Archive for February, 2010

The first thing you need to learn before playing the piano is the piano notes. What are they called? A regular piano keyboard has 88 keys on it including the black notes. The first notes to learn are the white notes, but how do go about memorizing the names of all those white notes.

There are many different sizes of keyboards. Sixty-one and seventy-six note keyboards are standard for electronic keyboards, and pianos are traditionally eighty-eight notes. No matter what the size of keyboard there are only seven white notes to learn. Black notes are associated to the white notes and are known as sharps and flats.

So, firstly let’s learn the seven note names. They are C, D, E, F, G, A and B. Wherever on the piano you play you will be using one of these notes names. You will see that from C to G is alphabetical, the reason I haven’t started with A is because when you start learning to play the piano you will be using C as one of the first notes you ever play and it will also be a very important note and will help you relate to the other notes particularly on sheet music.

Now you know the notes, your next step is to find them on a piano. The easiest way to do this is to look at the piano keyboard, if you don’t have a keyboard, find a picture of one on the internet. Now, just look at the keyboard carefully and you will see sets of two black notes and sets of three black notes. Look at a set of two black notes first. Starting with the black note on the left, notice a white note to its immediate left this note is called C, the white note to its immediate right is called D, and this is also between the two black notes. Finally, the white note to the right of the second black note is called E. So all the notes in this section of two black notes starting at the left are called C, D and E. Depending on the size of your keyboard you will see up to eight sets of two black notes together, these are the same and also use our three notes C, D and E. The only difference between the sets is the pitch of the notes. On the far left of the keyboard, notes will sound lower in pitch and to the right, notes will sound higher.

The next shape you are looking for is three black notes together and these notes are surrounded by four white notes. Starting from the left again these notes are called F, G, A and B. That’s it; you have learned all the white notes on a keyboard. The two black note and three note shapes are repeated on the whole keyboard and so are the notes. With a little bit of practice you should be able to find any note on the piano. Just remember that every two black note shapes are surrounded by C, D and E, and every three note shape is surrounded by F, G, A and B.

Mike Shaw
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/black-and-white-piano-keys-on-a-portable-electronic-keyboard-692492.html

Music rests pertain to the period of silence in any musical piece. Some may say that notes are more important than music rests but we beg to differ. A moment of silence in the right moment can separate a good song from a remarkable one.

Know more about music rests. Be acquainted with the music theory. Identify the types of music rests. Learn to play music. Rests.com is going to be your online guide on your crash course to music. If you are given the talent, you may not only listen to music. You may even be creating your own songs over the piano or with a guitar. Coming up with lyrics is one thing. There are seven elements of music namely melody, rhythm, harmony, timbre, structure, dynamics, and texture. Melody is defined as the series of notes sounding in succession. Under melody are three sub-elements. These are pitch, dynamics, and timbre. Pitch means the lowness or highness of a tone. Dynamics is the loudness or softness of a note. Lastly, timbre is the sound quality. Rhythm has something to do with the sound arrangement in a certain time.

Harmony deals with the relationship between pitches that occur simultaneously. Texture refers to the overall sound of a musical piece which may be determined through melody, rhythm, and harmony. This is but an overview. There will be more just Keep it here at Rests.com.

There are people who can learn to play music by ear. However, this lesson is not for them but for the not-so-musically gifted individuals. We are going to learn to play music by knowing how to read a musical score or a sheet music.

For more information about Music Rests visit the website, http://www.rests.com

Jizmack Baraceros
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/online-guide-on-your-crash-course-to-music-521045.html

by G. Hugh Bodell

Over the past few months, as a result of conversations with friends, relatives, colleagues and acquaintances I have come to a startling but more importantly a scary conclusion.  There appears to be a perception that the US Government has funds that either were in storage or will emerge from some private stash to rescue everyone or entity in financial trouble.

This commentary is truly intended to be a non-partisan piece.  My concern is not that any one group is the cause or will be the cure of our current economic woes.  My objective is to address an apparent disconnect between the 306 million citizens of this great country and the trillions of dollars being spent or committed by an assemblage of 535 out of control middle men and woman, some call congress, I call self appointed loan brokers.

First, let me make one statement that is the corner stone of my commentary today.  Regardless of the economic system under which one lives, capitalism, modified capitalism/socialism or full-blown socialism the only source of asset creation is the people.  Not financial enterprises, not industrial enterprises, not service enterprises and definitely not government.

Every asset in the economic infrastructure of our country starts with the effort of the individual and the remuneration that individual receives for that effort.

The Big Three auto manufacturers need money because the individuals who would normally be inclined to buy one of their vehicles are either not so inclined or do not have nor cannot raise the required cash.

The taxes these three behemoths would normally pay to various tiers of government will not be paid because they have not made any profit because people, individuals are not buying their product.

Construction enterprises will not buy trucks because their product, buildings, have no buyers because once again, individuals who would normally be inclined to buy their buildings are either not so inclined or do not have nor cannot raise the required cash.

Thus, if Charlie or Charlene citizen does not spend, regardless of what they are not buying, profit is not made and taxes are not paid.

If taxes are not paid, this amorphous body referred to as government has no money to support their endless bailouts.

Where are they getting it, they are borrowing it and putting the loan on the balance sheet of each and every living soul in the United States.

That’s right, you owe the money that the 535 loan brokers are borrowing to bailout banks, brokerage houses, auto manufacturers and whoever gets on the line next.

I truly believe that if the American public began to view government spending at a more personal level, these out of control loan brokers called Congress would find themselves in the hot water they deserve.  So what I am going to attempt to do here is ‘make it personal’.  Keep in mind through this exercise that the only tax dollars that the US Treasury will get with which to pay off the debts enumerated below must ultimately be paid by the individual, whether income, sales, property, etc, the source is the working men and woman of this country, enterprises are only conduits through which the money passes.

Let’s start with what is owed from past spending binges As of December 23, 2008 the national debt is approximately   $10.612 trillion
To see that number in its scary entirety $10,611,615,687,668

Now let’s add to that the bailout money that is not included in the above, and let’s round it to where it really is going   $1.000 trillion

Therefore as of today, the 535 loan brokers have committed your future earnings to pay back   $11.612 trillion

Now lets add President Elect Obama’s estimate of what further bailout/stimulus needs the government will borrow   $3.000 trillion

So sometime between now and summer 2009 the citizens of this great country will owe various lenders throughout the world   $14.612 trillion

The population of this country as of today is approximately  306,000,000

Therefore every man, woman and child, from sea to shining sea will owe   $47,751.63

To bring that number even closer to home, the average US household has 2.59 souls in it, so according to the US Census Bureau, the average family/household will be in the hole for $123,676.73 by summer, and you didn’t get anything for that 123 grand, hell, you didn’t even know you owed it.

It is imperative that you think about this number in these term because you are going to pay it back.

We have already established that any tax money the US Treasury receives from business enterprises ultimately comes from each individual, well so do the tax dollars that are paid by the rich.  Those among the rich that enjoy a life supported by dividends…those dividends are just another distribution of the profits earned by selling you, the individual, products or services.  Equally so with entertainers, sports celebrities, business owners, etc., if you do not buy their music, go to their games or buy their goods and services, they just ain’t rich anymore so they do not pay enormous taxes.

Harry Truman once said about his job as President of the United States, “The buck stops here”.  Well each citizen of the United States must look at the huge commitments that the 535 loan brokers are making with your money, assets and yes, your future and realize ‘The buck starts here’.

I would truly feel that this commentary was a success if people that read it start his or her own chart for their specific household.  Using the $11.612 trillion that we have already been made responsible for and the total population of the US as of today, each soul is responsible for $37,947.71 of debt the 535 loan brokers committed you to.  Each time you hear of the loan brokers committing you to another trillion, divide by that population number, 306 million, add it to the $37,947.71 and multiply it by the number of people in your household.

That way most of the honest, hardworking folk who built this nation can go to sleep every night saying to themselves, “My biggest creditor is a group of incompetent slugs who made me responsible for a loan without my consent, gave me nothing in return and have the government on their side to make me pay it back.  I am in this fix because 535 incompetent, self appointed loan brokers signed my name to the loan agreement, not theirs, mine.”

Then vote them out of office before they bankrupt you, all 535 of them!

G. Hugh Bodell is a freelance writer and a native New Yorker who is knowledgeable on many subjects but expert on none…well, maybe a few.  Feel free to visit him at http://www.ghughbodell.com

G. Hugh Bodell
http://www.articlesbase.com/politics-articles/the-us-government-is-not-an-independent-self-funded-entity-regardless-of-how-the-535-members-of-congress-are-acting-695382.html

I was TRYING to write a serious song for a game’s item shop…
but then the flute player decided to screw it all up.
Damn flute comes in at the most ridiculous times. his eyes.
poorman copyrighted (as if anyone would want to claim credit)

Duration : 0:1:2

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Technorati Tags: BGM, Desynched, Item, music, sheet, Shop

Buy the song “Homeward Bound” from the CD ‘The Road Home’ at http://TantaraRecords.com/index.php?p=catalog&i=68 or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00076GOHK?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwtantararec-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00076GOHK. “Until Then” (a military tribute) features the song “Homeward Bound” from the CD “The Road Home.” Visit http://www.TantaraRecords.com for more information about this CD. Visit http://gcsdistributing.com/index.cfm?pv=pc&pf=LP&PType=Multimedia to buy a copy of this video on DVD.

The song “Homeward Bound” was written by Marta Keen and is published by Alfred Music. Sheet music is available at www.SheetMusicPlus.com: http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/store/smp_detail.html?cart=33839107765355649&item=3529448

This flash presentation was created by Todd Clegg of GCS Distributing. Thanks for letting us pass it on.

Homeward Bound (lyrics)
by Marta Keen

In the quiet misty morning
When the moon has gone to bed,
When the sparrows stop their singing
And the sky is clear and red,
When the summer’s ceased its gleaming,
When the corn is past its prime,
When adventure’s lost its meaning,
I’ll be homeward bound in time.

Bind me not to the pasture;
Chain me not to the plow.
Set me free to find my calling
And I’ll return to you somehow.

If you find it’s me you’re missing,
If you’re hoping I’ll return,
To your thoughts I’ll soon be list’ning,
In the road I’ll stop and turn.
Then the wind will set me racing
As my journey nears its end,
And the path I’ll be retracing
When I’m homeward bound again.

Bind me not to pasture;
Chain me not to the plow.
Set me free to find my calling
And I’ll return to you somehow.

In the quiet misty morning
When the moon has gone to bed,
When the sparrows stop their singing,
I’ll be homeward bound again.

Duration : 0:4:3

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Technorati Tags: Afghanistan, bound, BYU, choir, Home, homeward, Iraq, Keen, Marta, military, road, Singers, terror, Then, tribute, troops, Until, war

Introduction to PLC’s

Programmable Logic Controllers

Bedford Associates, founded by Richard Morley introduced the first Programmable Logic Controller in 1968.  This PLC was known as the Modular Digital Controller from which the MODICON company derived its name.  The History of the PLC as told to Howard Hendricks by Dick Morley provides an interesting insight into the early development of the PLC.

 Schnieder Quantum PLC

Programmable Logic Controllers were developed to provide a replacement for large relay based control panels.  These systems were inflexible requiring major rewiring or replacement whenever the control sequence was to be changed.

The development of the micro processor from the mid 1970′s have allowed Programmable Logic Controllers to take on more complex tasks and larger functions as the speed of the processor increased.

Ladder Logic

PLC had to be maintainable by technicians and electrical personnel.  To support this the programming language of Ladder Logic was developed.  Ladder Logic is based on the relay and contact symbols technicians were used to through wiring diagrams of electrical control panels.

Until recently there has been no formal programming standard for PLC’s.  The introduction of the IEC 61131 Standard in 1998 provides a more formal approach to coding.  PLC Manufacturers have so far been slow on the uptake of the standard with partial implementation.  The SearchEng articleIEC 61131-3, a Standard for PLC Software by R.W. Lewis provides an introduction to the standard.

The documentation for early PLC Programs was either non existent or very poor, just providing simple addressing and basic comments, making large programs difficult to follow.  This has been greatly improved with the development of PLC Programming Packages.

SCADA and HMI

The early programmable logic controllers interfaced with the operator in much the same way as the relay control panel, via push-buttons and switches for control and lamps for indication.

The introduction of the Personal Computer (PC) in the 1980′s allowed for the development of a computer based interface to the operator, these where initially via simple Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems and more recently via Dedicated Operator Control Panels, known as Human Machine Interfaces (HMI).

The History of the PLC
as told to Howard Hendricks by Dick Morley

The following are some fables associated with the first ten years of the programmable controller business. These Fables may or may not have a basis of truth, but in general, they are the best that my Alzheimer-plagued memory can do at the moment. As has been often in other articles and reports, the startup of Modicon and the programmable controller industry as a whole is well documented. The programmable controller was detailed on New Year’s Day, 1968, and from hence till now, a slow steady growth has allowed the manufacturing and process control industries to take advantage of applications-oriented software.

The early days however, were not as straightforward nor as simple. We had some real problems in the early days of convincing people that a box of software, albeit cased in cast iron, could do the same thing as 50 feet of cabinets, associated relays and wiring. The process was indeed difficult, and deserves some of the stories that I hope the reader will be regaled with as he proceeds onward through the tortuous swamp of my mind.

One of my earliest recommendations was that the programmable controller, according to my own system architecture specification, did not need to go fast because I felt as though speed was not a criteria because it would go as fast as we needed it to. The initial machine, which was never delivered, only had 125 words of memory, and speed was not a criteria as mentioned earlier. You can imagine what happened! First, we immediately ran out of memory, and second, the machine was much too slow to perform any function anywhere near the relay response time. Relay response times exist on the order of 1/60th of a second, and the topology formed by many cabinets full of relays transformed to code is significantly more than 125 words. We expanded the memory to 1K and thence to 4K. At 4K, it stood the test of time for quite a while. Initially, marketing and memory sizes were sold in 1K, 2K, 3K, (?) and 4K. the 3K was obviously the 4K version with constrained address so that field expansion to 4K could easily be done.

The question of speed, in part, was part of the early designs. No interrupts were necessary because the external signal conditions were directly written onto memory without any supervisory requirements or “operating system of the conventional type. This allowed the processor to pay attention to solving logic rather than housekeeping the I/O. As a result, of course, the processor had to have significantly more processing power than normally associated with this size computer; and secondly, the system had to be made to run fast.

We increased the memory size, as mentioned above, but to get it to run fast, we had to break up the machine into three distinct components. Initially, the programmable controller was conceived of a processor board and a memory, and that the algorithmic and logical manipulation would be done in software. This approach was painfully slow, both on the generic “store bought computers, and other items.

We did, however, manage to substantially speed up the machine by making a third major component. This was called the logic solver. A logic solver board solved the dominant algorithms associated with solving ladder logic without the intervention and classical software approach of general-purpose processing. This meant that we ended up with three boards; memory, logic solver and processor. This single step allowed us to get the speed we needed in this application-specific computer to solve the perceptually simple problem of several cabinets full of relay wiring.

We had also assumed a modular approach to the programmable controller. In act, the name Modicon means MOdular DIgital CONtroller. The modularity, however, was soon abandoned because, as everyone knows, open architectures are no good. We instead had the marketing premise that a large footprint would contain within it the sets of problems we wished to solve. This meant that a buyer of programmable controllers could buy large numbers of the same units, and the software and hardware would be identical across a broad spectrum of applications in his factory. Service, maintenance and total life cost would be substantially lower than the perceived lower cost of an open architecture and modular expansion. Although at first, a supporter of the open architecture modular expansion, I soon became convinced by the marketplace, but this was folly.

We took one of our early units which was aimed at the machine tool industry because of my Bedford Associates consulting background, up to one of the early requesters of this equipment. This particular early requester was Byrant Chuck and Grinder in Springfield, Vermont. We took the machine up there, and it was heavy. This was the 084. The 084 was in the trunk of my old Pontiac, and since we needed help carrying it in, requested some of the people at Bryant to help us. We went out and opened the hood, and the first comment made by an outside viewer of the programmable controller said, “Thank God it,s not another pastel colored piece of sheet metal.

We can hypothesize from this particular comment that the ruggedness of the visual design was pleasing to him, and being human (as opposed to Martian), assumed that this same attitude went deep inside the construction of the machine in both the hardware and software. Indeed, this was the case, and the machine as a result, was built rugged, had no ON/OFF switch, had no fans, did not make any noise and had no wear out system.

To reminisce for a moment—in selecting the cores for the first memories, which in itself was a revolutionary step, we selected these cores and we applied Shannon,s Law. Shannon,s Law assumes that the signal-to-noise ratio is what makes signals good or bad. There are several ways to get the power from the signal-to-noise ratio; one is to code heavily, be triply redundant, and use lots and lots of error checking. There is another way, which is perfectly compatible with theory, which is to use lots of signal power in another domain. A nice switch, a car battery and a D-rated light bulb will work fairly well over a long time period.

Therefore, what we did was rather than going error checking, triply redundant and stuff, we got, and searched for and found high energy, large ferrite core memories that had lots on energy per bit. We still make the same assumption today. The energy per bit is extremely important—as Shannon,s theory said in his most famous 1948 paper, that the signal noise to power noise is what gives you transmission. the way we got signal power was to increase the energy per bit. This we felt was far more important than getting the energy per bit increased by means of doubly transmitting it. But I digress. Bryant Chuck and Grinder put it in, and liked the equipment so much that they never bought one. They in turn thought it was a good idea, and as many did at that time, tried to evolve their own.

One of our first major customers, however, was Landis in Landis, PA. We flew the equipment down in a private aircraft, and with apprehension because we were late (as usual), brought the equipment into Landis. In doing so, we tripped over the threshold. The equipment went KA-RASH onto the floor! Without much chagrin, we picked the equipment up, trundled it in. hooked it up, and low and behold, it worked quite well.

Now, Landis was pleased and surprised. They were pleased because it worked, but they were most pleasantly surprised—not because the equipment worked—but because the guys from Modicon fully expected the equipment to work in spite of it being dropped. In other words, the people from Modicon weren,t nervous about the fact that it fell on the floor over the threshold.

Landis subsequently took and wrapped welding coils of wire around the machine to induce electro-magnetic noise to see if they could make it fail. We had them there! We used to test the programmable controllers with a Teslar coil that struck a quarter inch to half-inch arch anywhere on the system, and the programmable controller still had to continue to run. There was significant strangeness with respect to the programmable controller. For example, it had no ON/OFF switch. It had no means to load software. It had no fans. It ran cool. It could survive bad, physical and thermal environments. It was not computer industry standard. There were many things that were most difficult in the acceptance of the programmable controller, and early acceptance was most difficult indeed.

Our sales in the first four years were abysmal. Early innovators such as Landers and General Motors were, of course, heroes to our eyes, but they would buy small numbers of units and then test them in the field before they committed themselves later on. We had one customer in the utilities business that took them approximately six to seven years to make a decision to but the first one.

We never really sold any programmable controllers into the intended market which was machine tool control such as lathes, grinders and stuff, but we did, as luck would have it, stumble across the transfer line market which was and still is the mainstay, long-term market for the application of programmable controllers. Discreet parts manufacturing in an automatic environment, i.e., mass production, continues to be, and probably will be for the future, the mainstay of the programmable controller industry.

Some of the more interesting stories center around the personalities and experiences as opposed to the programmable controller. Modicon,s third president (or fourth, if you count my two-week stint) was Don Kramer. When Don Kramer was chosen as president, we decided to go out and celebrate at the Lanum Club in Andover. At the time, we felt we should celebrate over both martinis and food. As we were leaving the shop for the Lanum Club, Don made the aside comment that “the place is dingy and needs a paint job. As we were leaving, I mentioned to Don that as president you have to change what you say, and not be very open—you have to be a little careful about what you say because employees, customers, and boards of directors tend to take what you say as truth. Rather than listen to the meaning, they listen to the literal statements, and one must be careful. We went over to the Lanum Club and had a nice glowing two hours of discussion, food, and drink. Coming back, as we entered the Modicon lobby, we noticed that there was scaffolding about and people were painting. We went over and asked Lou as to why these people are painting since, at the time, we don,t have any money. Who ordered this paint job? And Lou looked Don Kramer straight in the eye, and said, “Why you did, Mr. Kramer. Nuff said.

As has been mentioned many times, your author, that,s me—Dick Morley—is supposed to be the inventor of the programmable controller. This is at best, partially true. The thing that made the Modicon company and the programmable controller really take off was not the 084, but the 184. The 184 was done in design cycle by Michael Greenberg, one of the best engineers I have ever met. He, and Lee Rousseau, president and marketeer, came up with a specification and a design that revolutionized the automation business. they built the 184 over the objections of yours truly. I was a purist and felt that all those bells and whistles and stuff weren,t “pure, and somehow they were contaminating my “glorious design, Dead wrong again, Morley! they were specifically right on! the 184 was a walloping success, and it—not the 084, not the invention of the programmable controller—but a product designed to meet the needs of the marketplace and the customer, called the 184, took off and made Modicon and the programmable controller the company and industry it is today. My compliments to the two chefs—Lee Rousseau and Mike Greenberg.

The issue of quality in programmable controllers is a story that is normally taken for granted. The gentle reader must remember that our engineering people came from the computer industry where reliability in those days was a phantom—a phantom of design, a phantom of cost. People felt that reliability was something other people did, and that if we only could deliver faster computers, even if they didn,t work, everything would be fine.

When the programmable controller was designed, it was designed in to be reliable. We used lots of energy per information bit by utilizing D-rated components, large memory ferrite cores, relatively stable and large etchings on printed circuit boards, totally enclosed systems and conductive cooling. No fans were used, and outside air was not allowed to enter the system for fear of contamination and corrosion. Mentally, we had imagined the programmable controller being underneath a truck, in the open, and being driven around—driven around in Texas, driven around in Alaska. Under those circumstances, we anted it to survive. The other requirement was that it stood on a pole helping run an utility or a microwave station which was not climate controlled, and not serviced at all. Under those circumstances, would it work for the years that it was intended to be? Could it be walled in? Could it be bolted in a system that was expected to last 20 years?

The humorous side of this is though we did all those designs and very carefully tried to make this system as intrinsically reliable as we could, not by redundancy, but by building well. In other words, it was designed to be built, it was designed to be designed, and it was designed to be reliable. We, however, as engineers, didn,t understand the accountants and manufacturing. those two have their grail, shipments by the end of the month. As far as we could ascertain at the time, shipments were made independent of quality and independent of whether or not the system ran.

In the early days of the programmable controller and Modicon, even though I wasn,t a direct employee and an owner, I would give out my home phone number to many of our critical customers so that if they had a problem, they could call me directly. Several calls indicated that when we shipped near the end of the month, let’s say October 34th, that the equipment would not run; and secondly, when they opened the box and took the machine apart, cards were missing, bolts were on the bottom of the cabinetry, and some of the cards were not fully inserted. In other words, to make the end of the month was much more important than to deliver equipment that ran. to put it mildly, we were pissed! How do we as engineers maintain quality without continual surveillance which is most difficult for the design and entrepreneurial mind set. What we did was specify and design “blue boxes. These were cabinetries that the system had to operate in and run continuously for a minimum of 24 hours, under load, and under varying conditions. The box was built out of plywood, but its primary intention was to heat cycle the programmable controller under various input/output loads. We also ran, as a specification, that a Tesla coil was to be used on the programmable controller, and that vibration and thumping with a hammer (rubber) would be part of the specification.

This may seem unscientific to many of you, but let us assume that you try to get your equipment to run while somebody purposely tries to destroy it with a rubber hammer or spark coil that he can put anywhere on the system. Remember, your intention is to make the processor stop. That combination significantly depressed those monthly shipments during the first period. As a result of that, however, the message got through. Not only did we build ovens and tests, and pay attention to heat and spark and RF emissions, we would run the system continuously even in the shipping crate to get the maximum number of pre-custom hours we could. It was important to us that we found the mistakes and not the customer and his secondary customer.

The language itself, ladder lister, bears some discussion. This particular language was not the invention of Modicon. We hypothesize that the language is very old, and originated in Germany to describe relay circuitry. If one looks at ladder lister, it has been our technical community for so long, we somehow think those little symboligies actually look like relays. In fact, it,s a mnemonic form of rule-based language, very modern and very high level, but designed in a Darwinian fashion over a period of many decades.

The ladder logic construct, “If… Then… is a very powerful construct used today in expert systems and other rule-based languages. The symbology, allowing normally open and normally closed situations as well as parallel and serial representation, was used for many decades before the invention of the programmable controller. I have worked on machines where the number of C-size and D-size prints were hung in special racks, and would be up to three feet thick worth of documentation on those drawing sets.

The name ladder comes from the fact that on the right-hand of the drawing is one power rail and the left-hand side is the other power rail; and in between in a horizontal fashion, is the statement or sequential connection of logical elements which we call relays or relay logic. The initial 084 had only logic in its functionality, and as a result, was marginal. In other words, all we did was replace relays rather than enhance the functionality by a factor of ten which is the entrepreneurial rule. Immediately, of course, based on customer response and our own frustrations, we put thing in the ladder listing language such as addition, multiplication, subtraction, and other functionalities that went far beyond relay capability and entered the realm of mathematics and set theory. This was still not sufficient, however, and we needed some way to make a “call to a “subroutine using ladder lister symbology and representation.

A software engineer, Chuck Schelberg, and myself were in the conference room one day trying to ascertain how we could make a generic call to functionalities that far exceeded the relay symbology and representation, and came up with the “DX function. This function was a block function that would be an element on the ladder logic representation that could perform many functionalities including arrays, motor drive functions, servo functions, extended mathematical functions, PID loops, ad nauseam. We felt there would be an occasional representation and use of these functionalities, and that not much had to be done to the programmable controller other than to modify the software. Wrong again!

The first customer that took delivery of a programmable controller utilizing the DX function, had a capability to be predictable and operate in real time. The RUN light went out, and the time to execute a scan or complete transformation of the ladder logic went far beyond the time allowable. Every single line had a DX function on it. Again we learned that when you enhance functionality, people use it all. I have never designed a computer that had too much memory. I,ve only designed computers that have too little memory. The same thing applies to any other functionality. Conventional wisdom seems to think that price/performance depends on only one thing—price—when, in fact, my experience has been that the customer cares little about price.

This price/performance tirade being over, one of the lessons we learned is that the customer wants functionality over the entire life cycle cost installation of the job. the customer also wants ease of installation, to have some fun, and to be proud of the work he does. After he,s finished, he never wants to come back.. The equipment should work as installed and as based. At one time, the programmable controller meantime before failure in the field was 50,000 hours. This is far in excess of almost any other type of electronic or control equipment.

The concept of languages and high-level languages is important. The programmable controller, as it evolved, began to request more and more power, and more and more memory. The memories continually went up as well as power. It is estimated that at one time, in the mid-1970s, that the programmable controller had the equivalent of two MIPS processor and 128 kilobytes of memory, which at that time was a significantly powered minicomputer capability. Why? High-level languages require power to run them. If we take the equivalent of the ladder lister statement “If… Then…, the high-level language as represented here, requires a substantial amount of interpretive compiler, if you will, generation of underlying code. In other words, this statement spawns significant underlying code that must be run quickly, reliably, and contain within it, all aspects of resource allocation and operations resource. The higher level the language, the more powerful the processor apparently has to be in order to run the language. Ladder lister is a high-level rule-based language which, until now, we haven,t talked much about in these terms. Our customers treated the programmable controller as a box of relays, and well they should. Language theory is neither necessary not desirable for most of the customers to know. The customers, instead, understand their problem, and are indeed much smarter than the design engineers because the dimensions of their problem far exceed the relatively simple problem of designing a computer software system and language. Ladder lister requires high performance which is one of the reasons it has difficulty running on the personal computer even of today

INTRODUCTION TO SCADA

SCADA is the abbreviation for Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition. It generally refers to an industrial control system: a computer system monitoring and controlling a process. The process can be industrial, infrastructure or facility based as described below:

            Industrial processes include those of manufacturing, production, power generation, fabrication, and refining, and may run in continuous, batch, repetitive, or discrete modes.

            Infrastructure processes may be public or private, and include water treatment and distribution, wastewater collection and treatment,  oil and gas pipelines, electrical power transmission and distribution, and large communication systems.

            Facility processes occur both in public facilities and private ones, including buildings, airports, ships, and space stations. They monitor and control HVAC, access, and energy consumption.

A SCADA System usually consists of the following subsystems:

            A Human-Machine Interface or HMI is the apparatus which presents process data to a human operator, and through which the human operator monitors and controls the process.

            A supervisory (computer) system, gathering (acquiring) data on the process and sending commands (control) to the process

            Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) connecting to sensors in the process, converting sensor signals to digital data and sending digital data to the supervisory system.

            Communication infrastructure connecting the supervisory system to the Remote Terminals Units

There is, in several industries, considerable confusion over the differences between SCADA systems and Distributed control systems (DCS). Generally speaking, a SCADA system usually refers to a system that coordinates, but does not control processes in real time. The discussion on real-time control is muddied somewhat by newer telecommunications technology, enabling reliable, low latency, high speed communications over wide areas. Most differences between SCADA and Distributed control system DCS are culturally determined and can usually be ignored. As communication infrastructures with higher capacity become available, the difference between SCADA and DCS will fade.

 Systems concepts

The term SCADA usually refers to centralized systems which monitor and control entire sites, or complexes of systems spread out over large areas (anything between an industrial plant and a country). Most control actions are performed automatically by remote terminals units (“RTUs”) or by programmable logic controllers (“PLCs”). Host control functions are usually restricted to basic overriding or supervisory level intervention. For example, a PLC may control the flow of cooling water through part of an industrial process, but the SCADA system may allow operators to change the set points for the flow, and enable alarm conditions, such as loss of flow and high temperature, to be displayed and recorded. The feedback control loop passes through the RTU or PLC, while the SCADA system monitors the overall performance of the loop.

Data acquistion begins at the RTU or PLC level and includes meter readings and equipment status reports that are communicated to SCADA as required. Data is then compiled and formatted in such a way that a control room operator using the HMI can make supervisory decisions to adjust or override normal RTU (PLC) controls. Data may also be fed to a Historian, often built on a commodity Database Management System, to allow trending and other analytical auditing.

SCADA systems typically implement a distributed database, commonly referred to as a tag database, which contains data elements called tags or points. A point represents a single input or output value monitored or controlled by the system. Points can be either “hard” or “soft”. A hard point represents an actual input or output within the system, while a soft point results from logic and math operations applied to other points. (Most implementations conceptually remove the distinction by making every property a “soft” point expression, which may, in the simplest case, equal a single hard point.) Points are normally stored as value-timestamp pairs: a value, and the timestamp when it was recorded or calculated. A series of value-timestamp pairs gives the history of that point. It’s also common to store additional metadata with tags, such as the path to a field device or PLC register, design time comments, and alarm information.

Human Machine Interface

A Human-Machine Interface or HMI is the apparatus which presents process data to a human operator, and through which the human operator controls the process.

An HMI is usually linked to the SCADA system’s databases and software programs, to provide trending, diagnostic data, and management information such as scheduled maintenance procedures, logistic information, detailed schematics for a particular sensor or machine, and expert-system troubleshooting guides.

The HMI system usually presents the information to the operating personnel graphically, in the form of a mimic diagram. This means that the operator can see a schematic representation of the plant being controlled. For example, a picture of a pump connected to a pipe can show the operator that the pump is running and how much fluid it is pumping through the pipe at the moment. The operator can then switch the pump off. The HMI software will show the flow rate of the fluid in the pipe decrease in real time. Mimic diagrams may consist of line graphics and schematic symbols to represent process elements, or may consist of digital photographs of the process equipment overlain with animated symbols.

The HMI package for the SCADA system typically includes a drawing program that the operators or system maintenance personnel use to change the way these points are represented in the interface. These representations can be as simple as an on-screen traffic light, which represents the state of an actual traffic light in the field, or as complex as a multi-projector display representing the position of all of the elevators in a skyscraper or all of the trains on a railway.

An important part of most SCADA implementations are alarms. An alarm is a digital status point that has either the value NORMAL or ALARM. Alarms can be created in such a way that when their requirements are met, they are activated. An example of an alarm is the “fuel tank empty” light in a car. The SCADA operator’s attention is drawn to the part of the system requiring attention by the alarm. Emails and text messages are often sent along with an alarm activation alerting managers along with the SCADA operator.

Hardware solutions

SCADA solutions often have Distributed Control System (DCS) components. Use of “smart” RTUs or PLCs, which are capable of autonomously executing simple logic processes without involving the master computer, is increasing. A functional block programming language, IEC 61131-3, is frequently used to create programs which run on these RTUs and PLCs. Unlike a procedural language such as the C programming language or FORTRAN, IEC 61131-3 has minimal training requirements by virtue of resembling historic physical control arrays. This allows SCADA system engineers to perform both the design and implementation of a program to be executed on an RTU or PLC. Since about 1998, virtually all major PLC manufacturers have offered integrated HMI/SCADA systems, many of them using open and non-proprietary communications protocols. Numerous specialized third-party HMI/SCADA packages, offering built-in compatibility with most major PLCs, have also entered the market, allowing mechanical engineers, electrical engineers and technicians to configure HMIs themselves, without the need for a custom-made program written by a software developer.

Remote Terminal Unit (RTU)

The RTU connects to physical equipment. Typically, an RTU converts the electrical signals from the equipment to digital values such as the open/closed status from a switch or a valve, or measurements such as pressure, flow, voltage or current. By converting digital setpoints to electrical signals and sending these electrical signals out to equipment the RTU can control equipment, such as opening or closing a switch or a valve, or setting the speed of a pump.

Quality SCADA RTUs have these characteristics:

            Data Networking capability

            Data Reliability

            Data Security.

Supervisory Station

The term “Supervisory Station” refers to the servers and software responsible for communicating with the field equipment (RTUs, PLCs, etc), and then to the HMI software running on workstations in the control room, or elsewhere. In smaller SCADA systems, the master station may be composed of a single PC. In larger SCADA systems, the master station may include multiple servers, distributed software applications, and disaster recovery sites. To increase the integrity of the system the multiple servers will often be configured in a dual-redundant or hot-standby formation providing continuous control and monitoring in the event of a server failure.

Initially, more “open” platforms such as Linux were not as widely used due to the highly dynamic development environment and because a SCADA customer that was able to afford the field hardware and devices to be controlled could usually also purchase UNIX or OpenVMS licenses. Today, all major operating systems are used for both master station servers and HMI workstations.

 Operational philosophy

For some installations, the costs that would result from the control system failing is extremely high. Possibly even lives could be lost. Hardware for some SCADA systems is ruggedized to withstand temperature, vibration, and voltage extremes, but in most critical installations reliability is enhanced by having redundant hardware and communications channels, up to the point of having multiple fully equipped control centres. A failing part can be quickly identified and its functionality automatically taken over by backup hardware. A failed part can often be replaced without interrupting the process. The reliability of such systems can be calculated statistically and is stated as the mean time to failure, which is a variant of mean time between failures. The calculated mean time to failure of such high reliability systems can be on the order of centuries.

 Communication infrastructure and methods

SCADA systems have traditionally used combinations of radio and direct serial or modem connections to meet communication requirements, although Ethernet and IP over SONET / SDH is also frequently used at large sites such as railways and power stations. The remote management or monitoring function of a SCADA system is often referred to as telemetry.

This has also come under threat with some customers wanting SCADA data to travel over their pre-established corporate networks or to share the network with other applications. The legacy of the early low-bandwidth protocols remains, though. SCADA protocols are designed to be very compact and many are designed to send information to the master station only when the master station polls the RTU. Typical legacy SCADA protocols include Modbus RTU, RP-570, Profibus and Conitel. These communication protocols are all SCADA-vendor specific but are widely adopted and used. Standard protocols are IEC 60870-5-101 or 104, IEC 61850 and DNP3. These communication protocols are standardized and recognized by all major SCADA vendors. Many of these protocols now contain extensions to operate over TCP/IP. It is good security engineering practice to avoid connecting SCADA systems to the Internet so the attack surface is reduced.

RTUs and other automatic controller devices were being developed before the advent of industry wide standards for interoperability. The result is that developers and their management created a multitude of control protocols. Among the larger vendors, there was also the incentive to create their own protocol to “lock in” their customer base. A list of automation protocols is being compiled here.

Recently, OLE for Process Control (OPC) has become a widely accepted solution for intercommunicating different hardware and software, allowing communication even between devices originally not intended to be part of an industrial network.

 Trends in SCADA

There is a trend for PLC and HMI/SCADA software to be more “mix-and-match”. In the mid 1990s, the typical DAQ I/O manufacturer supplied equipment that communicated using proprietary protocols over a suitable-distance carrier like RS-485. End users who invested in a particular vendor’s hardware solution often found themselves restricted to a limited choice of equipment when requirements changed (e.g. system expansions or performance improvement). To mitigate such problems, open communication protocols such as IEC870-5-101/104 and DNP 3.0 (serial and over IP) became increasingly popular among SCADA equipment manufacturers and solution providers alike. Open architecture SCADA systems enabled users to mix-and-match products from different vendors to develop solutions that were better than those that could be achieved when restricted to a single vendor’s product offering.

Towards the late 1990s, the shift towards open communications continued with individual I/O manufacturers as well, who adopted open message structures such as Modbus RTU and Modbus ASCII (originally both developed by Modicon) over RS-485. By 2000, most I/O makers offered completely open interfacing such as Modbus TCP over Ethernet and IP.

SCADA systems are coming in line with standard networking technologies. Ethernet and TCP/IP based protocols are replacing the older proprietary standards. Although certain characteristics of frame-based network communication technology (determinism, synchronization, protocol selection, environment suitability) have restricted the adoption of Ethernet in a few specialized applications, the vast majority of markets have accepted Ethernet networks for HMI/SCADA.

“Next generation” protocols such as OPC-UA, Wonderware’s SuiteLink, GE Fanuc’s Proficy and Rockwell Automation’s FactoryTalk, take advantage of XML, web services and other modern web technologies, making them more easily IT supportable.

With the emergence of software as a service in the broader software industry, a few vendors have begun offering application specific SCADA systems hosted on remote platforms over the Internet, for example, PumpView by MultiTrode. This removes the need to install and commission systems at the end-user’s facility and takes advantage of security features already available in Internet technology, VPNs and SSL. Some concerns include security, Internet connection reliability, and latency.

SCADA systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous. Thin clients, web portals, and web based products are gaining popularity with most major vendors. The increased convenience of end users viewing their processes remotely introduces security considerations.

 Security issues

The move from proprietary technologies to more standardized and open solutions together with the increased number of connections between SCADA systems and office networks and the Internet has made them more vulnerable to attacks. Consequently, the security of SCADA-based systems has come into question as they are increasingly seen as extremely vulnerable to cyberwarfare/cyberterrorism attacks.

In particular, security researchers are concerned about:

            the lack of concern about security and authentication in the design, deployment and operation of existing SCADA networks

            the mistaken belief that SCADA systems have the benefit of security through obscurity through the use of specialized protocols and proprietary interfaces

            the mistaken belief that SCADA networks are secure because they are purportedly physically secured

            the mistaken belief that SCADA networks are secure because they are supposedly disconnected from the Internet

Because of the mission-critical nature of a large number of SCADA systems, such attacks could, in a worst case scenario, cause massive financial losses through loss of data or actual physical destruction, misuse or theft, even loss of life, either directly or indirectly. Whether such concerns will cause a move away from the use of existing SCADA systems for mission-critical applications towards more secure architectures and configurations remains to be seen, given that at least some influential people in corporate and governmental circles believe that the benefits and lower initial costs of SCADA based systems still outweigh potential costs and risks] Recently, multiple security vendors, such as Byres Security, Inc., Industrial Defender Inc., Check Point and Innominate, and N-Dimension Solutions have begun to address these risks by developing lines of specialized industrial firewall and VPN solutions for TCP/IP-based SCADA networks. The problem according to Eric Byres, CEO of Byres Security, is that “while many infrastructure organizations are doing good work, others are falling behind. When you have this diversity of effort, you are only as effective as your weakest link.

Also, the ISA Security Compliance Institute (ISCI) is emerging to formalize SCADA security testing starting as soon as 2009. ISCI is conceptually similar to private testing and certification that has been performed by vendors since 2007, such as the Achilles certification program from Wurldtech Security Technologies, Inc. and MUSIC certification from Mu Security,  Inc. Eventually, standards being defined by ISA SP99 WG4 will supersede these initial industry consortia efforts, but probably not before 2011.

N.Sankari
http://www.articlesbase.com/electronics-articles/introduction-to-plc-and-scada-679975.html

A fake book can be a source of many inspiring piano exercises. It contains a lot of melodies written in a concise format that includes only the melody and chord names. Let us take a look at how you can use these melodies to become a better pianist!

First of all we will take a look at how melodies are notated in a fake book. Usually you will find the melody of a song in sheet music notation together with chord suggestions above the notes. This economical way of notating makes it possible to fill a fake book with a lot of melodies.

The advantage of this way of notating melodies is that you can have a fake book as a reference book with a lot of melodies at your disposal.

The drawback is that you do not have a written out arrangement of the song for piano. You have to figure out how to play the song by yourself. Actually this can be an advantage that will help you develop as a pianist letting you interpret the song’s performance as you feel is appropriate.

One little melody in a fake book can give you many exercises in different areas of your piano playing and help you in your development as a musician. Here are a few examples:

1. Learn to play chords together with a melody. For example, play chords with your left hand and melody with your right hand, play bass notes with your left hand and combine melody and chord notes with your right hand, play various combinations of bass notes, chord notes and melody notes with both hands.

2. Learn to find the right chords to use when playing a melody. In a fake book you will find chord suggestions that can easily be supplemented with more chords making the voicings and chord progressions more exciting.

3. Learn to improvise by using the melody as a starting point. This is often called melodic improvisation. You can also use the chords or the fitting scales as a foundation for your improvisation. This is called chordal improvisation and scale improvisation.

4. Learn to play the songs in the piano fake book in different keys thus developing your ability to play by ear and understand the piano keyboard by transposing songs you have learned.

Actually you can use a song in a fake book as the basis for your development as a pianist if your goal is to be a good piano player in the area of improvised piano music.

Let us take an example from a fake book. You have a song of your choice in front of you with melody, chord suggestions and nothing more. What can you do to use this song as a starting point for a piano practice session?

We suppose that the song starts with the chord C-major and then in the next bar you will find the chord F-major. Here are some suggestions on what to practice drawn from these two bars of music.

1. Work on chord voicings. Practice playing C-major triads with your left hand in the three inversions. That means that you play the chord C-major with the three notes involved, C, E and G, in three combinations, that is, CEG, EGC or GCE. Do the same with the chord F-major. Practice also to move from C to F in various combinations.

2. Work on playing the melody in different ways. Single right hand notes, playing right hand octaves, playing the melody with your left hand and chords with your right hand and more.

3. Work on adding more chords. For example, taking the C-chord to F could go via Gm7 and C7 thus creating the following chord sequence, C, Gm7, C7, F. Much can be done to spice the song by adding more chords to the ones in the fake book.

4. Add notes to the chords you use in your song. A C-major chord can easily be substituted with a Cmaj7 chord or a Cmaj9 and you can find more interesting chords if you focus on one chord at a time. Of course you can work on playing these new chords in different combinations and inversions too.

5. Use the song as a foundation for improvisation. Learn a melody passage by heart. Play this passage over and over again with small changes in the melody thus practicing melodic improvisation. Or use the chords. The chord C-major suggests two major scales to use when improvising. You can use a C-major scale or a C-major pentatonic scale for example.

To sum up you can use one single song in a fake book as the basis for piano exercises in many areas of your development as a pianist and at the same time you build up a repertoire with popular melodies for your own benefit and the enjoyment of other people.

Peter Edvinsson
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/piano-lesson-how-to-play-from-a-fake-book-314849.html

Everyone loves music, and all music lovers’ love to listen the melodious tunes of Piano again and again. Many of them also want to learn how to play Piano skillfully. Playing Piano is always a fun filled action for all music lovers. However, not everybody gets all the facilities for learning Piano. There are several constraints that prevent people from learning Piano. Sometimes it is lack of proper piano classes and instructors and sometimes due to lack of time.

Well, it may be surprising to know for all those people who are not able to learn playing Piano due to above said constraints that now they can learn this musical art of playing Piano with help of the Internet. Yes, you have been using Internet for all your informational, entertainment and other important functions, not it will help you in being a master in playing Piano.

Now, worries of finding a good piano instructor and attending regular Piano lessons are matter of past. You can learn the art of playing Piano at your own conditions on your preferred schedules. You will have full control over the pace of learning and practicing various Piano lessons.

Nowadays, some enthusiastic Piano players or agencies working for Piano music have introduced some fully featured online Piano learning websites. These websites are not less helpful in learning Piano than regular live classroom Piano lessons by expert Piano instructors. People can come and register on these websites in order to learn the art of playing Piano.

Online Piano lessons available on these websites are usually based on extensive research. Well organized Piano lessons minimize the efforts taken in learning Piano. Aspiring Piano players can find music sheets of different Piano lessons guiding them in learning process. Prior to that website also instructs people in understanding Piano music sheets. With help of the songs sheet available on website people can start learning Piano without any prior knowledge of music.

This innovative kind of Piano learning provides you ease of scheduling your own classes. You can learn playing Piano during your leisure time. You can even practice more and more with online music sheets. If you want to increase your pace of learning you can do so. The most important advantage is that, you don’t need to wait to play your favorite tunes on Piano. Just find the music sheet for your favorite song and start playing that song on your Piano. You can also delight your family members, parents or partners by playing their favorite tunes.

Dror Kartash
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/learning-piano-was-never-so-easier-943707.html

You can start learning to play the piano right now, if you have an internet connection. Expensive pianos and ongoing piano lessons are no longer the norm. Anybody that has an interest in learning to play the piano can make a start thanks to the World Wide Web.

If you want to get some inspiration, then watch a good pianist at work or keyboard player, there are plenty of videos available on youtube to inspire you. When a pianist plays the piano well, the listener can be drawn in to a very different world created by the expressiveness of the performer. Learning skills in general can be improved when learning to play the piano and children can benefit from this at school. Piano lessons can also help to have a better understanding of science and mathematics.

<br>It doesn’t have to be expensive</b>

Piano lessons are now available to the masses not least because of the technological advancements of electric pianos and keyboards. Not too many years ago, if you wanted to learn how to play the piano your only option would be to buy an expensive piano. It’s easy to learn to play the piano online these days, and you can buy a used keyboard for next to nothing. You don’t have to spend a fortune when you are just starting to learn the piano or keyboard. An expensive piano is not going to make a lot of difference to a beginner.

<b>Improve your hand eye coordination</b>

When you read sheet music, eye to hand coordination comes in to play and this process will improve dramatically the more you practice. You may be surprised at how fast this improvement will be.

<b>Choose your own practice time</b>

When you take piano lessons with a teacher, you will normally attend once a week at the same time on the same day. If you learn to play the piano using a piano software course then you can choose your day and time of day when you have lessons. You can learn in the morning, afternoon or evening. You don’t have to wait for a particular day to have your piano lesson. Everybody has busy and quiet times so do more when you’re quite and take a break when you are busy. So if you don’t want to be tied to a teacher, online piano lessons is the way to go.

It’s already been mentioned that to learn to play the piano properly you need a piano and piano lessons. There is also a third crucial requirement when learning to play the piano and that is you. Even though the process is considerably easier than it was you still have to practice. A piano, piano lessons and practice equals a great piano player.

Mike Shaw
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/beginners-can-learn-to-play-the-piano-online-707474.html

In the marketing world, radio has earned the reputation of being the odd step-cousin. You know the one. No one knows quite what to do with him. Especially at family gatherings when everyone tries hard to avoid sitting with him. (After all, who knows WHAT he’ll start talking about.)

Much of that reputation comes from radio being tough to track. On one hand, radio does work. Businesses do notice an increase in sales when they add radio to the mix. However, radio doesn’t test well. In surveys and other tracking methods, radio tends to be the one with the dismal scores.

A good friend of mine, who’s also a marketing consultant but before that she sold radio for many years, has a theory about that. She says radio works on a subconscious or unconscious level. People remember the ad, but not that they heard it on the radio. So, they tend to credit a different medium for the ad, like the yellow pages. Yellow pages gets a boost while radio drops a few points.

Regardless, radio should not be ignored because it does work. And many marketing consultants will probably tell you radio is an excellent medium to reach a local market.

However, I feel there are possibilities beyond merely reaching local customers.

Internet radio shows are starting to take off in a big way. That means advertising and sponsorship opportunities are also taking off. In addition, “offline” methods have been shown to be pretty effective at driving traffic online. If increasing Web traffic is your goal, using traditional media outlets to increase traffic should be a part of your mix.

If people already know you (which they might in your local market) they’re more likely to be loyal. And they’re more likely to send other customers to your site. Depending on the costs of radio in your community, radio may be a very affordable way to get a good viral campaign going. (A viral campaign is when your customers send promotional items about your business such as e-mails, articles, Web site urls, etc. to their friends and family members.)

Below are some other positive reasons to use radio:

* Affordable — when you compare spot to spot, radio tends to be one of the least expensive media out there. However, one spot ain’t going to do it. To reach your target market, you need to purchase several spots. That’s why radio can also turn into one of the more expensive media. However, there are ways to keep your costs in line yet still reap the benefits of radio — for instance, buying less spots but running them all in one or two weeks, so your customers are more likely to hear your message.

* Psychological, if you voice the commercials yourself — hearing your voice makes people feel like they “know” you. (Hence the popularity of audio on Web sites. In fact, marketing gurus claim just by adding audio to a site substantially increases how many people buy.)

People tend to buy from people and businesses they know and trust. Hearing your voice helps them feel as if they know you. These psychological aspects may be another reason to consider running a few radio ads in your local market even if you have an Internet business.

* Speed — you can get your spot up and running in no time.

* Loyalty — listeners choose stations based on the music or shows they like and they tend to be quite loyal to that station. If you know what your customers enjoy listening to, it’s an excellent way to reach them. (I include both music and talk shows in this.)

* Good support medium — radio works really well when paired with other marketing mediums (like print, direct mail or television).

But for every positive, there’s a negative. In the spirit of being objective, here are a few for radio:

* Background medium — radio tends to be on in the background, which means it tends to be ignored. Generally, your target market needs to be exposed to your ad more times than other marketing media before they’ll act upon your message.

* Little staying power — the lack of visuals again keeps radio from “sticking” with people. At least, that’s what some of the marketing gurus say. But, here again my marketing consultant friend differs. She thinks it’s that subconscious thing again.

And if you can write a spot that creates pictures in your customers’ heads, you can actually work this to your advantage. In fact, according to my friend, if the picture is defined enough, not only will people remember it better, but they’ll also think it was a print ad instead of a radio ad. (More on the art of creating pictures using words in later issues.)

* Hard to track – it’s impossible to know exactly how many people are tuning in at any given time.

A final note: Because radio is subconscious, keep that in mind when crafting your ad.

Repeat your business name a lot and any other branding info, so it gets into your customers’ heads. Don’t put in phone numbers. Instead, purchase a memorable Web site domain name and repeat that. And remember to create “pictures” whenever possible.

How can you use radio in your business?

Would radio work for your business? Let’s find out.

Take out a sheet of paper and a fun pen. (I’m partial to gel pens.) Draw a line down the center.

On one side, put the header: Why advertising on radio is a good idea for my business. On the other side, put the header: Why advertising is a bad idea for my business.

Now pick a side and start writing down reasons.

You might be more comfortable starting with the side that’s easiest for you. Then when you work on the other side, you can simply turn the reasons around.

For instance, let’s say you started with the bad idea. One of your reasons was: My product is completely visual. You could turn it around by saying “Because my product is so visual, I’ll have to work harder to create pictures in my customers’ minds. And because the customers create their own pictures, they’re more likely to remember them.”

Or what if you started with a good idea, and one of the reasons was: “Because my business is local.” You could turn it around and say “Because radio is holding me back — I’m only reaching this local market.” (Ah, now I’m even going against what I said earlier. Maybe with this statement you could look for ways to get your customers to spread the word outside the area about your business.)

As you saw by my last example, you’ll be amazed at what comes out when you do this exercise. Even if you don’t change your views on radio advertising, you may come up with new and powerful insights to your business.

Michele PW
http://www.articlesbase.com/small-business-articles/why-radio-advertising-could-be-the-best-thing-you-ever-did-for-your-business-734569.html