Business Update 01 June 2023
I began working with the Camile laboratory control system in 1989,
shortly after Dow Chemical began marketing it outside of the
company. At the time, the hardware was all manufactured in-house and
the software ran on Microsoft DOS. Since that time, I have been with
Camile through 6 ownership changes, 15 versions of Microsoft
Windows, and the transition from homegrown hardware to partnering
with Opto22 and their SNAP-Ethernet hardware. Since 2009, I have
been fortunate to own the Camile business myself as part of CRW
Automation Solutions. The best part of the past 34 years has been
working with all the amazing scientists and technicians to help them
use this technology platform to advance their research. The
challenge of understanding the needs of so many varied processes and
how best to automate them has been fascinating. Like so many times
before, however, it is time for another transition. After much
consideration, I have made the difficult decision to begin the
process of winding down our business operations. I will try to
explain some of the reasons for this decision and what the timeline
will look like below.
Software
The last major version of the CamileTG software was written over the
period of 2001-2005, and resulted in the very stable version 5.0.
Versions 5.1 and 5.2 were minor revisions that added support for new
Opto 22 hardware and extensions to the macro language. These macro
extensions have allowed us to add functionality such as
full-featured recipe editors, consistent serial device drivers, OPC,
and Modbus interfaces without needing to modify the base CamileTG
software. Since the last recompile of the base software in 2010,
many of the third-party libraries used in its development have
become obsolete. As a result, any software changes requiring a
recompilation would also require a major re-write using new
third-party libraries, an expense not warranted by market demands.
We have been able to support subsequent Windows versions 10 and 11
through changes to installation scripts and configuration
procedures, but this has become increasingly more difficult over the
past few years. At some point, Microsoft will release a Windows
update that we simply can’t address with patches. Since corporate
operating system upgrades tend to be rather conservative, that point
is most likely a few years away for most users, since we are
currently running internal test systems on the latest Windows 11
release.
Hardware
Opto22 has remained committed to their SNAP Ethernet line
of hardware, because they have many customers other than Camile that
use it. Nevertheless, they do continue to update the hardware and
sometimes parts become obsolete. That was the case with the
SNAP-PAC-EB2 brain that is used with the Camile system last year. We
were able to participate in the last manufacturing run of the
PAC-EB2 brain, and have approximately 40 of them in stock. After
that stock is depleted, it will not be possible to build new systems
without a major re-write of the CamileTG software. As discussed
above, this is not a viable scenario for us. For users with multiple
systems, I would encourage the purchase of at least some PAC-EB2
brains to establish a backup supply in case an existing system fails
before it is possible to transition to a different platform.
Another hardware issue that continues to be a challenge is extremely
long lead times on some parts from our supplier. Over the past two
years, Opto22 has experienced significant delays on components used
in certain IO modules. The delays have been particularly long for
analog input modules, resulting in lead times of 8-10 weeks and in
some cases several months. Our customers use quite a wide variety of
different modules in their projects, so it is not feasible for us to
maintain a long-term stockpile of all possible modules. These lead
times make it impossible to maintain the level of responsiveness we
are accustomed to.
Timeline
At this time, the plan is to stop accepting orders for new
Camile systems at the end of 2023. I will continue to support
existing users through the end of 2024, and will work only on a
case-by-case contract basis after that. If you have existing Camile
systems that use the Opto22 SNAP Ethernet hardware (also known as
CamileConnections) you will be able to gradually change over to
different software without replacing the hardware portion of your
system. If you are still using the chassis-based Camile hardware
(2000, 2200, 2500, 3000, 3300, or 4000), you will need to upgrade
the hardware as well. You can switch to the SNAP Ethernet hardware
now and continue to run the CamileTG software without changing your
applications. This approach would give you some additional time to
migrate to a long-term solution.
If you have purchased any of our “Universal” serial device drivers
over the past several years, you are aware that these are
software-based licenses tied to a specific computer. Before we close
down the business, any existing device drivers will be converted to
a license-free version that can also be used with any other software
that is able to call Windows COM objects. We have demonstrated this
ability with Visual Basic .NET and National Instruments LabView
software.
Over the coming year, I would welcome inquiries about creating a
site license for the Camile software that would allow you to use it
after the close of our business.
