Swampfox Press Release

New system improves monitoring of water and sewage services

A research and development project forced back to the drawing board after the September 11 terrorist attacks has produced innovative and highly-secure technology to monitor remote sites such as wastewater substations.

Wellington company Abbey Systems new Swampfox Pump Station Controller (PSC) provides a cost-effective, robust and seamless system for transmitting data from water pumping stations and wastewater plants direct to a base computer system anywhere in the world.

Swampfox allows information to be transmitted via radio, cellular networks or Ethernet technology and also provides customers with improved options for displaying the data.

With co-investment from Technology New Zealand, the Government's research
and development funding agency, Abbey Systems launched its initial R & D project in 2002, aiming to link substation control equipment to the Internet,
Intranet and other communications networks.

However the events of September 11 had a major impact on the project, fuelling security concerns among potential customers worried that hackers would be able to tap in to information transmitted via the Internet and even take control of the remote site.

Technology New Zealand Investment Manager Ian Shields says rather than abandoning the project, Abbey Systems re-thought its approach and successfully resolved the security issues by opting to use virtual private networks (VPNS) to transmit data.

"VPNS are secure and reliable. The company was forward thinking and flexible enough to get around the obstacles that arose and has actually ended up with a product which provides greater control and is as good, if not better, than anything else on the market," he says.

The Swampfox is a complete pump station monitoring and control system, using digital signal processing technology to gather data. It is much smaller than other systems designed to do the same job and is encased in a robust, aluminium box.

Lester Abbey, Managing Director of Abbey Systems, says the Swampfox RTU allows the large volumes of complex data generated at field sites to be integrated in to a base computer system for efficient analysis and retrieval.

This allows, for example, easy access to information showing usage, water flows and how faults have occurred, control of the site from a base location and an alarm system to signal failures or warn of dangerous flow levels.

"It's also tailor made to handle very rugged environments where there are
extreme conditions. This includes hazardous gases in wastewater stations, vibration from pumps which can be very stressful for equipment and high
electrical noise. That's in contrast to many other systems which are basically designed for interior office use but adapted for the outdoors," Mr Abbey says.  

The Swampfox is being launched at EnviroNZ03, the annual Water and Waste Association conference in Auckland this month (17 September), offering new possibilities for the many local authorities battling problems of ageing systems
for monitoring and controlling underground services.

Abbey Systems is the largest supplier of these systems to local authorities
in New Zealand.

Four variants of Swampfox have been developed so far and three of them will
be on show at EnviroNZ03. Lester Abbey says there is also strong interest from overseas markets including the United States, and an emerging market in China.

"The product is developed right here in New Zealand for the way we do things.
This translates well into exports because we've found demographic similarities in some parts of the US and China which means the product has an instant market which larger manufacturers tend to forego."

Technology New Zealand contributed to the Swampfox project, through its Technology for Business Growth (TBG) scheme, which provides up to 50 percent of the cost of a project and is targeted at applied research and experimental development that moves companies towards high added-value, high-margin, export-focused products, processes or services.

Abbey Systems also specialises in remote monitoring systems for power substations and is re-developing these to take advantage of the new
Swampfox technology.

Further Information :

Ian Shields
Investment Manager, Technology NZ
Tel 09 912 6730   
Email ian.shields@frst.govt.nz
Web www.technz.co.nz                           

Stephen Dorrington
Sales/Marketing Manager, Abbey Systems
Tel 04 385 611
Email  steve@abbey.co.nz
Web www.abbey.co.nz