The effluent pump station is 45 kilometres away so you have to make the drive. After all, what other options are there? You could put in a landline for remote control and monitoring but it doesn’t run past the pump station’s door. One new option is to get out your mobile phone and use it to turn on the pump. And what’s more, when the holding tank is full your mobile phone will let you know.
An Australian owned and operated company, Maxon Electronics Australia Pty Ltd, spent months researching and developing a solution in consultation with industry groups. The outcome of this collaborative effort has been the design and manufacture here in Australia of the ‘ChatterBox’, an innovative user friendly off the shelf ‘box’ that uses Telstra’s national CDMA mobile phone network for connection.
That means no landline is needed for an in field connection. Users have the ability to communicate with the ChatterBox using a mobile phone’s Short Message Service (SMS), or alternatively, over standard telephone lines and a PC. To turn a pump on, a Council officer can send an SMS from their mobile phone to the ChatterBox. To turn it off, they send another SMS. To check that the relays have been activated they can request the ChatterBox to send an input/output status report direct to their mobile phone screen using SMS.
Using this system, the Council officer can monitor basic functions via sensors installed on the equipment for each critical parameter requiring monitoring. These could be fluid level, flow, temperature and so forth. Operators can now have a higher confidence that their remote in field equipment is functioning as required.
For further information contact Andrew Arnold at Maxon, telephone 0418 977 778 or visit www.maxon.com.au.
* Copy supplied by Maxon Electronics Australia Pty Ltd
