In the recent past a few customer enquiries came regarding the capability of MultiSmart to act as a DNP gateway RTU in addition to its standard pump station / lift station management functionality. MultiSmart can certainly act as a RTU gateway along with its normal functionality; however, it has certain memory constraints which limit the number of DNP slave profiles it can support within the gateway.

To come up with an alternate solution we decided to trial the Linux based MultiTrode applications for the communication on an Embedded PC. A small form factor MOXA V481-XPE is selected for the testing and implementation. The MOXA V481 is a compact, DIN – rail mountable, industrial embedded PC with relatively good hardware resources. The additional advantage with this MOXA PC is that it has got 8 built in serial ports (all can be configured for RS-232/422/485) and 2 GBit Ethernet ports which ease the physical communication interfacing. Having a large number of physical communication ports the V481 is an ideal choice for implementing the MutiTrode RTU applications. It also has a large capacity hard disk built in so that MultiTrode historian (MySQL Database) can also be installed to save the historical data at the gateway as well.

Installation of CentOS was performed using a USB disk rather than the conventional ways since the V481 does not have a CD/DVD drive. Unetbootin-windows or Unetbootin-linux software is used to copy the Linux ISO image to the USB and to make the USB disk bootable with the installation launcher. Once the installation is complete I had to compile the serial port drivers and update Linux boot scripts to load these drivers every time when the system reboots. Now the base platform for the gateway system is ready. Setup and configuration of the MultiTrode DNP applications seems to be very easy on the embedded computer.

In the MOXA system, having 8 Serial ports and 2 Ethernet ports, we tested running 10 DNP masters one for each physical communication ports, at the same time successfully. The V481 system is shown in the figure below.

MOXA V481 Embedded PC

In addition to the data concentrator functionality, this setup has another major feature. ISaGRAF, an IEC61131-3 based PLC platform is part of the MultiTrode applications installed and hence you can implement custom PLC based applications and control logics within the gateway system.

You can also run a MODBUS gateway RTU which is already a part of the MultiTrode application pack installed. The MOXA embedded computer with the MultiTrode application can act as a DNP gateway RTU, MODBUS gateway RTU and perform PLC control logics simultaneously. Only constraint is that different communication protocols cannot utilize the same physical communication port. Read more…

Technical Notes

The International Monetary Fund said this month that the world economy was on track to shrink for the first time in 60 years by as much as 1.0 percent. It said that recovery from the recession depends in part on stabilizing financial conditions through the injection of economic stimulus spending. But more telling was the view that the key to success was countries being prepared to work together on solutions.

Time is running out for the leaders of the Group of Twenty who are meeting in London this week. The message they might bring back home with them after the summit is of a deeper recession before things improve.

So what to do when faced with the very real chance of dealing with the worst downturn since the 1930”s depression?  That was a question we asked ourselves recently at MultiTrode. Just like in any other business involved with infrastructure, a slow down in the economic spending (despite money being made available for shovel-ready projects) will affect our customers and in turn “business as usual” revenue.

Our Chairman and company founder Craig Parkinson had the best answer. This is a man who has seen a few booms and busts in the twenty two years that MultiTrode has been around. So we always listen when he has advice.   Craig’s view was that we should do what we have always done in the past – go and talk to our customers.

He said it sounds simple but so few companies do it well because they are unable to stop thinking about themselves long enough to truly hear what the customer is saying. Now I am not going to give a lesson in Marketing 101 here. But the advice Craig gave was right on the money.

The folk at MultiTrode have always enjoyed a close relationship with the industry so it was not hard to start asking pointed questions about what things are keeping people awake at night. The response has been great. We are getting a lot of feedback and expect more as we continue to involve ourselves in the fresh issues.

The  biggest learning? Remember that we only focus on water and waste water pump station solutions so our questions can be quite targeted. From all our interviews with customers, experts and intermediaries we now know that the smart operations managers are focusing on three key areas. They realise that stimulus packages aside there will be an effect on operating and cap ex budgets so they are refining their operations, chasing station asset optimization and only investing in cost effective solutions.

They know that energy efficiencies of up to 15% are available at the pump station. They see that out-of-date lift stations can make up 60% of all emergency call outs and gobble up the bulk of “on call” penalty rates. They also know that the regulators will not be giving anyone a holiday.

Pump stations have long been overlooked by managers but today they see this area of their operation as a real mine of budget improvements. Our challenge is to keep listening like Craig did over twenty years ago to help them. Read more…

Industry

v2.1 of MultiSmart firmware is now on the website. Take a look at the recent post to find out what is included in this release.

The firmware can be downloaded if you have been given access to the firmware area. Create a login on the main site and request MultiSmart firmware (one of the checkboxes). If you already have a login, click on “Edit my details” in the top right of the main site. Read more…

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