Lester, Tim, Barry and the staff of Abbey Systems would like to thank you for your business over the last year. It has been a very busy year for us with some large projects completed and some significant contracts won, including our largest, the complete replacement of Rotorua DC's Wastewater SCADA system.

Our business in the USA has continued to grow and we're looking at making some changes to the office there in the near future, to further expand this operation. Barry Watson has been based in Salt Lake City running the office for the last 5 years and late in November Lester visited him. Lester reports increased interest in our new Swampfox Pump Station Controller with excellent prospects for the immediate future.

Swampfox has further evolved and is now shipping to customers in the USA. A big thank you to those New Zealand Abbey Systems customers who installed Swampfox in its Beta form and for our untiring Agents and Distributors who support these sites. Without this local field experience the development process would have been much more difficult.

Lastly we have a vacancy for an Assembly / Technician in our factory. Please see our advert later in this newsletter.

We wish you all a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and look forward to hearing from you again in 2006.

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Christmas & New Year

Opening Hours

Our New Zealand offices will close at 12:00 pm Friday 23rd December 2005 and reopen 8:30 am Wednesday 4th January 2006. Support calls during the Christmas/New Year period will be invoiced to callers at Emergency Call Out rates. These can be expensive, (e.g. <2hrs Christmas Day $975) so please, before you call be sure the emergency can't wait until our Applications staff are back on the 4th January 2006.

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2006 Training Courses

We are planning to run only one set of training courses next year, in early August. These are:

General Operations		31 July - 1 Aug		$850
Programming		2nd Aug		$500
Reporting		3rd Aug		$500
Telemetry Mimic		4th Aug		$500
Hardware & Tech		8th - 9th Aug		$1,000

There will be no courses later in the year. To enroll on the August courses please email cathy@abbey.co.nz or fax her on 04 385 6848 with your order number. Places are limited to 10px for the Gen Ops and 6px on all other courses. Course fees include lunch catering.

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20 years service

Congratulations to David Empson, our senior software programmer, who celebrated 20 years with Abbey Systems on 3rd December. David writes the code for Powerlink SCADA software and the embedded code running in the RTU hardware. He's been involved in the development of most products in our inventory including our most recent, the Topcat RTU & Swampfox PSC.

Davids first two projects were the Mobile Data Terminal and MicroAlert II Digital
I/O module. More recently his largest projects of note have been implementation of the HDLC and DNP3 protocols, data logging & Modulink store & forward functionality. Major ongoing responsibilities are RTU system architecture and communication protocols.

David started working for Lester Abbey & Associates as a holiday job after finishing seventh form at Wellington High School and while studying at Victoria University for a B.Sc. in Computer Science. His experience in assembly language programming of 8-bit microprocessors while at high school was easily adapted to embedded systems programming. The holiday job rapidly grew into a full time job, and the three year course at university had to be stretched to a fourth part time year, due to work cutting too much into study time.

In his spare time, David supports Macintosh computer users in his role as the president of the Wellington Macintosh Society. David and Steve Dorrington have also just completed the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge (160km) for the first time, after each did half of it two years ago.

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Recent projects

Supply of a Powerlink RTU and complete cabinet for Contact Energy, Wairakei steamfield. This is an interesting job because the RTU communicates with 3 Rotork valves via Modbus serial links as well as collecting the other discrete I/O from the site.

Tom Davey of Transfield, Napier has recently commissioned a Lowara Hydrovar VSD to a Swampfox Pump Station Controller for a customer in the
Hawkes Bay area.

Several of our Time Sync modules have recently been despatched to New Caledonia for synchronising the clocks in protection relays at power substations there. The Time Sync module is a cost effective GPS receiver and antenna package used to synchronise relays from different manufacturers and also RTUs. Its innovative, single package design means it doesn't require expensive coax installation onsite. The latest version is based on Motorola's timing platform and supports several IEEE 1344 features.

Development is well underway on a GSM cellular Swampfox PSC for the US market. This will use circuit switching for communications with the SCADA Master. While more costly to run because of the network charges, circuit switching means a SCADA Master modem communicates directly with the Swampfox cellular PSC in the field and not via a cellular network service provider's servers.

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Other News

Radio Frequency Users Association

At the 2005 Annual General Meeting of RFUANZ our Manufacturing Manager,
Bob McCrae was elected to the Executive Committee. As we and most of our customers are users of the Radio Spectrum in New Zealand it's important that we are all aware of future developments, ongoing requirements and costs for the use of the Radio Spectrum.

Its prime function is to protect, promote and preserve the rights of organisations and individuals who require access to the radio spectrum.

The Radio Frequency Users Association of NZ Inc is a non-profit organisation whose membership includes Local Government Authorities, Transport, Communications, Courier, Forestry, Veterinary, Farming, Taxi, Consultancy, Tourism Companies and private individuals.

Further details of RFUANZ can be found on their website www.rfuanz.org.nz.

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Situations Vacant

Would you like a challenge for 2006?

Electronics Assembler

We have a vacancy in our Wellington factory for an Electronics Assembler/Technician. The successful person will be assembling our popular Powerlink RTU, Topcat RTU & Swampfox PSC product lines for both the New Zealand and International markets.

You will have electronics industry experience in PCB and final assembly and possibly be partly qualified towards a technician qualification. This job would also ideally suit someone who also has reasonable mechanical skills.
While qualifications would be beneficial more value is placed on practical ability and experience in the industry.

If you think this job might be you, please call Bob McCrae, Manufacturing Manager, Abbey Systems 04 385 6611, or send your CV to bob@abbey.co.nz

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NEW Software Product

Have you ever wanted to allow other staff in your organisation access to the Telemetry Mimic SCADA screens? So that they can see what is happening, but not allow them access to the Powerlink Telemetry Server or have any control functions available?

Well we have a new Powerlink Multiport Interface that allows just this functionality.

		Available in 2, 4 or 8 port versions.
		Simultaneous operation.
		Alarm queue is available.
		Works with multiple copies of TM, TMView (no control) and OPC Server (with appropriate licences) or a combination of both TM & OPC Server.

With TMView only functionality, specific TM screens could be created to display information new viewers would find useful e.g. rainfall, river levels, reservoir capacity, infow rates. WTP & WWTP throughput, RMA compliance measures.
PL Reports can be used to populate tables automatically,
minimising operator intervention.

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