SCADA, Telematics & GPS Technologies

Illustration by Chris Philpot

The word drone may sounds related to any contemporary sci-fi flicks, or images of attacks carried out remotely on hostile lands, or even your high-school biology teacher’s voice. We don’t expect a drone to help us save water, but that’s what Arad Metering Technologies intends to do. The Israeli company’s battery-operated drone is one of the novel tools it’s deploying to help consumers and companies conserve H₂O — and to make money.

Such an idea would come out of Israel is no coincidence. The country is poor in water and rich in tech innovation, much of it born of constant military conflict. Israel pioneered the use of unmanned aerial vehicles after it lost many fighter jets in the 1973 war. But Arad’s drones don’t fight: They read data from the company’s patented water-meter system to detect leakage or, in irrigation systems, drought.

The World Bank estimates that water wastage costs utilities $14 billion a year worldwide; in developing countries, 200 million more people could be served by the water lost to leaks and theft. Arad CEO Dan Winter says this is largely a consequence of how the business works in places where water is cheap or untaxed: “You train people to abuse water because they pay very little.”

Photos courtesy of Arad Technologies LTD

With this innovation, instead of meter reading - it can provide real time monitoring of water supply infrastructures. Its technology can find irregularities — a pipe failure, an unusually low flow rate, or a too-constant one that could indicate a leak — in a few hours, rather than every 60 days as with a typical meter reading.

Arad’s system is built around what looks like a standard meter. The difference is on the inside, where you’ll find 3G wireless technology, a microcontroller, and 20-year batteries. Every 11 to 30 seconds, the system transmits data, which can be picked up by a drone (best for quickly covering big distances in remote areas) or by a drive-by or fixed-base reader. The data are then analyzed by computer to gauge how much water has been consumed, how much was lost, and even where tampering may have taken place. As a result, companies can save both water and man hours.

The possibilities for Arad’s services go far beyond water should be covering abilities to monitor everything from municipal infrastructure, such as traffic lights, to security-camera networks — basically any complex system prone to localized failures and waste. Arad has its own way, to proof drones could be associated with saving, not destroying; life, not death.

Courtersy: Tree Hugger, Fast Company

When the Department of Natural Resources of Australia decided that they needed to capture data about the natural flooding of a cave, they turned to a hacker to get results. The goal was to photograph the area during these floods with an automated system. In the end, they used a gutted Lumix digital camera mounted in a trash can, covered in aluminium foil. Though it sounds a bit silly, the final product turned out quite nice. You can see the build log, schematics, and results on the project page.

In this case the event they are trying to capture pictures of a cave flood with a Flood Triggered Automated Camera System. The system consists of a camera that is connected to a moisture sensor so that the a camera can start taking pictures when the sensor gets wet. Pictures will continue to be taken every 15 minutes until the moisture levels go back to normal. Since it is being installed in a remote location it needed to be self sustaining.

The water sensor is an interesting design since it has the ability of killing the power to the entire system when the conditions are dry. This is done by using a Darlington transistor feeding a relay.

Courtesy of Penguins Lab

This is a classic example of a well done hack, simply for the sake of hacking. [Jorge] wanted to be able to chart his weight changes.  His solution wasn’t to simply buy a scale that could be hooked to the computer. Those are available and aren’t really that expensive. He could have even used pencil and paper to chart it in a few seconds. Instead, [Jorge] started hacking. He took apart a digital scale he already had and installed his own circuit to display weight and write the values to a CSV. The CSV resides on a removable card which can then be put in his computer to chart the data in openoffice.

source: Hack A Day

The DataNet is a professional wireless data acquisition system using the Zigbee wireless protocol. Consisting of a USB base station, DataNet acquisition units, repeater units and the DataNet PC Suite logging software. The acquisition units have 4 inputs for direct measurement of PT-100, thermocouple, voltage 4-20mA, frequency and pulse. There is also a version with the addition of built-in temperature and humidity sensors.

Source: Audon Electronics

Audon Electronics is offering the Edam-9000 range of Ethernet-based industrial data acquisition and control RTU devices.

The Edam-9000 range is based on 10/100 Ethernet networking standards and supports the Modus/TCP protocol.

The Edam-9000 also supports UDP protocol over Ethernet networking.

There are six models in the range, covering voltage, thermocouple and PRT analogue inputs, digital inputs, pulse counting and transistor outputs.

All have a 10-30VDC power supply range, full opto-isolation and are housed in robust DIN rail mount enclosures.

Users can add Edam-9000 I/O modules to existing Ethernet networks or use Edam-9000 modules in new or existing SCADA systems.

source: Processing Talks

Yokogawa Electric has released the DXadvanced R3 data acquisition and display station for networks.

The product is an enhanced version of the Daqstation series of paperless recorders designed for more efficient monitoring of production lines.

The DXadvanced has a built-in panel and offers integrated display, recording and communication functions.

Sometime, the GPRS coverage & priority issue is a turning down subject in our AVLS operations. Despite of GPS data errors and interferences, we choose to add SMS  mode for failsafe function to our AVLS architecture. It’s not really a big deal to develope the back engine, but in considering the alarm dispacthing functions. Maybe, it will become another turning down factor in our bussiness. the dispatcher should be really intelligent to determine the raw data despite of many of uncertainty factors that always bother. We bought a quad-core dell 1U rack server in order to replace our old beloved application server, a 4 pentium 4 Dell 5U tower server. We done doing upgrades to database server, and now working on the back-end & front-end application test. In another hand, we are migrating the Telemery System for waterworks…. developing a friendly GUI for Flood Monitoring System plus testing the alarm dispatching functions, still handling data loses in ABB EM meters integrations… sigh!

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

RS Hydro have recently won two seperate contracts to supply anWater Quality Sonde with Remote Monitoring Telemetry Troll Link Systemd install the Troll 9500 multiparameter water quality sonde in remote locations in Wales. Two further units are being supplied as stand-alone platforms.

The clients are using the Troll 9500 XP Professional platform along with the Troll Link solar powered telemetry system with plug and play sensors including turbidity, level, temperature, conductivity and pH/ORP. One of the clients is using the Troll 9500 to provide an early warning alarm to inform the client if any of their remedial works on a dam face are having an influence on the water quality of the compensation flow from the reservoir. The other client is using 4 units to measure water quality in a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) over a period of two years.

Both clients are using RS Hydro’s FlowView platform to provide all the data on a daily basis. Should any of the alarm thresholds be exceeded, text (SMS) messages will be sent direct to the client. It is possible to view a demo of the Troll 9500 on our local river. Before you think there are errors in the conductivity readings, they are correct! The Salwarpe RIver is partly fed by Droitiwch Spa’s naturally occuring brine baths, hence at low flows, conductivity rises dramatically.

Source: RS Hydro

Thailand’s Hom Mali project is testing the use of RFID applications in its rice production supply chain. The Software Industry Promotion Agency (SIPA) has created a prototype system which tracks the flow of rice in the Roi-Kaen Sarn cluster area of the country.

The system tracks the flow of rice from the Khon Kaen Bank of Agricultural Cooperatives, where the rice is grown, to the cooperatives’ community mill. Rice trucks will be tagged at the time of loading and then scanned when it reaches the mill, to confirm the receipt of the rice and its point of origin. The tags will include additional information such as weight loads and truck numbers. For the pilot project, 500 tags will be used.

SIPA representatives hope the pilot project, which is expected to conclude in September, will develop into a system that enables local farmers to better compete in the global market. In an effort to further boost the regional economy, the project also encourages local software companies to adopt domestic supply-chain management software instead of importing it from abroad.

The system’s prototype will also be tested on other local agricultural products such as tapioca.

Source: RFID News