M8 connectors with QUICKON technology

The QUICKON system uses insulation-displacement technology to reduce installation times by up to 80 percent.

By eliminating the need to prepare the wires and cables, QUICKON technology provides a fast, vibration-resistant connection. The simple two-piece connector features color-coded terminals. This is especially valuable in field installations, where technicians need to make quick on-site connections and minimize downtime.

The M8 connectors are available in both male and female versions, with either three or four positions. Like the M12 QUICKON connectors, they meet IP65/67 requirements and are rated for operation between -25 and +80 degrees Celsius.

New DTH Gadget Allows Freedom To Switch

DTH (direct-to-home) subscribers would soon be able to switch service providers without changing their set-top box and antenna.

Dish TV, owned by the Essel Group, is planning to launch a conditional access module (CAM), an add-on hardware required for DTH portability, within the next two months.

The cellphone-sized device would cost Rs 700 to Rs 900, which is one-third the cost of a new direct-to-home connection.

A DTH connection now comes with proprietary set-top box and an antenna. To switch to another DTH operator, a subscriber has to buy its set-top box and antenna. But once CAM is launched, consumers would only have to buy it and plug it into their existing set-top box to access Dish TV signal.

When contacted, Dish TV’s competitors Sun Direct, Videocon and BIG TV did not reveal any plan of introducing similar add-on hardware soon.

Other DTH players are expected to follow Dish TV’s footsteps since the Competition Commission of India wants interoperability of DTH settop boxes and antennae. Sources said the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, another regulator, was also in favour of DTH portability.

“Interoperability is mandated in the DTH licencing norms. We are offering DTH subscribers of other companies the option of switching to the Dish TV platform by buying our CAM,” Dish TV chief operating officer Salil Kapoor said on Tuesday.

The company is performing a final-round of tests on two CAM variants, one of which will be made available to consumers through its dealer-distributor network, said a company source.

The Dish TV CAMs are working on the set-top boxes of Sun, Videocon and Doordarshan, added the source. According to technical experts, all set-top boxes have slots for such add-on cards since it is mandatory under law.

While DTH portability would be a boon for subscribers, it might prove to be the bane of DTH operators already losing money because of high subscriber acquisition cost. “Dish TV hopes to grab new subscribers at lower cost from rivals using this strategy,” said Kapoor.

Besides bringing a new set of subscribers to Dish TV, the launch of CAM could lessen the subsidy burden. Like the other DTH operators, Dish TV subsidises the cost of hardware by about Rs 2,500 for every new subscriber. The subsidy amount is recovered over a period of around three years through monthly charges.

Industry insiders said out of every 100 DTH subscribers, at least four to six were not happy with their service providers. Since there are about 20 million DTH subscribers and about 10 million more will sign up this year, CAM could throw up business opportunities for all DTH operators.

New fibre optics tech to fasten Internet 100 times

It may look like a piece of gel but it's a new nano-based telecom technology "enabler" that can make computers and the Internet hundreds of times faster.

The technology, that may be in use only five or 10 years in the future, is being designed by Koby Scheuer of Tel Aviv University's (TAU) School of Electrical Engineering.

Scheuer has developed a new plastic-based technology for the nano-photonics market, which manufactures optical devices and components. His plastic-based "filter" is made from nanometre (a billionth of a metre) sized grooves embedded into the plastic.

When used in fibre optics cable switches, this new device will make our communication devices smaller, more flexible and more powerful, he says.

"Once Americans have a fibre optics cable coming into every home, all communication will go through it - telephone, cable TV, the Internet," adds Scheuer.

"But to avoid bottlenecks of information, we need to separate the information coming through into different channels. Our polymeric devices can do that in the optical domain - at a speed, quality and cost that the semi-conductor industry can't even imagine," Scheuer says.

In the next decade, fibre optic cables that now run from city to city will feed directly into every individual home. When that technology comes to light, the new plastic-based switches could revolutionise the way we communicate.

"Right now, we could transmit all of the written text of the world though a single fibre in a fibre optics cable in just a few seconds," says Scheuer.

"But in order to handle these massive amounts of communication data, we need filters to make sense of the incoming information. Ours uses a plastic-based switch, replacing hard-to-fabricate and expensive semi-conductors."

Semi-conductors, grown on crystals in sterile labs and processed in special ovens, take days and sometimes months to manufacture. They are delicate and inflexible as well, Scheuer explains.

"Our plastic polymer switches come in an easy-to-work-with liquid solution. Using a method called 'stamping,' almost any lab can make optical devices out of the silicon rubber mould we've developed."

His biggest hurdle, says Scheuer, is in convincing the communications industry that polymers are stable materials.

"There is a lot of prejudice in this industry against plastics. But this approach could take us to a new level of communication," the researcher says, according to a TAU release.

He also notes that the process is not much different from the way that mass numbers of DVDs are produced in a factory - except Scheuer works on a nano, not a "giant" micro, scale.

His device can also be used in the gyros of planes, ships and rockets; inserted into cell phones; and made a part of flexible virtual reality gloves so doctors could "operate" on computer networks over large distances.

Leak detection: Technology catches up to theory

One of the world’s largest steam generating plants is located on an island in a major U.S. metro area. The plant distributes steam for heating and air conditioning throughout its local service area, but has to pull fuel for its oil-fired boilers from a tank farm approximately two miles away. To complicate matters, 85% of that distance is through a tunnel under a heavily traveled river. Given local environmental concerns, that fuel delivery system has to be closely monitored to make sure no oil is being lost in between.

The plant purchases No. 6 fuel oil from a tank farm across the river, so oil has to be pumped through a pressure-controlled pipeline that runs through a tunnel under the river, at a maximum flow rate of 300 gpm. Stringent requirements for the leak detection systems on the pipeline require that the system be able to detect any leak in excess of 60 gallons in 20 minutes, which effectively amounts to 1% of maximum flow.

Oil in = oil out?

The material balance method of leak detection is simple: quantity in – quantity out = size of leak. Simple, yes, but implementation is more complicated. The system must manage temperature and pressure differentials and time lag. If the system is based on volume, temperature compensation is especially challenging when different segments of the pipeline run at different temperatures. The oil temperature can change as it passes from the tank to underground to under water. Because multiple measurement devices are involved, measurement error accumulates, with negative consequences for overall accuracy.

In the early 1990s, the utility company assessed its leak-detection system and found it lacking. This prompted a 15-year effort to monitor, upgrade, and optimize the system so that it not only met but exceeded requirements.

The basic concept of the original system was straightforward and used paddlewheel sensors on each end of the pipeline. A comparator device developed in-house collected pulse data from the sensors via dedicated telephone lines, compared the inlet pulse rate to the outlet pulse rate, and calculated the difference in flow.

Unfortunately, the paddlewheels never were able to generate data with required accuracy. Variations in temperature and density made the errors worse, and the dedicated phone lines failed frequently. Although no significant leaks occurred over the 30 years the system operated, the company recognized the risk, and took steps to correct the problem.

Improved system, version 1

In the mid-1990s, the utility contracted system integrator Expert Systems Group to redesign and implement a system that would meet their specifications for sensitivity, accuracy, and reliability.

The sensing technology was changed from paddlewheels to Micro Motion D300 Coriolis mass flowmeters. Mass measurement is not affected by pressure and temperature variation, so an improvement in accuracy was realized immediately. Communications and processing were handled by two PCs connected by fiber optics. The PCs ran the Microsoft Windows 98 operating system, a custom data analysis program, and ProLink, a software tool from Emerson that retrieves process data from the sensors. As shown in the diagram, after local processing, the inlet PC sent data over TCP/IP to the outlet PC, where it performed comparison processing and leak detection analysis.

Although mass data is more stable, the leak rate is specified as a volume, so Al Shoop, proprietor of Expert Systems Group, had to make a conversion using mass and density readings measured by the D300 meters. By taking the direct density measurement from each end of the pipeline and assuming a straight-line temperature gradient from one end of the pipeline to the other, Shoop was able to generate temperature-corrected data that improved accuracy; other optimizations reduced the average system discrepancy to less than one gpm.

Even so, the enhanced system was still not ideal. The bulky D300 meters were hard to fit into the existing pipeline. Non-optimal positioning caused occasional bubbles in the line, which resulted in spikes and false alarms. The Windows operating system did not have real-time capability and its timer did not produce exact two-second data samples. Moreover, the PLCs of the time did not have sufficient computational and memory capacity to do the job. Still, the system ran flawlessly for 10 years.

Not only had PLC capabilities evolved during this time period, so too had the Coriolis sensor. The Elite Coriolis meter was five-times more accurate than the D300. Modbus-to-TCP/IP converters on each meter meant that no computers were needed because newer PLCs had no trouble processing and comparing the raw data.

The new equipment was installed beside the existing system, and immediate improvements were seen. “As a result of the increased accuracy and the preprocessing performed by the meter, for example, onboard data smoothing and noise reduction, the standard metering error dropped from 20–30 gallons in 20 minutes to less than 2 gallons in 20 minutes,” says Shoop. With decreased metering error, there is no danger of false alarms caused by spikes. The previous problem with bubble formation was addressed by adding S-bends to the pipeline, thus providing space to install the sensors in their optimal orientation.

Shoop knew the system was a success when one day he noticed a slight increase in the standard metering error. It was not reported because it was below the alarm limit, but a few days later, a technician saw sheen on the ground. The glint proved to be a small puddle of oil from a pinhole leak. Although no trip was initiated, the system had successfully detected the event.