In each application, the Adroit SCADA HMI is installed as a “node” on the LonWorks network, on a Windows NT PC. Star’s customers receive a system complete with a PC located in a cabinet in the refrigerator plant room or in the local engineer’s office. There is a cable connection from the PC to the control nodes. Adroit monitors and reports on temperatures of areas and products that end users require to be cooled. Pressures, on/off states, motor currents and electricity consumption are also monitored. This information is typically used by customers for validation - such as temperatures of cold stores and duty sensor monitoring - and data is also gathered on all aspects of the refrigeration plant for diagnostic purposes. Adroit provides remote communication to Star Refrigeration’s regional offices for notification of alarms and faults and also to facilitate maintenance. Using a modem link, Adroit interfaces with the offices’ PC based system which, when necessary, transmits an appropriate report to a standby engineer via a national monitoring bureau. All Star Refrigeration’s service engineers, in addition to the relevant office-based staff, have the capability to dial into end users’ sites and use the on-site Adroit SCADA HMI to monitor the refrigeration plant. This is carried out regularly, as part of customers’ maintenance agreements. Data from Adroit is exported to Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to provide maintenance reports. Star Refrigeration keeps logged information accessible for display for a month and thereafter stores the information on the PC hard disk for up to a year. The Adroit SCADA HMI’s range of logging functions have all proved useful, including trending and event logging. Adroit’s unique Plant VCR functionality has been particularly beneficial. This ‘video playback’ feature enables operators to replay, using various frame rates, chosen sequences of plant automation history in either text format or mimic format. Users can select the timeframe they wish to view then play, rewind, fast-forward or pause using on-screen controls similar to those on a household video recorder. Multiple mimics can be viewed simultaneously, with varying or synchronised start times. Users can view events in context, without needing to analyse large quantities of data. The graphical displays can also be used in conjunction with trends and mathematical data to provide indepth analysis of events. No extra configuration is needed as the feature is a standard component of the Adroit software. In terms of the future expansion of the project, Star aims to promote the Adroit system to all major refrigeration plant customers using TELSTAR. The company is also looking at the possibility of using Adroit as a replacement regional ‘server’ for communicating with its standby engineers.
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