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Arctic Fox™
Our experience with temperature
control and monitoring on marine vessels means our land-based
temperature monitoring and alarm systems are:
- able to monitor large numbers of sensors (in excess of 1000 if required)
- extremely robust
Furthermore, our marine cargo temperature monitoring systems are
certified by the USDA as complying with their in-transit cold
treatment regulations, and we use the same designs for our land-based
biorepository/biobank systems.
- Master station complex comprising monitoring PCs (communicating with temperature transducer input modules) and dialers to automatically dial out when an alarm occurs out of hours. The monitoring PCs allow operators to, for example, acknowledge alarms, alter settings, and manage the emergency contacts list for the alarm system. The master station complex has full redundancy to ensure continuous monitoring.
- A choice of temperature
transducer input modules:
- Outstations - each can monitor up to 256 +-200oC PT100 sensors, or other inputs such as oxygen depletion sensors for liquid nitrogen areas or digital inputs such as fan on/off. Multiple outstations can be added to the system depending on the number of transducers to be monitored. The transducers are wired to junction boxes (as marshalling units) and then onward cabled to the outstations. The outstations contain all the required signal conditioning to convert the input signals to temperatures which are then passed on to the master stations (each outstation has its own independent link to each master station PC).
- Distributed input modules connected to a 2-core IP67 cable which runs around the entire installation. The data is collected by Ethernet-based gateway units which communicate with the master station PCs via an Ethernet network. Again, multiple gateway units can be added allowing thousands of transducers to be monitored. Digital I/O can also be incorporated.
- A mixture of the above as required.
The master
station PCs provide the following functionality:
- set alarm limits
- store a history of alarms, as well as changes to the system
- automatically dial out to engineers if alarm states are detected outside of normal working hours
- print out histories of temperature readings
- conduct trending on sensors
- operation of the system with different levels of passwords, each with its own functionality
The advantage of the distributed system is that cabling in new installations dramatically reduced, and sensors can be easily moved (the simply clip on to the 2-core cable).
The Arctic Fox™ system (whether outstations or distributed input modules are used) is 21 CFR 11 compliant (as installed).
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20/08/10