to detect an error condition associated with the process parameter. The alarm determiner generates an alarm notification associated with the error condition of the process parameter. The digital valve controller includes an alarm status assignor to assign a status notification for equipment associated with the process parameter detected by the alarm determiner to be in the error condition and a discrete output channel. The apparatus includes a host device having a discrete input channel directly coupled to the discrete output channel to receive the alarm notification and the status notification from the digital valve controller. The host device is to be communicatively coupled to a control room of a process plant.