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Showing posts from 2018

The Arnold Classic 2018: Enter Raspberry PI

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The Arnold Classic 2018: A place for those with a passion for sport, fitness, and an overall desire to challenge themselves, compete, and to ultimately be blessed with the eternal spoils of victory after an arduous two and half days of pushing their bodies and minds to their absolute limits. Enter IDX, what challenge faces the mighty IDX you ask? Will we dead lift four hundred kilograms worth of ice cold steel, and prove ourselves stronger than a ‘mountain’? Will we sprint that one-hundred-meter sprint faster than a ‘bolt’ of lightning? Will we outplay the E-Sport community to be crowned the ultimate gamers in the land? Well… not quite, but we did create an awesome solution for managing the chess timers in the Big Chess School tournament, using some cutting-edge technology, including but not limited to:            Raspberry PI Model B as our hardware platform running Raspbian Stretch       Node as our underlying server            Node-Red to handle the Raspberry PI’s GP

Remotely Monitor Tank Levels Part 2/2 - Online configuration

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So, now that we have successfully installed our tank sensor in our last blog: Remotely Monitor Tank Levels Part 1/2   We can move onto the configuration of the Netbiter Argos server (User Interface and logging server for the Netbiter system. Step 1: Create an account on the Netbiter Argos server Go to www.netbiter.net and press "create account". From here you will need to add the particulars supplied with your newly purchased Netbiter Controller including the System ID and the Activation code, this will enable the Argos server to link to your Netbiter and fetch the required information from your devices. You will also need to supply a unique account name and password (these will form your login details to the server). Lastly the account creation process will require some personal particulars such as your name and contact details. Account will be created once you follow the activation prompts emailed through to you, once you login to your Argos account for the first

Insights from the PROFIBUS wire (understanding equipment behaviour)

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This blog is a by-product of a recent project to investigate and validate the sequence of events on some electrical Switch-gear where the SCADA and Switch-gear communicate over PROFIBUS DP. This was done by examining what was happening "on the PROFIBUS wire" (Actually PROFIBUS DP has two wires, a red one and a green one!). It also brought into focus the idea that analysis of process data as it appears “on the wire” could have many operational and maintenance benefits – achieved without additional loading or complication for the  associated SCADA. While it is true that modern field-bus and industrial Ethernet systems support the use of intelligent field devices which can provide access to configuration and diagnostic information via FDT and similar engineering tools there is a an effortless simplicity to gaining insight on the wire through independent means. This is especially true when comparing events from different sensors or items of equipment to determine cause-and-e