Industrial-strength Bluetooth puts cranes on track
An
Amplicon product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Dec 1, 2004
When communications between cranes and the warehouse control room at Pirelli's Central Distribution Hub proved difficult, Amplicon came up with a novel solution.
Pirelli's Central Distribution Hub in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, stores tyres and manufactures the rubber for every type of motor vehicle in a temperature regulated hanger.
Here eight automatic store cranes which manoeuvre the tyres for distribution were in need of modernisation.
Amplicon was selected under the recommendation of Siamtec to help provide the solution to bring the Pirelli warehouse up to date with the very latest technology available.
In order to completely modernise the system, Siamtec replaced all the PLCs onboard the cranes.
However, enabling communication between cranes and the central warehouse control room was proving difficult.
Once Amplicon was approached, the company used its in house knowledge and expertise to come up with a solution using industrial Bluetooth, so that no wiring was needed.
Siamtec has been dealing with Amplicon for a number of years and chose to approach its Professional Computing team for this major project as they have always been impressed with the high level of technical knowledge about the equipment on offer, and its limitations.
Jim Ward, Managing Director at Siamtec, commented: "We immediately thought of Amplicon when faced with this challenge, as we have always been extremely satisfied when dealing with them in the past".
"This occasion proved to be no different as they took up the gauntlet and threw themselves into finding a solution".
"Both I and Pirelli are highly delighted with the end result which was easy to integrate into the rest of our system and was backed up by on-site support from the Amplicon team".
Richard Munson, Amplicon's Senior Sales Engineer in the Professional Computing Division, added: "Designing this solution for Pirelli was something we were keen to do".
"Working together with Siamtec, with the large range of products available to us, and the high level of knowledge amongst our technical team, it proved to be relatively simple".
Amplicon supplied each crane with a 12.1in TFT LCD panel mounted PC which features a resistive touchscreen, from where the cranes can be controlled both manually and remotely.
The panel PCs used incorporate low specification Pentium III processors.
The screens have a high brightness of 150cd/m2, which was needed to combat the dark warehouse environment, and all units are IP65 rated as there are high volumes of dust in the warehouse at all times.
The Bluetooth solution designed was linked to these panel PCs and software supplied by Siamtec, to enable information to be conveyed between cranes and the central warehouse command room.
The serial port adapters from ConnectBlue, supplied by Amplicon, are able to transmit serial data point to point, using Bluetooth.
In this instance the rugged versions were used, although both plastic and OEM versions are available.
The adapters were easy to configure using the Windows wizard which is supplied as standard, and if needed there is also the facility for PIN code protection and "over-air" encryption for maximum security.
Each crane was taken off line and modernised individually so that the Pirelli warehouse continued to function as normal.
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