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Posted on 11/11/2011 6:56:17 AM PST by Liberty1970
National Instruments to Make Instrumentation for E-Cat Plants
November 11, 2011
PESWiki is reporting that Andrea Rossi’s Leonardo Corporation has signed an agreement with National Instruments of Austin, Texas for NI to provide all the instrumentation for the E-Cat plants that Leonardo Corp will be manufacturing. Sterling D. Allan of PESN reports that he learned of the agreement during a conference call with Rossi, and that NI’s Director of Physics, Stefano Concezzi confirmed to him (Allan) that Rossi was a customer.
National Intstruments is a leading provider of advanced hardware and software that is used in industrial and scientific applications around the world, and should be able to provide Leonardo Corporation with instrumentation of much higher quality and far more advanced capabilities than Rossi has been using so far with the E-Cat devices he has built. During recent testing Rossi himself has been the manual controller during the self-sustaining periods of all the demonstrations of the E-Cat done to date, but he has said that in mass produced E-Cats, the control of the E-Cat reactors would need to be done automatically.
It would seem that NI would be the kind of company who would have the skills and experience to design the automated control systems that will be needed to ensure E-Cats run stably and safety.
The quality of NI instrumentation should also make it much easier to get accurate measurements of such things as water flow rates, temperature levels and steam quality that have been difficult to hard to ascertain from the public demonstrations that have been carried out to date. Many analysts have been dissatisfied with the measurement instruments that Rossi has been using, and the methodology that has been employed in the testing.
With hardware, software and expert advice from National Instruments, there could be rapid improvements of the E-Cats coming soon.
UPDATE: Not only is there no denial about this story from National Instruments, at the foot of the PESWiki piece is this note from Sterling Allan:
On November 10, 2011 4:39 PM [MST], regarding the above story, I received the following from Trisha McDonell | Corporate PR Manager | National Instruments.
Subject: Re: final Re: contact info for E-Cat / NI contract
Thank you Sterling for allowing us to review. We approve the text, especially the National Instruments portion of the story that includes Stefano’s quote and information.
Best regards
Trisha
Daniele Passerini, of the 22Passi Blog says the National Instruments relationship had been know to him for some time. He writes:
I promised not to disclose confidential information, and I keep my word, now I pesni scoop delivered me from the bond of secrecy about this news. I know of many other “secrets”, but wait patiently, one after another fall.
Quite a strange press release. So NI has “agreed” to sell COTS, catalog items to a company.
In the past, I can attest to the fact that they sold me two PXI chassis, an embedded processor, and some modules for same, plus fiber optic links.
So?
Anyway, whomever designs these software controls is going to need to have pretty intimate knowledge of the operational parameters of the E-cat. They may not know the catalyst, but via testing and from Rossi himself they will need to know the precise parameters for proper operation. Since Rossi is not a software engineer himself and I've never heard him discuss this, some team at NI or elsewhere will be learning an awful lot about the fine details of running an E-cat.
Ehya... Yur gonna need some 50 weight ball bearing and a slidem auger with grease to get the spilcuf to rotate on the durger wheel.
No thanks necessary.
It’ll be interesting to see what commercial or industrial uses arises from e-cat technology.
Yeah, like where to put the funnel when you’re pouring the hydrogen peroxide into the secret chamber before doing a customer demo...
Either E Cat is a scam or they have very prudent inventors who understand what a successful cold fusion reactor will mean and how many special interests would try to sabotage it technically, legally and/or covertly. If you were Russia who rely on oil exports for cash/power, what would Putin do? If you were OPEC who rely on oil exports for cash and power, what would the sheiks do? If you are oil execs anticipating high oil prices/profits as the US EPA strangles exploration and etc and E Cat can obsolete your products, what will they do? Powerful people will kill for money.
If E Cat is legit, we are living in a historical event like the Edison light bulb and Westinghouse electrification of society. Major game changer for the world.
I would imagine there is more than just off-the-shelf hardware involved here. As per my post above the E-cat will require some dedicated software. Although it doesn’t say it in the story, I wouldn’t be surprised if NI was handling the software as part of the overall instrumentation.
*PING*
An automated control system requires a complete and thorough understanding in theory and in application of what you are needing to control.
Good luck with that.
Robustness comes from operating sides of a system, or operating voltage or heat. That means better pipes, better actuating valve systems, flow controls with durability, better heat exchangers, good freq. drives, and robust construction methods done by the best machinists and welders.
So far all we see is black tape and extension cords.
I’ve had my fair share of experience with NI Hardware, and I am not impressed at all. There are several manufacturers that sell much better instrumentation. NI has some good things, but touting the quality of their products holistically is a bit of a stretch for me.
Let me fix it for you:
“Either^H^H^H^H^H^HE Cat is a scam...”
No game changer here—just another one of Rossi’s scams.
Big whoop, they’re buying NI hardware. I’ve bought probably half a million dollars worth of it over the past ten years. It will be a step up from the project boxes they’ve been using. That said, It does only what you tell it to do. It doesn’t lend any expertise in measurement or control. It’s a measurement and control framework. The functionality is built by the programmer.
I’m a longtime customer of NI. I would never have them prepare software for me. I’ve been to big complex physics experiments (accelerators and similar)that bought NI gear, and in all cases they wrote their own code, I don’t think NI even offers that service.
The press release does not imply that, it just says that they are buying stuff from NI, and NI confirmed that.
There are plenty of people who code .vi’s in LabView, and many little consulting companies who will do it for you if you don’t know how or don’t have the time.
I also agree with the comment someone else made about not relying too much on just software control. I agree hardware should be designed so failure is inherently contained. But what I had in mind was that over the years you will have hardware failures eventually, and you want the software to respond appropriately (rather than making the problem worse) in safely shutting the system down. Plus no blue-screening in general.
Has anyone seen the press release on the NI web site, or from any other objective source?
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