Chicago, IL —Control Engineering (CE) announced its first eight Engineers' Choice Award winners on Feb. 24 at the magazine's 17th annual awards reception, during National Manufacturing Week 2004.

CE's North American subscribers were asked to choose the best technologies from among 35 winners of CE's 2004 Editors' Choice Awards, announced in the January 2004 issue. Criteria for selection are: service to the industry, technological advancement, and market impact. Subscribers were asked to apply the same criteria in their decision-making to select the Engineers' Choice winners, one in each of eight categories.

"This year we sought to add a new element to our annual awards by finding out what our subscribers—the engineers who use the products we cover—thought about the winners we selected," says David Greenfield, Control Engineering's editorial director. "Every entry received numerous votes from subscribers, showing a broad recognition factor with our audience. Adding this element to our awards process has proved to be an exciting exercise, underscoring interest in both our awards and the products we select for coverage."

Mark Hoske, Control Engineering editor-in-chief, adds, "An overriding feature among winners is the ability to make applications (and the lives around them) run more easily. The new award also helps highlight 2004 as Control Engineering's 50^th anniversary year."

The eight 2003 Control Engineering Engineers' Choice Award winners are:

• AnadigmPID from Anadigm in the Embedded Control category. AnadigmPID, an electronic design automation tool, automates development of analog proportional, integral, derivative (PID) control loops and reduces to minutes the time required to design and implement one of the most common types of control circuits. www.anadigm.com
• InteractX from Parker Hannifin Electromechanical Automation-CTC in the Human-Machine Interface category. InteractX is a Microsoft Windows-embedded HMI system that runs on Windows98/2000/NT/XP and Embedded NT/XP operating systems. www.ctcusa.com
• SONARtrac from CiDRA Corp. in the Instrumentation and Process Sensors category. SONARtrac flow monitoring system uses patented sonar-array technology, and is non-intrusive because it clamps onto the pipe and requires no special upstream or downstream installation requirements. www.cidra.com
• OptiGen from Baldor Electric Co. in the Motors, Drives and Motion Control category. OptiGen adjustable-speed generator automatically adjusts generated power output to match various load requirements for standby power applications, and is designed to supply up to 250% of rated power for electric motor starting. www.baldor.com
• Legend Spectral Camera from DVT Corp. in the Machine Control and Discrete Sensors category. Legend Spectral Camera ultra-sensitive color SmartImage sensors merge the color sensitivity of a spectrophotometer with an in-line vision sensor. www.dvtsensors.com
• EtherCAT Ethernet-based I/O system from Beckhoff in the Networks and Communications category. EtherCAT I/O bus system uses commercial, off-the-shelf Ethernet network cards to scan 1,000 points in 30 microseconds. www.beckhoff.com
• PACSystems from GE Fanuc in the Process and Advanced Control category. PACSystems programmable automatic controllers (PACs) contain an engine built on standard embedded architecture using commercial, deterministic operating systems, which makes the engine portable to multiple platforms. www.geindustrial.com
• AutoCAD Electrical 2004 from Autodesk in the Software and Information Integration category. AutoCAD Electrical 2004 software incorporates and augments VIA Development's Wiring Diagram, and its controls design package is integrated with AutoCAD to maintain full native DWG format compatibility. www.autodesk.com/autocadelectrical.