We believe MultiTrode’s Engineers are the Best! When others echo our sentiments, we can’t help but shout it from the roof top!

MultiTrode had the opportunity to work with the Town of Greenwich, CT, on a telemetry upgrade to their sanitary sewer collection system pump stations, a project that required extraordinary preliminary planning.

Recently, the Town of Greenwich’s Wastewater Division Manager, Richard Feminella, took time out of his busy day to write Aaron Parkinson, President of MultiTrode, to share his praises of both MultiTrode and our Engineering Services Manager, Nick Claudio.

About MultiTrode, Mr. Feminella wrote that Greenwich has “been extremely satisfied with the MultiTrode system and installation.” 

As an organization, our longstanding goal is to be the very best we can be – to meet every challenge head on, to solve every issue to the utmost of our ability, overcoming the foreseeable and unforeseeable, to ensure each and every MultiTrode customer walks away satisfied.

Mr. Feminella goes on to write that “Nick was responsive, courteous, polite, knowledgeable and performed each and every task correctly and without any delay”.

We couldn’t agree more!  Nick is that rare combination of knowledge, professionalism and readiness that makes every project easier, and every client happier. 

 Thank you, Mr. Feminella, for your kind words.
& Thank you, Nick, for yet another job well done! Read more…

General News efficiency, greenwich, Pump Station Management, sanitary sewer collection, telemetry

There is nothing more refreshing than a cool tall glass of water on a hot summer’s day. This is such a small thing; it’s easy to take it for granted. After all, who doesn’t have clean water? If you ask UNICEF, the answer is – 1 billion people worldwide do not have access to safe water. Below is a list of charities that aim to lower that number. Together we can make a difference.

Water for People

“Water For People assists people in developing countries to improve quality of life by supporting the development of locally sustainable drinking water resources, sanitation facilities and hygiene education programs.” www.waterforpeople.org

 Water Aid

“WaterAid enables the world’s poorest people to gain access to safe water and sanitation. Together with improved hygiene, these basic human rights underpin health, education and livelihoods, forming the first essential step in overcoming poverty. We work with local partners, who understand local issues, and provide them with the skills and support to help communities set up and manage practical and sustainable projects that meet their real needs.” www.wateraid.org

 Water 1^st

“Water 1st’s mission is to serve families in the poorest communities in the world as they implement community-managed projects that integrate water supply, sanitation, and health education. We envision a world free of extreme poverty. Providing people with safe water systems, latrines, and hygiene education is the 1st step to ending the cycle of poverty and death.”  water1st.org

El Porvenir

“El Porvenir supports self–help, community–initiated water, sanitation and reforestation projects. Mission: To improve the standard of living of poor people in Nicaragua through sustainable self-help water, sanitation and reforestation projects.” www.elporvenir.org

Charity Water

“Almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean drinking water. That’s one in eight of us. Charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. 100% of public donations directly fund water projects.” www.charitywater.org

Water.org

Water.org is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization committed to providing safe drinking water and sanitation to people in developing countries. Our goals are to draw attention to the world’s number one health problem, unsafe and inadequate water supplies, and to raise funds to help fight this immense problem – one community at a time.” www.water.org

WaterLife

“WaterLife is a non-profit organization that exists to implement and support community-based, community-owned water and sanitation programs that offer dignity and opportunity to disadvantaged people worldwide.” www.waterlife.org

Water Charity

“The mission of Water Charity is to implement practical solutions to provide safe water, effective sanitation, and meaningful health education to those in need.” www.WaterCharity.org

Play Pumps International

“The mission of PlayPumps International – U.S. (PPI) is to help improve the lives of children and their families by providing easy access to clean drinking water, enhancing public health, and offering play equipment to millions across Africa.” http://blog.playpumps.org/home

 H2O Africa

“H2O Africa is the clean water initiative that is part of the “Running the Sahara” expedition and film project, now chronicled on a special DVD release. Co-founded by Matt Damon, H2O Africa is creating widespread public awareness of the water crisis in Africa and gathering support for clean water programs in critical areas, including communities along the Running the Sahara route.” www.h2oafrica.org Read more…

General News clean water, drinking water, pumps, wastewater, water, water charity

MultiTrode is headed to Orlando, Florida. We will be exhibiting at the FSAWWA Florida Section Fall Conference from November 29th through December 2nd. Please stop by booth #525 to visit with sales team members. 

There, you will have the opportunity to check out the latest versions of MultiSmart and the new SafeSmart Backup Controllers, Safe-FS and Safe-TL.

The featured Safe-FS,  SafeSmart’s failsafe level alarm relay, is the next generation of ultra-reliable high level alarming for lift and pump stations. While the Safe-TL, provides an independent backup control system for level device fails. Read more…

General News backup controllers, FSAWWA, lift station, MulitSmart, pump station

I traveled to New Zealand recently to give Applied Instruments a hand with a large trade show. Applied Instruments are the sole distributor in New Zealand for Multitrode. The expression of interest received for the MultiSmart this year was massive compared to that of last year.

We were able to take over 140 quality feedbacks over the 2 ½ days of the conference. Of those 75 were directly aimed at the MultiSmart and other MultiTrode products. Last year we received only 28 enquiries and I considered only 22 to be “quality” enquiries.

The full sized demonstration pump station cabinet drew the most interest followed by the MultiSmart controlled waste water neutralization system. In the neutralization system the MultiSmart controls the switching of the sump pumps according to level and performs several custom functionalities.

The MultiSmart also accepts the 4-20mA pH signals from 2 pH meters, controls Pre treatment and then post CO2 dosing. The unit’s 4-20mA output is used to control a modulating valve that controls the discharge rate of the CO2 injection. The MultiSmart records the treated volume of water via flow meter and controls a divert valve, should the water not be adequately treated.

Most people were interested in the easiness in reconfiguration of the MultiSmart unit on the fly without needing to pull the unit out of the panel. Read more…

General News

Wayne Patterson, the Chief Executive Officer of MultiTrode, is selected as the Chairman of Australian Institute of Management Queensland and Northern Territory for the period 2009-2010 after its Annual General Meeting in May 2009.

The AIM Qld & NT, founded in 1950, is a not for profit entity promoting the advancement of education and learning in the areas of management and leadership for commerce, industry and government. AIM provides training and conducts seminars on the latest industry trends in corporate management and helps professionals in developing their leadership qualities.

The AIM Qld & NT Board of Directors are chosen by the Professional Members of the Institute, once every two years. By electing Mr Patterson as the new Chairman, the AIM members recognised his more than 20 years experience in building successful businesses.

Mr Patterson, previously the Deputy Chairman of AIM, said

 There is no better time for leaders to partner with an innovative business like AIM. My responsibility as Chairman is to make sure we continue to position the Institute as a respected voice for leadership and management excellence.

Read more…

General News

MultiTrode has recently released the firmware version 2.2.1 for the MultiSmart Pump Station Manager. This update includes enhancements for achieving higher efficiencies and support for extra security.

Major highlights of this release are,

1) Easy interfacing of selected ABB drives, in just a few button presses
2) Support for Dallas iButton security key
3) Improvised well mixer functionality
4) New Pump Alternation Modes
5) Simplicity in interfacing Rain-gauges
6) Extended pump efficiency calculations and alarming
7) DNP Object 0 support (helps in remote identification of device details and DNP profiles)
8) Improvised VFD configuration menu
9) Enhancements for flow calculations and flow statistics

These new features and enhancements further extend the capabilities of the MultiSmart to continue providing a unique and one stop solution for Pump Station Management. Registered members can download the firmware from the MultiTrode website www.multitrode.com. If you do not have a login, please navigate to http://www.multitrode.com/member-registration.php for applying a free registration. Read more…

General News, Industry, SCADA & Telemetry

Pump Station performance optimization has become an important feature  for pump stations throughout the world. A well optimized pump station can increase the lifetime of the pumps as well as decrease the cost involved in running the station. Station optimization can also help in reducing the hardware, software and maintenance costs significantly.

However it has been seen that many a times the pump stations (or lift stations) are not designed or maintained close to the best possible solution. Design changes after the Pump Station commissioning for including optimizations features are commonly seen these days.

Majority of the reasons behind this are; inability to identify all the optimization parameters during the design and commissioning phase;  huge costs and time constraints involved with the software reprogramming (PLC programming and SCADA changes) which are quite often seen requiring vast changes; incapability to see the relevant historical data required for achieving optimization; inability to trial different combinations of optimization features; and changing demands to the station  due to geographical & environmental changes, increase in population leading to varying optimization design requirements.

The MultiSmart Pump Station Manager is designed to eliminate these optimization issues. With the help of the easy to configure parameters through the LCD faceplate the user can configure different optimization settings and combinations. Having more than 500 tags for a standard two pump controller MultiSmart configuration the station’s functioning, with the relevant data, can be easily trended and observed over a period of time for fine tuning. The trending can be viewed from a SCADA system, as well as using the built-in Data Logging feature of the MultiSmart. The license free TrendReporter software, available for download at the MultiTrode website (www.multitrode.com), can be used to view the trends from the data logged within the MultiSmart unit.

Tags with the relevant data can be added for local or remote data logging, or deleted when not required, by browsing through the tag list in the LCD faceplate and selecting a few options. The tag database in the unit has about 3000 entries which covers all of the station optimization and pump control data available.

The MultiSmart unit comes with a lot Optimization features built into the software. The users can enable or disable particular features and setup & change the parameters according to the requirements with a few button presses. Therefore these features can easily be trialed after the station commissioning or whenever new changes are required and the best solution can thus be identified and implemented.

Available ready to use optimization features are as follows,

• Odor reduction (Max Off Time)
• Max Run Time
• Station Max Pumps to Run
• Minimize Fat Buildup
• Well Clean Out
• Minimize Excessive Starts
• High Inflow
• Well Washer
• Well Mixer
• Blocked Pump Detection
• Pump Max Starts Per Hour

The most common settings are found in the main station optimization screen.  New custom configurations can also be created easily without needing any hardware or firmware changes. The pump controller functionality has a whole range of advanced pump station parameters and can support multiple wells, multiple groups of pumps and multiple profiles.

A variety of standard pump alternation schemes are also present in the MultiSmart which are listed below.

• Alternation (std)
• Fixed (std)
• Alternation Special
• Fixed Strict
• Hours Run
• Pump Starts
• Efficiency
• N to 1
• First On First Off

Alternation by efficiency is one of the popular features utilized by the MultiSmart customers.

We have seen that the MultiSmart Pump Station Manager can improve the performance of a station immensely with the help of the standard and configurable optimization features. We can look at each of these features and how the customers are benefiting from them in the coming posts.

Read more…

General News, Industry, Technical Notes Lift Station Optimization, Pump Controller Optimization, Pump Station Optimization

Cellular communications has made huge progress in the last few years, and many people would say is a viable solution for water & wastewater telemetry.

The first area that cellular comms started getting attention was for water supply and wastewater collection systems – as a backup to radio.

The requirements would state that radio was the primary communications and cellular GPRS was the backup on more important stations.

We also saw a few utilities who requested cellular as their primary communications method, either because they had had a lot of problems with radio in the past, or because their geography meant that building a radio network was clearly a lot more expensive than using cellular.

Let’s look at the thinking behind the backup first of all.

Historically, in water and wastewater, radio has the been the main method of RTU communications, with PSTN (phone lines) coming a long way behind in second place. One of the main benefits of radio was the fact that the utility owned the infrastructure and therefore “felt” some level of control over it.

In theory, if you own the infrastructure then you are able to run an operation which ensures an uptime that you are happy with, i.e., that meets the organizational requirements. If communications to one site goes down then you have a problem – but one that you can theoretically fix. If a repeater goes down, it’s the same situation.

Contrast that with cellular comms where if a cell tower goes down, or for some reason there are other comms problems in the backbone or to one area, you have to wait for the cellular operator to fix it.

But apart from those whose lifeblood is radio communications, this can also present a major disadvantage of radio communications. A lot of utilities don’t have the expertise to troubleshoot and fix radio systems, or to replace radio repeaters in the middle of a storm. Even if they do, there’s the question over response time. In later posts we will look at possible benefits of cellular, but for now, the radio “ownership” problem and the low cost of cellular comms raised the possibility of using cellular as a backup. Read more…

General News Cellular Communication, telemetry

MultiSmart Pump Station Manager, with firmware version 2.2.0 onwards, now includes support for easy interfacing of the ABB ACS550 and ACS800 series VFDs. After a study in the US and UK, it was found that the ABB VFD’s are widely used in Pump Station Controls.

ABB - ACS800 Drive

Having support for the MODBUS RTU capability MultiSmart can be interfaced to any VFD’s with MODBUS support for bringing the data in and to send controls to the drives, and these data can be easily brought to a SCADA system. This process is fairly easy and straight forward with the help of the buttons on the MultiSmart faceplate. The only time consuming part is adding the MODBUS points by going through the VFD data sheet.

However, after identifying the customer demands, this integration process is further simplified for selected ABB VFD’s in MultiSmart firmware version 2.2.0, which requires only a few button press. With this feature MultiSmart can now use the currents read from the VFD, instead of current read from the MultiSmart Motor Protection module, for generating the fault alarms.

Even though MultiSmart has the capability to stop the pumps based on faults, these faults are configured only to alarm due to the fact that the VFD will holdout the pumps from running. The relevant motor protection faults, when interfaced to these VFDs, are set to Auto Reset within MultSmart to avoid the need for two resets when the fault is cleared, thereby simplifying the steps involved with the operations.

The MODBUS communication can be either setup over a RS232 or over ethernet. A RS232 to 485 converter is required if the RS232 option is selected. Ethernet communication can be setup using a cross over cable or using a straight through ethernet cable with the help of an ethernet switch.

Read more…

General News, Technical Notes ABB, ACS550, ACS800, MultiSmart

The Blue Ocean Strategy is a great book by Kim and Mauborgne (Harvard Press) that looks at how exciting new  products can be created at the development stage by focusing on uncontested market space.

In the book the authors argue that instead of companies trying to be better than the competitors and fighting over market share they should instead focus on making the competition irrelevant by creating uncontested Blue Ocean market places where new demands of customers are satisfied.  Rather than trying to beat the competition at their own game businesses looking for uncontested space should answer four questions:

• Which of the factors that our industry takes for granted should be eliminated?
• Which factors should be reduced well below the industry’s standard?
• Which factors should be raised well above the industry’s standard?
• Which factors should be created that the industry never offered?

I found the book a good read and like anyone who learns about a new model or concept I wanted to try it out on one of our products at home.  I knew that no-one here had read the book before designing the MultiSmart Pump Station Manager over five years ago so it would be a good test. I am now sitting down and will do my best to answer the four questions:

• What did we eliminate that the industry took for granted?
That is easy. We took away the need to bring in a third party expert to set up, commission or make changes to the configuration of pump control in a lift station. It was all made so easy to use that any operator could be given simple training to do it and save themselves big dollars!

• What factor did we reduce below the industry standard? 
After thinking about that for a while it occurs to me that the MultiSmart reduces the number of moving parts found in any panel or station control box. The standard control panel is full of gear. A MultiSmart takes a lot of that away – up to 14 different devices are eliminated from one panel, maybe more. Again – big savings.

• Which factors did the MultiSmart raise well above the industry standard?
One of the biggest issues for the industry is getting enough data from lift stations and pump station. On average the industry is used to controllers providing less than 50 tags. We saw that as being the big picture for customers. The more information you have to hand the better your decision making. Asset managers are becoming more focused on network management, efficiency, energy and operating costs. Information and lots of it was going to be the key. We upped the ante with the MultiSmart and brought back 500 tags of data (and growing).  This allows greater level of control and monitoring than ever offered before in a controller.

• Which factor did we create that had not been offered before? 
Going back to the book for examples the authors showed how Cirque Du Soleil had solved this by being the first to offer a high level of theatre to their industry (Circus entertainment). That leads me to say that the MultiSmart was the first to offer an out-of –the-box solution for full pump station management. All the hard work has been done for you.  All the smarts come with the unit and we provide free upgrades as we develop them.

You might agree with me on those answers or you might not. My view is that they stand up to some scrutiny but I would love to hear if anyone has a different view. Read more…

General News, Industry MultiSmart, Pump Controller, Pump Station Management

This station is one of the four major stations in Greenwich, CT USA.  It pumps directly into the force main and sees an inflow of about 500 GPM into its very small well. If you would like to see video of the inflow into the well send me an email. If the station were to go down there will almost certainly be an overflow because they have only 20 minutes to respond. The station is equipped with a 2 VFD’s , backup generator,  mixer and a grinder.

The PLC operating the station used PID to keep a constant level in the well but the alternation feature did not work so someone would visit the station everyday to alternate the lead pump via the touch panel. The station used to have a an indicator panel separate from the PLC display that indicated what alarms were present. All three components (PLC, touch panel, indicator) were removed and only a MSU3MP took their place. One of the main reasons the town wanted to undertake the replacement of the PLC’s is the maintenance cost of the PLC programming. Most municipalities outsource the PLC programming. The MultiSmart has enabled them to get rid of the maintenance cost while adding the many features of the MultiSmart into the station.

Greenwich South Panel before installing MultiSmart

It took 4 hours to get the station running on the Colacino Demo unit and 4 days to complete the retrofit. This relatively small demo unit is used by Colacino for retrofits and for MultiSmart demos. It has 30 ft cables coming out of it that were temporarily wired into the panel to keep the station running while the work was performed.

Greenwich South Panel: removed components

Colacino demo unit

Greenwich South Water panel after installing MultiSmart

General News colacino, greenwich, MultiSmart

When someone talks about the capital infrastructure of a water or waste water utility or authority they are referring to things like the pipe networks, the lift stations, water mains and treatment plants a utility owns and is responsible for. These are usually very large and costly investments by any standard and that is why most times the owner of the assets must levy fees in the form of taxes when other government funds cannot be found.

Asset management is the term used to describe the management of this infrastructure in a way that minimizes total costs. These costs are made up of the cost of investment, operating costs, maintenance costs and the eventual cost of replacing the assets at the end of their life cycle.

Asset management for our customers is all about the analysis of information in order to make informed decisions about their capital investments. The better the information – the better the decision they can make. There is a big incentive to use that information on decisions that will minimize costs.

All utilities and authorities are limited in their spending to how much they collect in water and wastewater rates. Therefore a critical goal for the city is to manage their assets in such a way that they can achieve the level of service desired by customers AND meet the legal requirements of the regulators WITHOUT going over the amount of money they are allocated to spend each year.

So asset management is all about the analysis of information to make better decisions about investments. The more data you have and the more of that data you get in real time – the better you are able to manage your assets.

According to the Water Investment Newsletter the application of information technologies to the water industry is destined to become a high-growth opportunity. As if we did not know that!

Combining a modern SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system with the MultiSmart Pump Station Manager provides a sophisticated solution to asset management. This ensures not only continuous monitoring and control but a high level of predictive intelligence at the site where the assets are. Our enabling technology creates operational efficienies, and reduces maintenance and energy costs. This in turn helps the customer delay or reduces rate increases, helps bridge their funding gaps and optimizes their assets performance and reliability.

In the US much of the water infrastructure is approaching the end of its asset life cycle. This makes it a healthy candidate to get federal funding for capital renewal. We have already identified around $5billion in “shovel ready” projects that are eligible under the America Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Multitrode designs its products with the needs of the customer in mind. In fact one of our core values is that the customer is “Boss”. Our view is that the MultiSmart is the best solution to a customer looking for a better way to manage assets.

Some examples of how the MultiSmart delivers better Asset Management

Capital Costs: The MultiSmart is great value for money. It allows for lower cost panels. in many cases it can pay for itself in the first 12 months. The one unit replaces up to 14 other devices.

Maintenance Costs: The MultiSmart provides large amounts of data from the remote site back to a central site to be analysed. It also has on site predictive intelligence that can tell when a pump will need servicing.

Operating Costs: We know that any network where MultiSmarts are fitted will reduce after hours call outs by up to 80%. That reduces emergency response costs and “on call” costs. We also know that energy costs can be reduced by up to 15%.

Recycling: The MultiSmart has a 5 Year warranty. The case is made of recyclable plastics and the boards can be returned and disposed of in the appropriate way.

Read more…

General News

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…

General News dnp3 security, MultiSmart, PID

v2.1 of the MultiSmart Pump Station Manager will be released in the next week or two. There’s some great new features included as well as lots of small enhancements and cosmetic upgrades:

• PID control, e.g. for constant pressure, constant flow via IsaGRAF
• New comms screen making all the communications much easier to setup
• Smart Outflow calculation to cater for high inflow conditions
• Updated DNP3 security (v2)
• Time to spill calculation on the main screen
• Generator functionality (e.g., run time and starts)

More about these features in later posts.

What else is in v2.1?

Fault finding tool – you can enable DNP3 and Modbus logging on the unit, then view the log on the LCD. We’ll do a post later which shows more about how this works in practice and why it’s useful.

Pump Running by External Control – the display shows when the over-ride is running the pumps (known via contactor auxiliary or currents). The main screen shows External Run next to that pump. And the starts and hours run accumulators also update. Thanks to Todd Burnett from Coastal Process & Steve Lahm from North East Water for requesting it (and maybe others as well).

DOUT from multiple sources – you can already do with this with IsaGRAF or the logic engine, but a few customers requested being able to configure a DOUT from a number of sources without using custom logic. So the user interface lets you choose a number of sources and select the “operator” – AND, OR, XOR.

Station Outflow alarm – there are already flow alarms by pump, this has been introduced to cover the complete station.

Cosmetic improvement - holding down a softkey repeats the keypress – greatly welcomed by anyone who has configured lots of faults and digital inputs for example.

Upgrading – the DSP upgrade is automatic, so you don’t have to remember to do that after a firmware upgrade. And when you put in a CF card with an upgrade image the unit prompts you to do an update.

Extra IO blocks in LCD – the Acromag and Adam IO units weren’t fully integrated into the LCD but now have been. Previously the available IO from external units didn’t show up in some of the settings screens (only in the advanced screens), but now do.

Custom names for IsaGRAF tags – the user can rename any IsaGRAF tag as well as change values, making the process a lot more intuitive. Read more…

General News MultiSmart

Following on from the post about MultiSmart v2..

Since v2 was released there have been a few minor releases. There are lots of small features and cosmetic improvements with a few more important additions. I highlight in bold the more interesting ones, but if you are a current MultiSmart user then any one of the smaller items may be important enough for you to want to upgrade.

If you do want to see every last “ticket” (as we call them), you need to get access to the MultiSmart firmware page, which you do by creating a login on the main site and requesting access to MultiSmart firmware. (Or, if you have already signed up, login and click “Edit my details”).

2.0.1 added

• Support for Single-Phase AC Monitoring and Fault Detection – important for smaller pump stations so that the “phase fail” functionality can be included
• Integrate Acromag IO Devices into screens
• Configurable units for pump efficiency
• Efficiency calculations during an overflow
• Show DSP Version number on Info page
• Invert Analog input value
• Telstra Modem support – CDR-882SEU & CDR-780SEU

 v2.0.2 added:

• Multiple thresholds on Insulation Resistance Test (IRT) -to allow a warning and a “fault pump” value
• Level device analog compare

v2.0.3 added

• Level locked feature – to indicate faulty level device
• I2T motor protection
• Protect reset accumulators via security login
• Support for redundant IP address

v2.0.4 added:

• Remote reconfiguration of DNP points list
• Display inversion – user selectable

A reminder that you can download the latest firmware for free from the MultiTrode website. We will shortly be releasing v2.1, so there will be a post about the main features in 2.1 very shortly. Read more…

General News

When you find useful stuff on the web, it can be hard to keep track of it all. You can bookmark it, and in Internet Explorer (or another browser), you assign it to a folder.

Later, you have some memory of a useful website that you found but when you look in a likely folder under your bookmarks there are 50 links. Is it there? It’s hard to be interested enough to find it, so you do another Google search and start over..

I started experimenting with Diigo (www.diigo.com) a few days ago.

Diigo is one of many “social bookmarking” websites but seems to have some handy add ons.

What’s a social bookmarking website anyway? They are websites that let you share interesting websites with friends or colleagues.

What diigo offers which makes it more interesting – even if you aren’t interested in any sharing, is you can:

• highlight a section (or sections) of a webpage
• pin a post it note with your comments
• save it to your Diigo bookmarks with one or more tags

The tags concept lets you create your own categories and later search for the bookmarks under these categories.

It’s a simple solution to the problem that anyone who uses Windows Explorer to store files has found – you can only store a file in one location so later, you might try 5 different places to find what you are looking for. If instead you can tag up a website with a few different keywords you have much more chance of searching for it – and finding it – later.

Here’s an example below:

Commenting on and highlighting a section of a website

If you go to www.diigo.com and sign up you can add the diigo toolbar to IE (or Firefox). The toolbar lets you easily highlight and add your sticky notes or comments to a site – and to review all the websites you have bookmarked.

I’m on diigo as “stevecarson”. I’m going to try it out some more and see how it works for the sharing side.. Read more…

General News

Some people might be interested in the latest MultiSmart brochure now on the main website.

You can find it under the MultiSmart section of the website, at www.multitrode.com/pump-station-manager/data-sheets.html

Some people prefer to read a “real paper” version, so you can always ask your local MultiTrode sales office to give you a copy.

We like to encourage less paper but the reason we printed a few thousand is that we know it’s not an easy shift to have everything as a soft copy and not print it out.

Multismart-brochure

General News

This continues from the earlier DNP3 posts -

Part One: Date/Time Stamping – or Less Guessing
Part Two: Communications Options – Polling and Unsolicited Reporting
Part Three: Security

The DNP3 protocol also supports guaranteed delivery. What does this mean?

Suppose you want to send a command to start a pump. How do you know the RTU at site received the command? With some older and simpler protocols the only way to check is to read the status of the pump at a slightly later time – and hope you catch it in the act.

Or suppose you want to ensure that the message High level alarm or All pumps unavailable sent from the RTU was not missed by the master station or SCADA? With some protocols, like Modbus, there isn’t any mechanism for ensuring this.

DNP3 provides message acknowledgements. With unsolicited reporting, the RTU might send all changed data every half hour, or if the event buffer was full. The “message” that the DNP3 protocol sends includes all the tags that have changed with the date/time of each, and also includes a sequence number. The master station would send an acknowledgement to the RTU – or “outstation” – that that sequence number had been received.

In the event that the RTU / outstation didn’t get that confirmation, it would retry. And after a certain time period the site would go into a Comms Fail mode with probably a longer retry delay. I say “probably” because that depends on how the user sets it up, but that would be the sensible approach.

As you can see if you’ve been following this series on DNP3, the creators of DNP3 designed it for the challenging world of telemetry where communications is always suspect and often problematic.

There’s more to configure in the protocol of course, but each element is there to ensure data integrity:

• you know what happened
• exactly when it happened
• you can guarantee that the SCADA system knows about it
• and you can ensure that data is genuine and not from a hacker

Read more…

General News DNP3, reliability, RTU, SCADA, telemetry

We only launched the blog a month ago, so for people following the blog it seems worth doing a catch up on recent history.

v2.0 of Multismart was released in July 2008 and came with some major enhancements.

PLC functionality

IsaGRAF v5 was added in as an option to the product. This means that a full IEC61131-3 compliant PLC extension is available (all 5 languages).

How does it integrate and when is it needed?

First thing to mention is that the code behind MultiSmart is NOT written in a PLC language. It’s in C++ for a whole bunch of reasons that I hope to get our software team to elaborate on at a slightly later date.

What MultiSmart does do is make ALL of the many tags (1000’s) available to the PLC module for reading and writing. This then allows a PLC programmer to extend, change or add totally new modules, without having to rewrite the complete application or module from scratch.

Praveen wrote a post recently about a customer who wanted to match dosing of SulfaLock to the flow rate for odor control. It’s such a custom requirement that you wouldn’t expect to find it in the standard list of MultiSmart functions! So Praveen developed it for the customer in IsaGRAF. The customer or his SI could have done the same, so it’s not dependant on MultiTrode engineering staff writing the application. Of course, we like doing custom applications because it’s a great opportunity to learn more.

Another PLC application would be testing a high level alarm in a specific way – turning the pumps off periodically, letting the level rise, and ensuring the high level alarm actually operated. That’s a function that we might include as standard at some stage, but I’m sure you get the idea.

How might that work?  The PLC application would interface to the pump controller module - maybe based on date/time and certain other conditions being met (low flow rates, no pump alarms last 3 days), and turn the pumps off, then monitor the level to where the high level alarm should activate. If it does activate, start the pumps, send a “High level alarm check ok” signal to SCADA and reset the high level alarm. If it doesn’t activate, still start the pumps (!), send a “High level alarm FAIL” signal to SCADA and reset the high level alarm.

There is a lot of functionality in MultiSmart so a challenge for us is educating our customer base as to what’s there so someone doesn’t spend a week or two rewriting something we have already done and tested..

Another enhancement in v2 is to be able to view all tags on the LCD screen, including IsaGRAF tags and the entire tag database (go to the Info screen on MultiSmart) – makes on-site troubleshooting a lot easier!

DNP3 Security

The new standard for DNP3 security was out so we included it in MultiSmart v2. There’s a big concern about security in SCADA communications so we moved it to the top of our queue. You can find out more in this DNP3 Security post.

More Expandable I/O

We added some off the shelf I/O blocks and integrated them into the user interface. Why 3rd party I/O modules? Standard I/O is pretty much a commodity these days so there are plenty of great modules out there. We added two Adam units from Advantech, and in 2.01 added two UL-listed Acromag units. They connect on Ethernet using Modbus TCP protocol.

What we’ve done in MultiSmart I/O is focus on specific pump station requirements, so even though the most common I/O card you find in MultiSmart has 2x 4-20mA Analog inputs, 1x 4-20mA Analog output, 7 Digital outputs and 20 Digital inputs – there are some extras. The Digital inputs as default are volt-free contact closure inputs but can also be configured to read Flygt FLS, PTC thermistors, seal sensors, conductive probe inputs (for the MultiTrode probe), and a few can be configured to be Flygt CLS or high speed counters. The card also includes 3 inputs for reading phase-to-phase supply directly – up to 600v input.

And the energy and pump efficiency card reads 3-phase currents, and provides insulation resistance. Reading all this I/O usually means you have to buy lots of parts to do the signal conditioning. So most people don’t do it and spend lots of time driving to site to see what’s going on..

All of these pump station specific I/O makes the control panel, simpler, more intelligent, smaller – and of course lower cost.

But when it came to another card for 8x standard AINs or 16x standard Digital Inputs we thought why not just a card from someone else?

Import and export of DNP3 and Modbus tags

You can now export the DNP3 and Modbus tags as a .csv file and save it onto the CF card – or read it via ftp. And you can re-import the tag list back after modifying it.

This matters because as a default there are 400-500 tags in MultiSmart and if you want to play around with that configuration it takes a while through the user interface. Also you might want to synchronize data with a SCADA configuration file or master PLC.

Energy Monitoring and Energy Saving

v2 includes “Run the most efficient pump”, also known as “Alternation by efficiency”

This allows automatic saving of energy. You set a parameter for the ratio to run – e.g. run the most efficient pump 20:1 compared with the other pump(s). If it just ran the most efficient pump, the system could never get an opportunity to recheck – or to check the other pump runs ok.

How much do pumps drop in efficiency? I.e. how much can you save? It’s one of those values that people rarely know. As one major pump supplier said to us, “We all know the pump curve the day it leave the factory, but 1 year, 3 years later, what is it like? No one knows” They showed us a study they had done but it’s confidential. We did put some studies that we found on the Energy & Environment page on our main site, which indicated that wastewater pumps were often more than 15% below their original efficiency. Even clean water pumps can degrade significantly – always a surprise.

So the Run most efficient pump feature gives a change to automatically and easily save energy costs.

Other features

There’s a couple of other minor features:

• Digital Output pulse and delay functionality
• Support for relative level

How do I get v2?

Easy. I’m assuming you have a MultiSmart of course. If you don’t, and you have a lift station, try one out!

If you do, you can download the firmware for FREE from the multitrode.com website. You can find the link under the Training and Support section at http://www.multitrode.com/firmware-upgrades.php

You will need to signup on the site. If you don’t already have a login, just click the Signup button in the top right (of the main website), and check the box – Please give me access to the free MultiSmart firmware upgrades & release information. If you do already have a login and haven’t been in the MultiSmart firmware access section before, make sure you are logged in and click the Edit my account details link, then check the MultiSmart firmware access box.

We process that request manually so it usually takes a day, sometimes less - but if you are in a hurry you can always call up your MultiTrode office and speed things up.

How do I find out about New Versions?

Easy. Follow this blog. If you haven’t already subscribed just click the Subscribe by RSS    or Subscribe by Email icon in the top right. Find out about Subscribe by RSS.

Alternatively, or as well, to make sure you don’t miss anything, in the instructions above (”How do I get v2?”) about editing your login details to the MultiTrode site, you can check the box Please update me on email with all new releases of software or hardware in the MultiTrode family of products (MultiSmart/PumpView/Outpost2).

If you are a MultiSmart customer it’s well worth finding out the details of all the new features. It’s free to upgrade!

More about some minor MultiSmart updates since v2 in a later post.. Read more…

General News dnp3 security, isagraf, plc, pump efficiency

The magazine Control Engineering ran their monthly Information Control email today which included a tutorial from MultiTrode and Parasyn:

www.controleng.com/article/CA6640186.html 

They describe the tutorial:

SCADA systems aren’t scalable out of the box; you have to plan with the final footprint in mind,” says Tony Poole, managing director of Parasyn, a system integrator specializing in water/waste water applications. Steve Carson is with MultiTrode, a manufacturer of MultiSmart pump station manager units, which are replacement devices for pump controllers or PLCs/RTUs for lift stations. The devices add more monitoring and control capability to SCADA systems, and can also add 400 to 500 tags (data points) per site. In this tutorial, Carson and Poole provide best-practice advice for designing large tag count SCADA systems so they are manageable.”

Control Engineering  have a number of email newsletters that you can subscribe to. There’s plenty of good quality articles that make it worth the free subscription. Just visit http://www.controleng.com and you will see the Newsletters menu item on their site.

There’s a story behind how we came to write that article together, a subject for another day.

We find the subject of large tag count systems very interesting – we’ve run into it a number of times and in different elements of the SCADA solution. Parasyn’s approach made a lot of sense when they explained it to us and we certainly learnt from their experience.

“SCADA systems aren’t scalable out of the box; you have to plan with the final footprint in mind,” says Tony Poole, managing director of Parasyn.

Have a read of the article. It will be in the print edition of Control Engineering  in April. Read more…

General News large tag count, reporting, SCADA, telemetry