We recently Have taken on a project with 22 remote Site Booster stations using 900Mhz Radios and One of the Antennas reaches a little over 18 feet In height. now my Burn with this issue is the polling Used in these Worthless 900mhz Radios. There is no way to Control Any aspect of any device In the panels. all Panels have Worthless PanelView 300 devices. what if i wanna change Graphics of these panelviews or Change the program for some reason or Change Some aspect of the panel Operation? that means Driving over a 200 mile radius and changing each site one by one... what a trip and what a waste of
Customer's money, this is called Automation?? that in my mind is described as unintelligent Control... i'd like to hear other Methodologies In a more Productive Senario for this application. i know how i would approach this situaltion, i can explain my Theory once i hear Some of yours...

Thanks

Brian E Boothe

 

LOL, what a great whine...

A collection of 900Mhz radios connects a number of remote sites over a 200 mile radius and you dare call them "worthless"?

Perhaps the radios chosen don't perform a task or task that you wish, but to denigrate 900 Mhz radios that do cammunicate over the geography you desscribe is a feat worthy of respect.

Radios replace wire, and all radios are designed to carry specific types of data - serial, I/O like analog (converted to digital for transmission purposes) or discretes, or one of hundreds of various industrial protocols. It is likely that the installation does not allow for remote "configuration" or remote control, but data acquisition only. But that's not the fault of "worthless 900 Mhz radios". It might not even be a fault at all, it might be original intent.

There's scads of commercial radio telemetry and radio control options. A number reside in the 900Mhz ISM band. Maybe your application requires licensed or license-free radio in another band, but from the minimal amount of information provided, that can't be determined.

Perhaps you could attempt to provide some information on what you're trying to achieve and with what equipment, rather than rant.

 

This illustrates all the virtues of canned solutions and shrinkwrap software. If you need to do what they do, great. If you need to do something else, Good Luck! And usually you won't know until you try. We need a Free, Open, extensible, flexible and fixable replacement for each of the black boxes. That way when someone crafts a GPL solution, it's available to all. And we can stand on each other's shoulders and see far.

Regards

cww

 

I'd have to agree, that is not the fault of the radio. If you wanted to do remote configuration of your PanelView Panels then you probably should have used panels that are ethernet ready and used radios that have an embedded IP Stack. Then all of this could have been done quite easily over the www.

Ron

 

You could replace the 900mhz radios with industrial 802.11x wireless port servers (Digi, Lantronix, etc.). Data would be on one serial port and configurarion would be via another serial port. All the serial port data is transmitted wirelessly using IP encapsulation. I do this type of setup on a daily basis, mostly with modbus. With directional antennas you should be able to get the required coverage (if it works with the 900mhz radios it should work with the 802.11x).

I find the 802.11x approach much more flexible, easier to use and much cheaper than the 900mhz hardware.

 

i would agree with u, it's just u can't teach an older dog new tricks, for some reason he sticks with Dataradio 900Mhz Crap Radios. Me myself, i'd make the Entire System Ehternet 802.11b or g. that way u have unlimited flexible Options all the way around.

P.S. What hardware do u use with your 802.11 solutions???

 

Whine, > ? damn right give me cheese

#1 Customer Satisfaction
#2 Dont give Customers Hopes of somthing that your hardware can't do,
#3 Limit the amount of Customer Interaction with there system, as far as Control, ("aka, Automation")

 

But what about the distance? 900 MHz can reach further than 2.4 GHz. Will 802.11 meet your distance requirements?

Jonas Berge
SMAR
===========
[email protected]
www.smar.com
Learn fieldbus and Ethernet at your own pace: www.isa.org/fieldbuses
Learn OPC and automation software at your own pace: www.isa.org/autosoftware

 

Don't blame him for the rant. You should work with those DataRadios to understand how frustrating they are. 900 MHz band is great for propagation, but lousy for throughput. That comes with the available bandwidth. DataRadios' fault is their old design. Nothing you can compare with the new 802.11x technologies.

But 802.11x devices are not THE solution for everything. 200-mile radius is too long for 802.11 technologies. Especially if you want throughput. The reason? Timing, not power or LOS. The 802.11 standard was never engineered to go beyond 300ft. Going beyond there is possible, but there are penalties. Most manufacturers who claim going long range usually touch the ACK_Timing parameter, so WiFi out of the box is not a good idea.

For such long range you may be forced to stick with old modulation technologies, unless you can install repeaters on the way. You may also want to look at some manufacturers supporting MESH technology, but be careful with the number of hops.

Give a look at http://www.avalanwireless.com, that might do the trick for you.