A reminder for those who aren’t aware – if you have a MultiSmart you can get FREE software upgrades for the life of the product. This applies to any end-user or system integrator or contractor working for the end-user.

If you haven’t already registered on the MultiTrode website, all you have to do is click on the SignUp box in the top right on the main multitrode.com site:

When you get the member registration form, don’t forget to select the box which says: “Please give me access to the free MultiSmart firmware upgrades..” – see below..

If you have already registered on the new multitrode.com website and didn’t select this option at the time - but do want access to MultiSmart firmware, just send an email to webmaster@multitrode.com requesting an upgrade – best to include a phone number where we can contact you.

Specification Document Update for v2.0.4

Part of the reason for this post was to let people know that the specification document has been updated for MultiSmart.

The specification document generally has two main audience groups – those who want a chance to review the main features of a product – to understand what the product offers; and, those who want to write that functionality into a specification for a bid document.

The new MultiSmart spec document is relevant for v2.0.4 onwards of MultiSmart, and includes functionality like “locked level detection” - a subject of a future blog post.

v2.0.4 was released in December 2008. If you don’t have a copy and you are a MultiSmart end-user, or an SI or contractor for an end-user, please register on our website as described above. 

How can you get hold of the spec document? Visit http://www.multitrode.com/pump-station-manager/specifying.html to find the latest pdf and word copies. 

If you are looking for specifications for any MultiTrode product, simply navigate to that product by clicking Products & Software, then find the product you are looking for and select the Specifying link.

And if you stumbled across this blog post and want to know how to get future blogs without having to remember to visit the website 10 times a month – simply subscribe. If you are already reading this blog post in a reader (like Google Reader or Feedburner) then it looks like you are already ok. If you are reading this on our website, just click on one of the two links at the top right of this blog – subscribe by email – OR, better, subscribe by RSS (less clogged email inbox). Read more…

General News Add new tag, Technical

We posted a news item on our main site about Trihedral and MultiTrode.

Background

This brief blog post gives a bit of background. Canadian-based Trihedral have been making inroads into the water and wastewater industry – our main market – for some time. From our perspective, we have seen them win a lot of customers in the SE of the USA. They might be winning customers in lots of other areas too.. we’ve just noticed the SE region.

The Florida market has had a major supplier who locked up the customer base with a proprietary protocol. What Trihedral did was reverse engineer the protocol. As a result, the Trihedral VTS platform can be implemented by these customers who can continue to use their existing field hardware but are now free of their restraints! They change their SCADA platform, keep their old hardware (so don’t have to change everything overnight), but they can start using new products.

These customers who have switched to VTS can now introduce any product they want in the field – or the plant – so long as it supports open protocols like Modbus or DNP3. 

The Partnership

That’s the background, but the news item is about what Trihedral have done, in partnership with MultiTrode. VTS will shortly have an “add site” function for MultiSmart.

This function essentially removes a lot of the legwork, or integration, out of bringing a MultiSmart site with 100’s of tags (data points) into the VTS system.

The new version of VTS isn’t quite out yet – expected in February. But I saw a demo of it a few months ago and was very impressed. The MultiSmart pump station manager was on an ethernet link (could have been a radio link) to the VTS SCADA server and the whole process was automated.

The remote MultiSmart site created a compressed version of the XML configuration (we use XML as standard for all configuration files), transmitted it using DNP file transfer (industry standard), VTS loaded it, unzipped it, and presented the user with a few checkbox options for configuration – including graphics, alarms and controls.

I know some of the Florida customers are very keen to get their hands on it. And some of our engineers are very interested in what Trihedral have done.

2+2 is more than 4 – if you choose the right combination

That’s the beauty of working with other companies who are great at what they do and have a passion for making things better! New ideas that spur our engineers on to come up with even more innovation.. and make life easier for the customer. Read more…

SCADA & Telemetry Add new tag, DNP3, MultiSmart, SCADA, telemetry