Content area
Full Text
Echelon has announced that it will freely license the LONWORKS protocol for implementation on any platform. Previously available on the Neuron chip supplied by Motorola and Toshiba, the move will allow LONWORKS' rich control networking facilities to be made available on any kind of processor - from low-cost microcontrollers to powerful 32-bit or RISC systems - to satisfy a much broader range of applications.
Users will now be able to exploit facilities such as media independence, peer-to-peer communications and data sharing, and unconstrained network size - to create interoperable systems which span the entire breadth of an organization's activity from low level automation to high level networking. Additionally, by relinquishing intellectual property rights, Echelon greatly strengthens LONWORKS' many standards activities in the areas of building automation, industrial control, forecourt automation, meter reading, substation automation, transportation and more.
Under the terms of the licence, manufacturers will be able to implement the Echelon protocol - known as LonTalk - on their platform of choice. The LonTalk protocol is expected to be hosted on other platforms to satisfy two major requirements: to create higher performance nodes, and to integrate existing host processors which are present to run "legacy" applications such as PLCs. Echelon will provide services to ensure that implementations are fully compatible: the company will also administer the unique node identities which aid network management.
The LonTalk protocol is already a market leader in building automation, and is included in the BACnet...