Are you getting the message?

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Oct 16, 2006

Helen Bates of Send Technology looks at the rise of machine communications.

In 1992 only one person in 297 used one, in 2002 it was one in five and now nearly everyone in the UK has one, or more.

The history of the mobile phone can be traced back to Bell Laboratories as far back as 1947 with the first true mobile service being offered in Japan in the late 1970's.

Now they are the must-have device for personal communication but the real potential growth for this sector is the use of GSM technology to allow machines to communicate.

Whilst the main phone manufacturers and network providers are keen to sell product to the 6 billion men, woman and children of the world, this figure looks tiny compared with the 50 billion machines that populate our planet.

The future for machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and machine to person communication (M2P) is a big market and the ability for machine OEM's to offer this technology will set them apart from their own competitors.

Being able to communicate with your remote machine and interrogate the PLC or control system is not new; in fact most PLC manufacturers have included "dial-up" programming for many years.

The reality of installing fixed telephone (PSTN) lines to your machines in far-flung corners of the UK, let alone the world, is a more challenging proposition.

Questions over who will install, pay for and manage the connection are usual if such a line is available at all.

If the machine does have a problem, this is not usually picked up until you connect to the remote site periodically.

The arrival of industrial GSM based modems overcame the problems of maintaining a fixed line and, depending on the intelligent of the PLC (and PLC programmer), you could even get the system to send text messages on alarm states or when a certain service was required.

The basic GSM terminal solution only has one problem in that it needs to be connected to an intelligent device as it only reacts and passes commands over its' serial port (AT commands).

Now, most PLC manufacturers would love to have their devices connected to all 50 billion machines in the world but as the majority of these either don't need this level of control, or have no way of communicating over a serial port to such a device, a simpler method of sending alert messages was required.

Most machines from the most complex high speed processing line through to the simplest irrigation system have local alarm indication through means of lamps and LEDs.

They also have self-protection by means of circuit breakers, isolators etc These devices allow smart GSM products such as the GSM Alarm and GSM Control from Send Technology to connect simply by a digital switched contact.

Now when the pump fails and the flow switch closes, the GSM Control can send a SMS message informing the engineer of the fault.

The engineer can then decide the next course of action - perhaps to visit the site or maybe control one of the GSM Controls secure outputs to switch on the backup pump.

More options in this GSM family of products range from simple free call remote controls such as the GSM Key through to custom design GSM modems that fit within Mitsubishi Alpha microcontrollers.

Now you can text your machine and ask it to run for 100 hours then send you a SMS message to tell you how many widgets it has produced.

OK, I know that you thinking that George Orwell predicted this would be happening in 1984 but the positive deployment of this technology can help everyone.

How many wasted site visits are caused by ill-prepared engineers who have no knowledge of the problem or at worst just switch the reset button after a CO2-high 300km round trip.

A simple message from the thermostat switch in your cold store "Cold room temperature is now above 0C" could save you thousands.

The application of these simple GSM devices is only limited by your imagination.

If you already use this technology you are in good company as the most surprising statistic today is that in 2005 there were more invisible connected machines and objects than humans on the planet.

The machines are talking but are you getting the message?.