SCADA and Telemetry
Ilios Research and Development has been developing
products for the telemetry / SCADA (supervisory control and data
acquisition) industry since 1992. This includes development of the
‘Kingfisher’ Series 2 range for RTUnet, and more recently the
‘SCADAPack’ range of PLC/RTUs for Control Microsystems.
We have extensive experience with communications
protocols for the utility industry, including the industry-standard DNP
protocol as well as many others including Modbus, IEC61850, Allen Bradley
DF1, Kingfisher Series 2, CAN-bus, and many others.
We have extensive software and hardware design
experience with embedded processors including the Hitachi SH-3, Intel x86,
strongARM, and 8051; and industrial real-time operating systems including
WindRiver VxWorks, PharLap, and ByteBos.
We also have extensive experience with SCADA HMI
systems including Citect, Wonderware, and ClearSCADA, both from the
perspective of systems configuration using these products, and software
development of these products. We have worked with Control Microsystems and
Serck Controls (creators of ClearSCADA) on design upgrades of ClearSCADA to
integrate gas flow metering, as well as RTU configuration and logic
programming based on the IEC61131 standard, within the product.
 
Control
Microsystems are a large telemetry and SCADA equipment manufacturer, based in
Canada and with offices
in USA and Australia.
Their product range of ‘SCADAPack’ telemetry units and
‘ClearSCADA’ software is well-respected and well-used
worldwide.
Ilios
Research and Development has worked with Control Microsystems over the past
five years to help build the business in the Asia/Pacific region, by
developing and enhancing the ‘SCADAPack’ product range to suit
the local market. This has involved a significant amount of new product
development – developing support for industry-standard communications
protocols such as DNP 3.0 which are required by the local market, and new
communications mediums such as GPRS and CDMA 1x.
This
development work involved working closely with the Control Microsystems
engineering development team based in Ottawa,
Canada.
DNP3
– Distributed Network Protocol – is a standards-based
communications protocol developed to enhance interoperability among systems
in the electricity, oil & gas, water and security industries. It is an
open standard, controlled by the DNP Users Group.
Ilios
were contracted by Control Microsystems to add DNP3 support to their
SCADApack products. This included both slave operation, allowing a
SCADAPack to respond to data requests from a remote master station, and
master operation, allowing a SCADAPack to act as a data concentrator and
gather data from remote outstations. An extensive set of features was added,
including unsolicited reporting, event logging with/without timestamps,
support for multiple masters, select-before-operate control of output
points, and pulsed digital outputs.
The
innovative way in which this was implemented allows for easy configuration,
and in most cases means that no extra logic configuration is necessary.
Download
the Control
Microsystems DNP datasheet
For
more information, visit the Control Microsystems website or email Peter King, Control
Microsystems Asia Pacific manager.
RTUnet
 
RTUnet
(formerly Action Controls) are a leading Australian manufacturer of
telemetry equipment based in Melbourne,
producing the well-respected ‘Kingfisher’ range of telemetry
products.
Ilios
Research and Development worked with RTUnet to design and develop the
Series 2 range of Kingfisher RTUs from its inception in the mid-1990s; and
to continue to maintain and enhance the products since then. We were
responsible for the complete software architecture design for these
products, including firmware for the embedded processors and for the I/O
module processors; and an innovative ladder logic compiler design which
allows quick and easy programming of these telemetry devices using
industry-standard ladder logic.
Some
more recent additions to the Kingfisher Series 2 family are the CP-21
processor module with ethernet capability, and the video capture module,
both of which were designed and developed by us.
‘CP-21’
Telemetry Processor
We were contracted by RTUnet to design and develop
a new telemetry processor module for the Kingfisher Series 2 range. This
module is based on 80386EX CPU, includes ethernet and TCP/IP capability,
and incorporates a commercial real-time operating system.
The software design is based on the flexible
series 2 architecture, allowing modular I/O (up to 4 racks of 16 modules)
and modular communications options (up to 16 comms ports) to be added. It
also incorporates the simple ladder logic programming capability used in
all series 2 products. We were also responsible for design and maintenance
of the ‘Toolbox’ windows program used for configuring these
units and for ladder logic editing and debugging.
Video Surveillance
System
Ilios
were contracted by RTUnet to design and develop a video capture and storage
unit for security surveillance and monitoring applications over telemetry
networks. This involved hardware design of the capture and compression
unit; software design of a Windows application for interfacing with a
network of these units in a telemetry network; and design of a suitable
method for streaming this data across the network to a host computer
Two
products were designed: one with a dedicated Zoran JPEG-compression IC and
separate microprocessor for communications, for up to real-time, 25 frames
per second operation; and one with a general-purpose Analog Devices DSP,
for low-cost low-power still-frame image capture at around one frame per
second. We designed and developed the code for both these units, including
the DSP code to perform motion-JPEG compression, mainly in C but with the
time-critical sections including the DCT transform in assembler.
This
involved hardware and software design for the video capture unit and
development of a windows-based program for communications with the devices,
uploading and storage and database management and archival of the images.
For
more information, visit the RTUnet website.
|