♦  B&R is offering €17,500 in prizes (first prize €10,000) in a pan-European competition to encourage university students to come up with innovative applications ideas for, or research projects based on, Ethernet Powerlink. As an option, they can use the free open-source openPowerlink implementation. The winners will be announced in mid-2009.
 
♦  The ISA 100 working group looking at wireless standards has voted to create a factory automation working group to develop and maintain requirements and recommended practices for this sector. The group will produce a standard called ISA 100.16, which is due to be released in July 2009.

♦  The LonWorks control networking technology has been approved by the IEC and ISO as a global standard (ISO/IEC 14908, Parts 1–4). The technology, originally developed by the Echelon Corporation in 1990, is now used in more than 100 milllion installed devices. Although it was designed to be used in any type of control application, most of the applications have been in building controls.