Wireless for Soccer Moms, Cows & Nuke Plants

Hi, my name is Mike Fahrion, and every few weeks I dish out practical tips for getting all those pieces of equipment in your care to talk to each other. We give out special freebies too — like specialized reports and tech guides, to make your job easier.

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Wireless for Soccer Moms, Cows & Nuke Plants

Dear Subscriber and Friend:

This month’s letter is for all my European subscribers who aren’t Italian. If you are Italians its ok if you read it, but you should really be out celebrating your 4th World Cup title while the rest of the world goes back to work.

Wireless is truly everywhere now. You know how I know that?

The other day our Internet was down and my wife urgently needed to book some travel. She took the laptop to the bookstore and did it wirelessly from there. But she could have just driven around the block in her Soccer-Mom minivan until she found a house with a wireless router and tapped in.

(It's easy to find the networks that are unsecured too, 'cuz they just say "netgear" or "linksys", and everybody on the planet can help themselves to “free” 1's and 0's. In fact there are 3 unsecured networks within range of my laptop as I type this from my living room…)

I haven't said anything you don't already know yet. But what is really exciting to you and me are industrial applications of wireless, which are legion. The cost savings are major, too. Consider this:

-In pipeline monitoring, wiring is about 10 Euro per foot
-In a process plant, about 20 Euro per foot
-In discrete manufacturing, 100 Euro per foot
-In a nuke plant, 1000+ Euro per foot

By now I've had a chance to work with a lot of customers directly on these projects. Here are some of the things we're seeing:

*Temperature monitoring of a commercial dairy: Cool cows are happy cows. And happy cows give more milk than cantankerous cows. A supervisory wireless monitoring system profiles temperatures and controls various cooling systems.

*Steel mill furnace - fault detection for a cooling jacket. The hot corrosive environment chews up cables, and the RF interference in a steel mill is merciless. But we got a pilot system up and running. Early results are promising.

*Nuclear plant - temperature monitoring of 2500hp pump motors. If a motor has to be replaced, the plant's output has to be dropped 20% - that costs $400K in lost power sales. Motor failure can be predicted in advance if you have the temp data though, and a battery powered wireless monitoring system makes this work.

Our new catalogue hits the streets this month, and one of the highlights is a Modbus Serial to Ethernet converter.
http://www.bb-europe.com/product_family.asp?FamilyId=275&Trail=57

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As always we're here via email and telephone to help you solve those tricky communication problems. Ring us on 353 91 792444 in Ireland, or email support@bb-europe.com.

Happy Wireless Connections-