SCADA, Telematics & GPS Technologies

Fishery researchers in Thailand plan to adopt an RFID-enabled system to track the broodstock – the fish kept isolated for breeding purposes – of several fish species key to the country’s export business. With the system, researchers can track the development of the broodstock and supervise crossbreeding programs to improve the species.

Researchers at the Department of Fisheries Science at King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Lad-krabang are embedding RFID chips in three aquatic species, the Giant Prawn, Nile Tilapia and Walking Catfish. The three species are crucial to Thailand’s economy, with an export value of about 2 billion bahts a year.

Since last year, the team has embedded RFID chips into more than a thousand of the three aquatic species. Researchers are working to determine the least disruptive way to insert the tags into the tiny juvenile creatures. To keep the system simple, the tags will only include a serial number to identify the individual. Other information, such as the animal’s breed, its growth and diet, will be maintained in a database.

“We will track an animal’s growth on a monthly basis, to monitor its overall development. The software will help us analyze the data. If we find that the animal is not growing well, we will implement cross breeding to improve the species,” said project leader Rungtawan Panakulchaiwit.

The project has received funding from the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre, as well as support from two private RFID companies, Silicon Craft Technology and IE Technology. After the pilot program is completed, the research center plans to promote the technology to private aquatic-animal farms across the country to help improve their farm management.

Source: RFID News

Photo: Rekhan

GlobalTrak’s Remote Sensor Nodes (RSNs) increase the shipper’s ability to monitor cargo condition with a variable set of sensors for door status, humidity, temperature, a 3-axis accelerometer, and now an extremely sensitive gamma detector, a long term stable sensor with built-in temperature compensation and low power consumption.

Richard C. Meyers, CEO of GlobalTrak, described how the sensors on an RSN add important cargo data for GlobalTrak’s customers, “Remote Sensor Nodes send reports and real-time alerts to any GlobalTrak AMU over a ZigBee protocol wireless network, allowing the data to be communicated to stakeholders. This is a flexible and convenient way of placing sensors where they need to be within a loaded container, truck trailer, or railcar.”

In a radiation monitoring application, the GlobalTrak AMU is mounted on the exterior of the container, truck trailer, or railcar with one or more RSNs equipped with the gamma detector positioned inside the load in best detection positions. The detectors have low and high alarm thresholds to accommodate varying levels of background radiation, such as might be encountered in an ocean transit versus a land route.

The same ZigBee wireless network that allows RSNs to report their status through the AMU can be used to enhance shipment security by monitoring the status of EJ Brooks’ electronic strap seals on individual packages within the shipment or bolt seals on the door of a container, truck trailer, or rail car.

Source: MarketWatch

Image: MaritimeInstituteOnline

In a move toward controlling datacenter energy consumption, Microsoft is deploying sensors that will trace work distribution to help plot for optimization

To better control energy consumption in its datacenters, Microsoft has deployed 2,000 internally built temperature and humidity sensors in several of its facilities.

The sensors use ZigBee wireless technology to transmit the data to databases that analyze the information. Data-center administrators can look at a graphical image of the datacenter that is color-coded based on temperature and at a glance see areas that are getting hot.

Ultimately, Microsoft would like to be able to distribute computational load in the datacenters based on the temperature of servers, and it is beginning to work on such a system, said Jie Liu, a Microsoft researcher working on the deployment. He showed off the devices and a view of the database at the annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit in Redmond, Washington, on Tuesday.

Source: InfoWorld

While the air in Beijing, and efforts to improve it, have been a concern for the Olympic organizers and competitors, they could prove a boon for researchers.

Beginning tomorrow, a UC-San Diego professor will be sending unmanned aerial vehicles into the pollution clouds emanating from the city to measure the impacts of the government’s industrial shutdowns and traffic bans on the region surrounding Beijing.

“We have a huge and unprecedented opportunity to observe a large reduction in everyday emissions from a region that’s very industrially active,” said atmospheric scientist V. Ram Ramanathan, who also works with the Scripps Oceanographic Institution.

While it does not appear that Beijing’s plan has reduced particulate matter levels to World Health Organization recommended levels, the attempts still represent a large and unique science experiment. Chinese officials say they’ve reduced industrial activity by as much as 30 percent, although questions persist about the effectiveness of the shutdowns. Independent and government monitoring station data have been mixed since the program was instituted. (more…)

An ABB innovation has increased the performance of generator circuit breakers by more than 25 percent while simultaneously reducing the footprint, weight, noise levels and maintenance requirements of these critical power plant components.

The innovation has enabled ABB to increase the nominal current of its HECS family of generator circuit breakers (GCBs) from 18,000 amps (A) to 23,000 A, an increase of almost 28 percent.

Previously GCBs of this rating required a so-called ‘forced’ cooling system of pumps, fans or motors to counteract heat dissipation and keep sensitive breaker components within their rated temperature tolerances.

About 70 percent of the world’s GCBs are engineered and manufactured by ABB, which is launching three new GCBs with heat pipe cooling in 2008

ABB has eliminated the need for these cooling devices by developing an innovative heat pipe cooling system that makes the HECS range lighter, slimmer and quieter than was previously possible.

In addition to offering a substantial increase in nominal current capability, the maintenance requirements of the new GCBs are – as with all HECS breakers - extremely low.

Nominal and short-circuit currents generate a tremendous amount of heat. The higher the nominal current, the more heat is generated. A cooling system – either natural or forced - is therefore required to keep the breaker within its temperature limit.

A forced cooling system is itself a generator of heat, which in turn limits the nominal current capability of the GCB to 18,000 A, as well as creating extra weight and a larger footprint.

Natural cooling has its own engineering challenges and only becomes feasible for nominal currents above 13,000 A by increasing the dimensions, weight and footprint of the breaker components.

The success of the ABB heat pipe solution is to solve the limitations of the two existing technologies. It requires no electricity to operate and is virtually maintenance-free and silent.

Generator circuit breakers are a critical component in power plants, protecting both the generator and the power transformer. ABB has the broadest GCB portfolio on the market, covering power ratings of more than 1500 MVA and nominal currents in excess of 50,000 A.

Source: ABB

The Regional Transport Authority of Hyderabad, India, has announced plans to monitor its driving test tracks with an RFID-enabled system designed to automate testing for driver licenses.

The new system will be tested in a pilot program at one of the RTA’s three test tracks. The Nagole track will be equipped with a set of RFID readers buried 15 inches beneath the road surface. Applicants for licenses will drive vehicles outfitted with antennas, and the system will track variations in movement, speed limit and wrong turns within parameters preset by the RTA. Test scores, and the prospective driver’s ability, will be judged in a graph format.

The system takes human judgment out of the test administering, after accusations had been made that driving school agents and motor vehicle inspectors were manipulating test results. As additional insurance, thumb impressions would be recorded on the driving license to avoid manipulations

“No discretion is given to a motor vehicle inspector or others,” transport commissioner Raymond Peter said. “Once we see how it works, we will computerize the rest of the tracks. The system will be in place after the monsoon.”

Source: RFID News

Carspotting: Part of a mesh network, this sensor node embedded in a San Francisco street can detect when a car parks in the spot beside it. It also monitors passing traffic. See following image credit to Streetline.

This fall, San Francisco will implement the largest mesh network for monitoring parking to date. Around 6,000 wireless sensors from the San Francisco company Streetline will be fixed alongside as many parking spots, monitoring both parking availability and the volume and speed of passing traffic. The city hopes that displaying information from the sensors on Web maps, smart phones, and signs on the street will reduce the traffic and pollution caused by circling cars.

A mesh network differs from a typical wireless network in that there’s no central transmitter: every node can transmit to every other node. Mesh networks have generally been used for environmental monitoring, or to grant wireless devices Internet access.

When sensor networks have been deployed roadside, it’s usually been to monitor traffic, not parking. In urban areas, traffic-monitoring systems have been used for congestion pricing: during business hours in downtown London, for instance, the license plates of cars are photographed, and the drivers are sent a bill. Some parking garages also have signs that tell drivers where the available spaces are, but such systems generally rely on manual car counting, not sensors.

In San Francisco, however, clusters of plastic-encased, networked sensors are embedded in the surface of the street. The main sensor in the cluster, which is commonly used to detect cars, is a magnetic one, says Jim Reich, the vice president of engineering at Streetline. Magnetic sensors detect when a large metal object locally disrupts Earth’s magnetic field. One challenge with magnetic sensors is avoiding false positives. “We rely on the magnetometer the most, but in order to fix errors, we use other types of sensors [that] give you much higher reliability,” says Reich. He won’t elaborate on the supporting sensors, but he says that the Streetline system has a high ninety percent accuracy in recognizing parked cars. (more…)

For the last few years, we’ve witnessed a great expansion of remote control devices in our day-to-day life. Five years ago, infrared (IR) remotes for the television were the only such devices in our homes. Now I quickly run out of fingers as I count the devices and appliances I can control remotely in my house. This number will only increase as more devices are controlled or monitored from a distance.

To interact with all these remotely controlled devices, we’ll need to put them under a single standardized control interface that can interconnect into a network, specifically a HAN or home-area network. One of the most promising HAN protocols is ZigBee, a software layer based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. This article will introduce you to ZigBee—how it works and how it may be more appropriate than simply accumulating more remotes.

Why so many remotes? Right now, the more remotely controlled devices we install in our homes, the more remotes we accumulate. Devices such as TVs, garage door openers, and light and fan controls predominantly support one-way, point-to-point control. They’re not interchangeable and they don’t support more than one device. Because most remotely controlled devices are proprietary and not standardized among manufacturers, even those remotes used for the same function (like turning on and off lights) are not interchangeable with similar remotes from different manufacturers. In other words, you’ll have as many separate remote control units as you have devices to control.

Some modern IR remotes enable you to control multiple devices by “learning” transmitting codes. But because the range for IR control is limited by line of sight, they’re used predominantly for home entertainment control.

A HAN can solve both problems because it doesn’t need line-of-sight communication and because a single remote (or other type of control unit) can command many devices.

Source: Embedded.com

Nice to see that the utilities are starting to do an actual roll out of Zigbee based meters…

In what utility officials call “the first wave of deployment,” SDG&E began installing digital, wireless smart meters this week for about 3,500 customers in Tierrasanta. The new meters track each customer’s electricity and gas usage throughout the day, and automatically transmit data at regular intervals to a computerized information center at SDG&E.

The smart meters are expected to do far more than merely eliminate the need for meter readers. By most accounts, the technology represents the biggest advance in monitoring energy consumption since 1888, when the electromechanical meter was invented.

Source: SignOnSanDiego.com

It’s easy to argue that road taxes are quite unfair because they’re flat: You pay fees to drive around; it doesn’t matter how much you actually use the car.

The Netherlands has decided to improve the country’s road tax by taxing according to the vehicle type, usage, hour and roads the vehicle is using. The system uses GPS, a car transmitter and a standard cell phone GSM network to send this information to a central computer that processes the information. Once these figures are calculated, the driver is charged. Congestion and the environment are both taken into consideration in the rate scheme. Using a highway that enters a city in peak hours while driving an SUV will be taxed more than driving a small car in a rural area where private vehicles are more of a necessity.

Dutch officials hope the system will reduce CO₂ emissions and congestion, because the Dutch government claims that there is no more room to build more roads. Critics say this system is an attack on privacy: a computer will know where and when you’ve driven, although the company that implements the system guarantees that this information won’t be stored once translated into money. The system starts in 2011 for freight transport and will be expanded to include cars in 2012. Full deployment of the system is scheduled to be completed in 2016. A similar system has been under study in the UK.

Source: Qué!, Motor Authority