Newsletter December 2007

Lester Abbey, Tim Naylor, Barry Watson and the staff of Abbey Systems would like to thank all of our customers for their business during 2007. We wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy New year and safe travels over the break and look forward to catching up again in 2008.

Merry Christmas

Steve Dorrington
Sales & Marketing Manager

Christmas Hours

The office is officially closed from 12pm Friday 21st December 2007 reopening 8:30am Monday 7th January 2008.

Any emergency calls during that time however, will be treated as an Òout of hoursÓ callout subject to our normal callout charges and labour rates. If at all possible, please delay any non urgent support calls until the office reopens on 7th January 2008.

Details of callout charges are available on request - contact cathy@abbey.co.nz

For a life or death emergency, then please call our office - the answerphone message will give you the number to call for Answer Services who will forward your query to a Director. No guarantee can be made as to who will be available to respond to any calls over the holiday period. If possible we encourage customers to call only if the problem is major.

If possible please store a backup copy of your SCADA software files on a separate PC or laptop. (We allow all customers to do this for disaster purposes) Include all .CFG, .TM, .APX, .RSP suffix files.

To maximise the chance of an uninterrupted holiday break, we recommend any software updates take place at least a week before Christmas.

US Trekking

Earlier this year, in August, Lester Abbey & Steve Dorrington paid a visit to the Abbey Systems office in Utah, USA, to catch up with Barry Watson (US office Abbey Systems Director).

We were there to promote our Aspex and Swampfox roadshow, which many of you have seen in New Zealand over the last 12 months. This demonstration presents both of our NEW pump station hardware products; Swampfox and our SCADA Master software, Aspex in a working demo system.

The first week saw us based at our offices in Salt Lake City. There we updated the Aspex demo before conducting several presentations to local Utah customers and our agents. The main differences between the US and New Zealand is in the terminology used around the pump stations and of course level measurements are imperial.

Lester went to University in SLC, so for him it was a return home and a chance to reacquaint himself with his native language. For me, on the other hand, it was my first time in the US and adjusting to the cultural differences. The things that struck me most were the distances you had to travel to get around, the size of 4x4 SUVs, the freeways in LA and funnily enough the adoption by SLC of a light rail system, servicing the University and southern parts of Salt Lake City. I rode this several times during my stay and what a quick, easy way to traverse town. Light rail has proven so popular they're extending it with four more lines in the coming year.

The second week Lester, Barry & I drove towards the Pacific Northwest - an area where we are making great progress. We had to cross the Bonneville Salt Flats and 500km of Nevada Desert, overnighting in the small town of Winnemucca for a night. Back in the 70's Lester spent 2 hours in the local courthouse there, courtesy of Trooper Jackson. Lester hadn't done anything particularly bad - it's just that Trooper Jackson had arrested the FBI's most wanted man a month before (on a speeding ticket) and had adopted the practice of arresting anyone he didn't know - just in case he could repeat his moment of fame. We didn't get busted this time; the only captives being the photos I took outside the courthouse.

Next morning we went on the "Winnemucca to Sea" highway through the Black Rock desert where Steve Fosset had recently gone missing.

This wasn't really a highway as such - more a collection of back country roads and if you took the right turns you would have reached the sea after a 15 hour drive. We didn't see Steve Fosset (unless he was disguised as a mule deer) and didn't see much else for the first 6 hours of driving. Eventually we drove across the state line into Oregon where the sagebrush gives way to trees. Oregon gets more like New Zealand the further north you go. After presentations in Roseberg we drove south to Crescent City and on to Mckinleyville, both in Northern California. Lester's parents have a house in Mackinleyville which was a good place to stop and regroup before the dash to San Francisco to catch our delayed flight to LA and missed connection to New Zealand.

In all some 30 customers saw the Aspex and Swampfox presentation and we received some excellent feedback on the benefits they valued most.

Next Courses May 2008

It's never to early to start making plans for the next year. So if you missed out on our fully subscribed courses in November then we now have course registrations open for the next factory courses in May 2008.

General Operations: Mon, Tue 5 & 6 May $935
Programming: Wed 7 May $550
Reporting: Thur 8 May $550
Aspex: Fri 9 May $650
Hardware & Technical: Tue, Wed 13 & 14 May $1,100

To reserve a place on these please contact us for a registration pack - cathy@abbey.co.nz

Abbey Systems reserves the right to postpone or cancel any course, dependent on numbers enrolling.

SMS Execute

Our latest product allows authorised Powerlink users to execute programs at the Powerlink SCADA Master from their cell phone. This feature is very useful where staff wish to control various plant without access to the rest of the system. Here are two examples of its use.

1 A customer wanted to be able to change the operator on duty (i.e. the person who received any SMS Alarm text messages) without giving access to their SCADA system with all the other view and control capabilities that a Powerlink dialin licence has. SMSX means authorised operators can now interrogate Powerlink to see who the current operator is and change to a different one, from anywhere with cellular coverage.

2 A motor /generator attached to this client's power network in the South Island is turned on and off remotely by an Energy Trader in Auckland. The lines company still has control of whether the MG is available or not, but when it's available, the decision as to when to start it rests with the Energy Trader.

Contact Steve Dorrington for pricing

Aspex Local Operator

Our latest sales of Aspex HMI software have been to several WTP sites to act as a Local Display & Operator. In this arrangement a PC running at the plant is connected to the Swampfox PSC serial config port. Inputs and Outputs from the Swampfox and any PLC connected to it can be displayed on an Aspex screen for local operation. The same Aspex screen file could also be used at the Powerlink Telemetry Server.

The Local Operator can also store measurements and status changes at the Swampfox or PLC and display them using Aspex Advanced Trending onsite. Because it's connected onsite it can store values just as if Datalogging was enabled in the Swampfox i.e. much more frequently than the SF at site is polled by the Master.

Please contact Steve Dorrington for Aspex Local Operator pricing.

Hints and Tips

Don't we all just love these? If your Powerlink PC is on a network, you may be affected by the MS security updates, which often require the PC be restarted to complete the update. In fact it insists on a popup reminder every 10 minutes or so until it's done. Restarts are not a good thing for a Telemetry Server where uninterrupted running and 24/7 unattended operation rates as significantly more important than Microsoft's latest gizmo. As we have no control over what an update is designed to do and whether it does need to restart the computer we strongly recommend MS Automatic updates is turned OFF and that any updates that are to be applied are done by SCADA & IT staff during work hours.

Swampfox Trivia

Want to know the temperature in your remote pump cabinet? The Swampfox battery pack is fitted with a thermistor to control the battery charging rate. As long as the battery isn't charging then the thermistor will display the current temperature inside the cabinet. This needs to be set up in the configuration of the site but once it's done the temperatures of any site can be monitored.

22" 16x9 Widescreen Actual viewable screen 290x465mm		20" 4x3 Aspect screen Actual viewable screen 305x405mm

We're seeing increasing availability of widescreen LCD monitors for PCs and correspondingly longer lead times on 4x3 aspect ratio screens, as manufacturers push widescreen over the traditional CRT ratio.

Most Telemetry Mimic and Aspex GUI screens look OK on the new 16x9 screen format, but we recommend that you check before using them.

Steamin'

Graeme Clover, Abbey Systems Project Manager, is a volunteer at the Steam Train Museum at Paekakariki, Kapiti Coast, looking after electrical and / or electronic related things for the heritage steam train located there (i.e. carriage battery systems, radios, locomotive speed datalogger, carriage PA system, and most recently a locomotive headlight mounted camera to carriage video monitor - the so-called "loco-cam"). The steam train comprises, steam locomotive Ja1271 (built 1956, ex-Invercargill in 1971) and 9 vintage "red" carriages built between 1910 and 1944.

At the end of October 2007, the Steam Train was run from Paekakariki to Auckland (Papakura) over 2 days with local NZ passengers onboard, stopping overnight at Ohakune. Then 4 days later, it added a party of overseas tourists from the UK, departed from Papakura and travelled south over 3 days. The overnight stops in this direction were Ohakune and Fielding, then on the last day on to Wellington via the Manawatu Gorge, the Wairarapa and the Rimutaka Tunnel. During each day the overseas tourists visited places of interest, namely the Otorohanga Kiwi Park, the Chateau Tongariro (stayed overnight), Palmerston North (stayed overnight), etc. From Wellington, the tourists crossed Cook Strait on the Interislander ferry and travelled south to Christchurch on the regular Coastal Pacific passenger train. From there, they travelled on the Tranz Alpine train, then to Dunedin, where they travelled on the Taieri Gorge Railway tourist train and on to Queenstown to ride on the TSS Earnslaw.

Graeme is one of 7 Ontrack-trained heritage train Guards at Paekakariki, and this picture of him was taken at Hamilton on the north-bound journey by ex-Abbey Systems employee Keith Patterson (who now works part-time for Eric Williams). Graeme was just one of the party of 20 volunteer crew on board to run the train (only the driver and fireman are regular Toll employees). He arrived back at work after 8 days away, thoroughly exhausted as being a train Guard requires a lot of walking and there was not enough sleep had between days on duty. Graeme's wife Shirley, has also circulated this picture to family and friends, as proof of "the other woman in Graeme's life"! We could all be so lucky. If you want to learn more about the Paekakariki steam train, please visit www.steaminc.org.nz

Any questions arising from this issue, please contact

Steve Dorrington
Abbey Systems Ltd
tel 04 385 6611
steve@abbey.co.nz

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