In this section, you will find examples of past software solutions we realised to our clients’ benefit in the past. We hope they might serve to provide you with some further insight into what it is we offer.
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APM Oakland is a driverless, automated guideway transit (AGT) system in San Francisco’s Bay Area, which is operated by and connected to the pre-existing Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) public transport system, but has its own fleet of cable-drawn AGT vehicles operating on fixed guideways. It serves to connect the BART public transport system to Oakland International Airport. The guideways and Cable Line vehicles were built by the Doppelmayr Cable Car company.
We helped set up the video security for the monitoring of the guideways and interior spaces of the driverless cable cars, choosing the cameras and designing the camera setup using our very own camera planning system. Our video management system vimacc monitors and controls the video system’s different camera video streams.
The narrowband transmission paths available for permanent video signal transmission posed a particular technical challenge. In order to meet it, our team devised a solution in which all of the signals the installed cameras provide are stored on dedicated computers on board of the vehicle. After closing hours, this data is transferred to back-up systems in the control centre.
Only if an alarm occurs, a specially secured network path directly transmits the relevant video signals to the control centre, thus ensuring the all-time port authority the project requires.
The chosen solution required extensive hardware qualification the better to choose the most appropriate hardware components, particularly as regards its sophisticated radio transmission technology.
We conducted the on-site commissioning for the technical component of the Airport Connector which we were responsible for and trained the operating personnel - both control centre and service personnel -regarding its use. At the same time, we handed over the English language documentation we compiled for our part of the project.
A highly accomplished technical solution, Hanover’s operation and tunnel control centre serves to monitor the operation of Lower Saxony’s seven tunnels. This comprises, amongst others, the Bovenden tunnel, the Butterbergtunnel and Heidberg Gallery. There were particular challenges we needed to meet in order to realise this project’s successful solution. The two main challenges were due to the existing video systems, which not only varied from tunnel to tunnel but partly also suffered from lossy transmission routes.
This meant that our solution had to meet two specific objectives: We had to provide a software solution able to display differing video formats in the control centre and, at the same time, find optimal system configurations for the transmission routes. Furthermore, in some instances it was necessary to handle the operation of analogue matrix switchers, in order to digitise video images using a free video encoder, and to transmit them. The process control system WinCC OA, which was developed by Siemens AG, serves as the operating platform for the operation and tunnel control centre’s monitoring system. Our video managmement system vimacc, which is integrated with WinCC OA provides for the platform’s video management capabilities.
The employment of WinCC OA allows for the monitoring of individual system sections’ conditions, for example as regards the system’s lighting, ventilation or pumps, and their control from the control centre. vimacc, our integrated video management system serves to facilitate the visual analysis of a variety of process states, e.g. smoke formation, road supervision and traffic management as well as general property surveillance.
The operation and control centre is continually in operation. Consequentially, if a support case arises as regards the tunnel control centre’s WinCC OA video component, time is of the essence – which is why we are there to provide swift support when required. Utilising our SCADA video expertise, we continue to provide support for the project up to this very day.
Land drilling rig systems, employed in the exploration of gas and oil drilling opportunities, and to produce gas and oil are comparable to conventional drilling rigs - they are, however, situated on land. These land drilling rigs are frequently loaned out fully equipped and in tandem with the required personnel. Typically drilling takes place in remote regions of the world, far away from any type of human settlement and lacking any type of information technology infrastructure. The land drilling rigs are generally also far away from company headquarters. Therefore, the only way for the necessary data transmission between the land drilling rig and the control centre to take place is usually via satellite.
Often only narrow-band satellite connections are at one’s disposal to transmit vital data, including geological data, service status, drilling rig machine data as well as video signals. These have to transmit the SCADA system’s machine data as well as video data to the control centre, which is situated in Europe. This allows for decisions to be made regarding, for example, recommendations as to the rig’s maintenance or the precautionary replacement of individual components.
For our team of software engineers here at accellence, it was a particular challenge to ‘synchronise’ the SCADA system’s data transmission stream with the video signal data transmission in a way that would allow for analysis of the video stream and the reconstitution, on the receiver side, of the video stream’s images. Qualifying hardware was the project’s first step. Was it going to be possible to reduce the camera’s video stream and the number of transmitted images in a way that would allow for their transmission via the satellite’s narrowband connection, while ensuring, at the same time, that the connection would also allow for the proper functioning of the WinCC OA platform to continue? Working together in close collaboration, our team of specialists here at the accellence and the customer’s own engineers devised a solution that did just that. In no small part, this successful collaboration was underpinned and facilitated by the WinCC OA video/SCADA training we offered to our customer’s team at the very beginning of the project.
‘SloopTools’ – the Single Point of Information in the SCADA/HMI world: Lukas Schopp, the CEO and Founder of SloopTools, sums up the project’s main objective concisely.
Going a little further into detail, one could describe SloopTools as a kind of app store or digital marketplace for the SCADA system platform WinCC OA. SloopTools enables WinCC OA solution partners to offer their SCADA/HMI functionality to an international user community, as a high-quality, ready-to-buy WinCC OA add-on. We took advantage of the opportunity to offer a multitude of already developed software applications on the digital marketplace.
The SCADA apps we offer on SloopTools include:
WinCC OA is a process visualisation software used all across the world. It was developed by the Siemens affiliate ETM, which is situated in Eisenstadt, Austria.