Practical Cases

June 20, 2010--ProSoft Technology announces Industrial Hotspot series of radios with SweetWilliam Automation’s ScadaMobile application for the iPhone/iPod platform. The application is designed to provide engineers with access to live process control variables, and the ability to modify this data remotely from their iPhones.

Functionally, the application creates a secure wireless interface between an iPhone device and an existing 802.11 wireless network on the plant-floor, effectively allowing an iPhone device to read Modbus TCP/IP and EtherNet/IP process control variables from Programmable Automation Controllers / Programmable Logic Controllers (PAC/PLCs) distributed throughout their plants. These live values are displayed in stylized lists and include user-established variance allowances and alarms. Engineers are able to monitor these variables in real time and make adjustments on the fly from an iPhone device.

The Wired Boat Company, located in Vancouver, Canada designs and installs shipboard automation and instrumentation. Their systems are built on reliable industrial PLCs and touch panel HMIs so that everything on board can be monitored. Engines, Generators, Electrical and Navigation Systems are integrated on a single interface for convenience, efficiency and ease of use.

The Wired Boat Company is now using ScadaMobile to make real time information collected by their systems available to customers through the iPhone. As an extension to their in.finity and in.finity+ offerings, their new i-Boat Monitoring adds a new remote functionality to their current capabilities.

The new i-Boat product is built with ScadaMobile as a basis. The Wired Boat custom built the necessary configuration files for use on their in.finity systems. No changes were required on their existing systems. Our ScadaMobile App helps The Wired Boat Co. continue it's mission to deliver the highest quality products and services at reasonable prices, and adding features that make a difference.

More information at http://www.wiredboat.com/

Samuel Jackson, Inc. is a leading OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) serving the cotton gin industry which has over 50 years of experience in this challenging environment. They offer over 35 different products in drying, moisture restoration, measurement and online air diagnostics. And they wanted to extend their offerings still further by adding iPhone accessibility to their gins.

So they were fast at identifying the advantages of our ScadaMobile solution and they asked us to develop a customized version for them. The app we jointly developed was called Mobile Mirror.

The Mobile Mirror app places real time cotton gin production data from a Samuel Jackson Moisture Mirror IV in your pocket. Critical data like production rate, recent shift production totals, moisture measurements, and ambient weather conditions are everywhere at your disposal as if you were standing at the control console in the gin. The app uses VPN (virtual private network) for security so only authorized users will be able to view gin’s data.

In this case Scada Mobile is being used to provide information about the state and running parameters of a mini hydro plant located next to the Pyrenees base mountains, on the Spain side.

Before Scada Mobile, the customer used a web based system configured around an Omron HMI touch screen (NS series) with embedded web-server, which was connected to the internet through a GPRS router.

The customer looked for a more efficient way to be connected to his plant and consequently he tried ScadaMobile. Our solution provided him with a new light to his hydro plant because according to his own words "now I feel nearer to my facility even if I am many miles away, because unless the previous system, ScadaMobile brings almost instantly all the relevant information I want with only a single touch of an icon". The customer also told us that he is now more confident giving orders to the system (such as run/stop or set-point changes) because of ScadaMobile's essential lack of response delays.