... It started in Belgium snow and ended by a rubbish tip!Early 2013 saw unprecedented snow across Europe and four Routeco Automation and Software Product Sales Specialists at a 3 day eWon training event at eWon’s HQ in Nivelles just South of Brussels. The course taught us about the many features of eWon beyond the headline feature of remote access. We were all struck by how easy it was to set many features such as data logging, email alarms etc.
The course of the year provided many opportunities to use these for customer’s benefit. There are two applications that stand out for me.
‘Can you send alarms from my site to my phone?’ ‘By the way, there’s no mobile signal or wired internet there!’
The answer was ‘of course’, a traditional telephone land line was available. An eWon with PSTN modem dials out to the eWon Talk2M cloud service from the site, passing forward any relevant alarms. These alarms are delivered by SMS from Talk2M to the customer’s Service Engineer’s mobiles.
Toward the back end of the year we engaged with Canford Renewable Energy. They were looking for a system that could remotely monitor their Generators at a waste from energy site.
The solution is elegant and robust. A Compact Logix L16ER PLC monitors signals from each engine whilst controlling relevant exhaust valves etc. An eWon 4005 is set up to monitor these tags and set to alarm if any of the Analogue or Digital values fall out of range. Usually these alarm emails, which go to company pagers and ipads are sent via a dedicated broadband link to the Free+Talk2m cloud service.
In the event of a power failure both the PLC and eWon are kept alive by use of Rockwell UPS’s. A script in the eWon detects the loss of power and switches the eWon to use its inbuilt GSM modem to retain connectivity. An alarm is generated for the power loss and the eWon automatically switches back to hardwired mode once power is restored.
“It’s pretty amazing, pretty much before the test button it pressed the email has arrived on my phone!” – Rob Dowding, Power Station Manager.
The eWon / PLC combination replaces a monitoring system provided by the engine manufacturer and avoids the subscription charge levied for that service as well as providing a means of remotely accessing the site.
Toward the back end of the year we engaged with Canford Renewable Energy. They were looking for a system that could remotely monitor their Generators at a waste from energy site.
The solution is elegant and robust. A Compact Logix L16ER PLC monitors signals from each engine whilst controlling relevant exhaust valves etc. An eWon 4005 is set up to monitor these tags and set to alarm if any of the Analogue or Digital values fall out of range. Usually these alarm emails, which go to company pagers and ipads are sent via a dedicated broadband link to the Free+Talk2m cloud service.
In the event of a power failure both the PLC and eWon are kept alive by use of Rockwell UPS’s. A script in the eWon detects the loss of power and switches the eWon to use its inbuilt GSM modem to retain connectivity. An alarm is generated for the power loss and the eWon automatically switches back to hardwired mode once power is restored.
“It’s pretty amazing, pretty much before the test button it pressed the email has arrived on my phone!” – Rob Dowding, Power Station Manager.
The eWon / PLC combination replaces a monitoring system provided by the engine manufacturer and avoids the subscription charge levied for that service as well as providing a means of remotely accessing the site.
Robert Stebbings
Automation Product Sales Specialist
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