Access Monitoring at Remote Location

Posted in: Application News on November 5th, 2009

At the start of 2009, Pacific Automation commissioned a solar powered remote access monitoring system at a rail yard in Pilbara, Western Australia.

Scope Of Project

The customer needed to monitor seven access points and activate alarms upon unauthorised entry. This requires monitoring of the gate position, an infra red cross beam and an infra red motion detector. Due to the distance from mains power, the system had to be self powered.

Pacific Automation’s Solution

Working in conjunction with the site’s engineers, Pacific Automation developed a solar powered system to monitor a number of parameters at each location and send the data back to a central master unit. A PLC at the master polls the inputs at the six remote locations via a 2.4GHz wireless network. Alarms can be sent via voice, SMS or fax to the on duty security officer to alert them to unauthorised entry via the use of a GPRS modem.

Each remote pole was fitted with solar panels and batteries, temperature monitors, a Modbus TCP/IP input module, 2.4 GHz Ethernet Modem and timer.

Summer temperatures at the installation site reach in excess of 40⁰C and temperatures inside external steel enclosures can reach in excess of 70⁰C. To combat this, all enclosures we double skinned and coated with heat reflecting paint. In addition to this, specialty products with high temperature ratings were used to ensure system stability.

Pacific Automation managed all aspects of the project, from the fabrication of the steel mounting poles to the commissioning of the electronics and training.