Dr. Phil, Ozzy Osbourne, and the FAA

Friends & Subscribers:

Before I talk about something that's 
actually important, I gotta get just one 
thing off my chest.

It's about Dr. Phil, the ''straight-talkin' guy'' on Oprah.

First, I will agree that Dr. Phil has a lot of good 
things to say.  For example I completely agree 
that if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.  
He is definitely right about that.  

But friends, I'm sorry, but no matter what Dr. Phil 
says, the Ozzy Osbourne family is NOT one of the 
most loving,  committed, and mutually supportive 
families I've ever seen.

For example, take our own B&B family. Like many
families, we're a bit scattered. A bunch of us here 
in the midwestern US, more in Ireland and even 
Phil Chapman, our roving technical sales man in 
the UK.  More than 100 people all together. We have
Dysfunctional St. Patricks days, Dysfunctional 
Christmases, and Dysfunctional 2-Week Vacations.  
We've got every disorder in the book.  Heck, it would 
take a round-the-clock team of psychologists and 
sensitivity trainers years to fix this place.

But let me tell ya, WE are loving, committed, and 
mutually supportive at B&B.  More than the Osbournes.  
For example, there's the time when the US Federal 
Aviation Administration needed a custom data router.  
Way back when, the Feds developed a network 
scheme for tracking airplanes as they fly across 
the country.  It's a unique concoction of  RS-232, 
RS-485, and FAA Voodoo.  And now they needed
more than 2000 custom routers to make the next set 
of air traffic control upgrades.

They talked to Dennis Flanagan, one of our technical 
sales reps. Sure, Dennis is dysfunctional, but he's also 
committed and mutually supportive.  He figured out 
what they needed, and then Randy Hanck, our 
dysfunctional custom products engineer, made sure 
that engineering built this thing exactly to their 
spec - including the FAA Voodoo part.  

And even though engineering is dysfunctional, and
even though production is dysfunctional, they've 
bought over 3000 of these routers (Lockheed-Martin 
installs them in a new air traffic control apparatus) 
and NONE of the routers have ever failed.  Not one.

Why?  Because we are a loving and committed
company family.  And because Don, the 
El Presidente at B&B Electronics (''Dad''), is going 
to fire somebody if the FAA ever gets unhappy with us.  

(That's the ''Mutually Supportive'' part at B&B.)

So yeah, I'm sure Ozzy and everybody loves 
each other just fine.  But would the Feds entrust the 
care of the air traffic control system to Ozzy?  
I think not.  That's why they gave the contract to us.

Love and mutual support works in body shops, too...

Akzo Nobel puts systems in auto body shops that mix
paint to the proper color.  They read a special number
on your car door and the system mixes the paint to 
exactly match the tint you have.

The problem they were having was that the serial 
conversion card in the system PC's would routinely fail,
leaving the entire body shop high and dry for days.  
This was not good! Akzo Nobel came to us and we 
adapted one of our existing isolated RS485 PCI cards 
to their system, pre-configured to exactly match their 
setup.  It's a drop-in replacement for the old card, and 
requires no extra programming.  Very convenient for them.

If you're like Akzo Nobel, and one of our products would 
be useful but you need special pins or jumpers, special 
firmware programming, or even if you just want your 
name on it, we can take care of that for you.  

  
Got an application? The person to talk to is Gary Stewart, 
+353 91 792444. You can email him 
at mailto:gstewart@bb-elec.com. Or, click through to 
http://www.bb-europe.com/custom.asp?s=e040105 for 
more information. Fill out our Custom Quote Form for your 
project and Gary will get right back to you.

Is USB Taking Over?

We've been hearing about a lot more USB applications 
from our customers lately. And they haven't been 
camera and printer applications. These are serious 
installations. Cash registers, card readers, industrial 
scales, shop floor HMI. Nothing light-duty about it. 
USB has finally graduated beyond consumer gear and 
is being fully accepted in commercial and 
industrial applications. 

So what do you do when you've got a dysfunctional mix of
a USB PC and Serial Equipment?

USB to up to 16 ports of RS-232, RS-422 and RS-485
http://www.bb-europe.com/product_family.asp?FamilyId=115&s=040105

Optically Isolated USB to RS-232, RS-422 and RS-485
http://www.bb-europe.com/product_family.asp?FamilyId=30&s=040105
 
Happy Connections,

Mike Fahrion
mailto:support@bb-europe.com