Telemetry and tank monitoring solutions have long played an integral role in industries relating to printing, water, chemicals and oil and gas, often fulfilling the most specialised of requirements. Much could certainly be said of oil telemetry, which has been used for the real time transmission of drilling mechanics and formation evaluation information uphole, during the drilling of a well. But there are many other specific functionalities that can be incorporated into telemetry systems by a provider that bears cost-effectiveness, reliability and flexibility closely in mind.

Some providers of oil telemetry systems, for example, may offer a DCD (Driver Controlled Delivery) system for the integration of on-site CCTV with on-site control, level monitoring and safety systems. What this means is that instead of the two man operation that loading and unloading has traditionally been, the task can be accomplished with aplomb by a single operative. Such an efficient process is made possible by a video intelligent outstation at each remote loading/unloading site, with the system able to have multiple inputs and control outputs incorporated into it.

Such an oil telemetry system may also feature various live video feeds that are displayed on a local PC, meaning that an unrestricted overview of the entire operation can be given to the depot manager. In the event that the bulk tank is close to running dry, there may be low level alarms as well as an auto-shutoff that can be activated, which would ensure that no damage occurs to the pump seals. There may also be such an auto-shutoff, together with high level alarms, that can be activated if the bulk tank is overfilled.

The best oil telemetry system is likely to be one where, during the normal working day, the operation of unloading and loading the tanks is entirely controlled by the local depot, with the video intelligent telemetry outstation capturing CCTV images to be viewed later. On the exit of the depot staff for the night, however, they should have a 24 hour control centre to which control of the DCD system can be given. From this point on, load permissions, control and monitoring could all be performed remotely.

Such a system would mean that in real time, one person at the control centre can supervise, monitor and control the unloading and unloading operations at all sites, in addition to fire protection systems. This brings a significant decrease in running costs, given that otherwise, filling operations would need to be attended by two people at each site for health and safety reasons. The fact that tanker loading and unloading takes place on a 24 hours a day basis has long made such staffing a significant expense.

Furthermore, even if an unwanted event occurs, industry-leading oil telemetry systems customarily store video feeds on site, allowing the event to be reviewed and analysed on a computer to prevent repeat occurrences. Such components are all increasingly standard elements of a truly complete telemetry system for the oil and gas industry.

Oriel Systems (http://www.orielsystems.com) will always take great pride in the suitability of its remote monitoring systems to a wide range of applications, which owes much to their scalability and ability to connect to all manner of remote plant and equipment – even the telemetry equipment of other suppliers. Such telemetry systems are designed from the ground up to be powerful, flexible and reliable in the context of the client’s industry, whether that is the water industry, oil and gas, printing or even chemical industry.

Certainly, Oriel Systems’ chemical industry clients appreciate the firm’s supply, installation and commissioning of level sensing equipment from all of the most sought-after manufacturers, as well as its installation of any required galvanic isolation and the bringing of tank level information back to a single central location. Another option for the telemetry system of a chemical industry client is the information being hosted on Oriel Systems’ own web server, with it being made available to the client via a password protected web page.

A tank level monitor or VMI system also needs to have the right sensor chosen for it, in accordance with the given application. This is another area in which Oriel Systems offers considerable help to clients, with an extensive range of sensors including Radar, Ultrasonic, Guided Microwave or pressure transducer. Clients contemplating the correct sensor may wish to discuss it with the Oriel Systems technical team, keeping the product data sheet close to hand, given the wide range of important factors to consider – such as the vessel’s size and shape, what internal structures may interfere with the sensor, the need or otherwise for ATEX approval and the product characteristics.

As is the case with clients in other fields, those turning to Oriel Systems for chemical industry telemetry can also choose from a strong assortment of hardware and software products. They may opt for a video outstation that can transmit as many as eight live feeds, or an intelligent outstation that can be programmed for the monitoring and control of plant equipment at a remote site. Oriel Systems’ VMI software, meanwhile, also better enables the fuss-free monitoring and control of remote sites, being an open, flexible and expandable means of efficiently monitoring critical stocking levels at sites across the world.

With the Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) solution of Oriel Systems, chemical industry clients can ensure the accurate prediction of delivery dates and times, with the actual amount delivered able to be calculated – even if it has yet to be consumed – before an invoice is automatically sent out for each delivery. It is just one more reason to contact Oriel Systems’ (http://www.orielsystems.com) technical team about a big or small chemical industry telemetry installation.

There’s no room for doubt with regard to the effectiveness of remote monitoring systems around the world, in such industries as oil and gas, chemistry, motor racing, agriculture and energy. Certainly, whatever industry a given organisation is in, it can frequently turn to Oriel Systems (http://www.orielsystems.com) with the expectation that it will benefit from the most suitably tailored telemetry solutions. For all of the advice that its engineers can provide, however, it is routinely their ability to install a telemetry system that wins particular plaudits.

That’s because the Oriel Systems technical team is always carefully considering all of the vital elements of a telemetry installation so that the client can obtain the exact results that it needs, not just time after time, but cost-effectively. The effective installation of a telemetry system depends on so many factors, from an appreciation of the most specialised requirements of a wide range of industries and organisations, to investing in hardware and software that is powerful, flexible and reliable.

Oriel Systems is in a position to carry out the right telemetry installation for all manner of companies, due to a combination of the right people, equipment and accumulated knowhow and experience. Certainly, the company’s track record in wireless telemetry systems is formidable, helped by more than 25 years in the business, but it also helps that it has a south west England based manufacturing and development facility of the highest calibre. Its installation engineers, meanwhile, work out of two further sites in Manchester and north of London.

The result is that a dependable, professional and cost-effective installation service can be provided for organisations across the country – and beyond – for which a new remote telemetry arrangement may be necessary. Whatever the nature of the client organisation and irrespective of the size of the project, Oriel Systems’ seasoned engineers can devise a suitably cost-effective, flexible and scalable system, before the arrival at the client site of its experienced service and installation engineers to install, commission, service and calibrate the equipment.

When organisations choose Oriel Systems to devise and install their new wireless telemetry system, they won’t necessarily need to entirely throw out any existing system that it is intended to replace, given the expertise of Oriel Systems’ engineers in combining old and new. Clients receive the most informed advice on how they may best integrate older, out of date legacy systems with more modern telemetry equipment, which has been conceived from the start to connect to a wide range of other remote plant and equipment.

Quite simply, when one requires the complete installation, maintenance and calibration service for their new telemetry system – for whatever purpose – there can still be no better option than Oriel Systems (http://www.orielsystems.com), with its many years of business in high technology services and a vast range of areas of expertise – not to mention, many satisfied prestigious clients.

Central to the telemetry systems of so many past and present customers of Oriel Systems (http://www.orielsystems.com) is truly industry-leading Awax VMI software. However, it does help to begin by explaining the principles of VMI, or vendor managed inventory, which is a family of business models in which certain information is provided by the buyer of a product (business) to the vendor (supply chain) that supplied that product. Full responsibility for maintenance of an agreed inventory of the material is taken by the supplier, usually at the consumption location of the buyer – such as a store.

Also potentially involved in a vendor managed inventory arrangement is a third party logistics provider, which adjusts the demand and supply gaps to ensure that the buyer is in possession of the necessary level of inventory. VMI is a symbiotic relationship minimising the likelihood of a business unintentionally running out of stock of a particular product, while inventory in the supply chain is also reduced. In the case of a telemetry installation, the Awax VMI software of Oriel Systems enables the easy and confident monitoring and control of remote sites.

Customers choosing the Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) solution of Oriel Systems for their remote monitoring, data collection and control benefit from an open, flexible and expandable solution, perfectly suited to the efficient monitoring of critical stocking levels at industrial sites across the world. Not only can delivery dates and times be accurately predicted by the VMI system, but the actual amount delivered can also be calculated, with an invoice for each delivery automatically being sent out. This is the case even if consumption of the delivered amount is yet to occur.

Past customers with an appreciation for the VMI telemetry system of Oriel Systems include leading ink manufacturer Sun Chemicals, which, having inherited various different systems from recently acquired firms and new customer contracts, needed a means of integrating and replacing them. The customer recognised the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of Oriel Systems’ VMI telemetry system in the monitoring of customer usage of a product or number of products. They realised that such a solution brought together all of the information from customer sites in various parts of the world that was necessary if they were to kept informed in good time on potential stock-out situations.

This is the reputation that Oriel Systems’ VMI software has attracted far beyond printing industry telemetry, with so many organisations and sectors seeing increased productivity, profits and customer loyalty as a result of their embracing of a system that provides them with both current and historical product usage and consumption information. Such data enables the more efficient scheduling of production batches and deliveries, not only of the optimum amount, but also made at the optimum time. Interested parties overseeing both small and large projects are invited to contact Oriel Systems’ (http://www.orielsystems.com) technical team for more information.

Oriel Systems (http://www.orielsystems.com) may have become a significant name in wireless telemetry over its more than 25 years in operation, providing innovative data monitoring and collection solutions for firms in the chemicals, water, oil and gas and printing industries. However, it would hardly enjoy such renown if there was not a great number of past and present clients happy to vouch for its expertise. That the company’s list of valued clients includes such names as Virgin, BP, Roche and Unilever suggests that there are plenty of such organisations.

Such a high level of customer satisfaction is owed to not just the basic scalability, reliability and performance of the company’s remote monitoring systems, but also a commitment to satisfactorily fulfilling the most specialised requirements. This commitment is represented by such past case studies as the help and advice given to Middle Level Commissioners of March, a Cambridge based engineering consultancy firm catering for the East of Ouse, Polver & Nar Internal Drainage Board, which had as one of its sites, an outfall sluice in the centre of Kings Lynn. Oriel Systems was asked how one of the most awkward tidal outfall sluices could be automated.

Oriel Systems subsequently designed the perfect telemetry system for the outfall site, which came to be such a success that the system is set to take in other sites over the coming years. But it is far from the only instance of Oriel Systems catering for very specific requirements, with the firm also handed the contract to supply and integrate CCTV and remote monitoring and control systems into BP’s Driver Controlled Delivery system at all UK-wide BP LPG sites. The installation at each site of a PC based control and monitoring software system solved the problem of the Health and Safety Executive’s insistence on the constant presence of two people at each site to oversee the filling operations.

It was also Oriel Systems’ high level expertise in the fulfilment of very particular requirements that was instrumental in its being awarded the contract for the Lindsey Marsh Drainage Board telemetry system’s replacement and upgrading. As England’s largest single drainage board, the LMDB had very strict criteria for a replacement remote telemetry system. LMDB did not wish to run two disparate systems side by side on account of operational and economic inefficiency, and nor was any existing equipment to be replaced, except that which was obsolete or no longer working. Again, Oriel Systems catered for such needs with aplomb, its telemetry system being chosen on the grounds of its functionality and integration of disparate systems into one.

In the telemetry field, it’s all so easy for prospective clients to believe that every supplier is the same. In truth, Oriel Systems’ (http://wwww.orielsystems.com) own wireless telemetry systems have long proved a key differentiator for a wide range of firms that have also been impressed by the company’s unstinting customer service.

If there’s any acronym that will be more than familiar to those in such industries as water and waste control, energy, oil and gas, telecommunications and transportation, it is SCADA, referring to supervisory control and data acquisition. This is the term for a computer system that gathers and analyses real time data from industrial processes, as has such fundamental importance in the monitoring and control of a plant or equipment. Certainly, Oriel Systems (http://www.orielsystems.com) is noted for the high standard of its own AWAX SCADA software, which is as cost-effective as it is cutting edge.

SCADA systems are types of industrial control system (ICS) that have been historically distinguished from other such systems by the large scale processes involved, potentially encompassing very large distances and multiple sites. Examples can include industrial processes like manufacturing, fabrication, production, refining and power generation, or public or private infrastructure processes like wastewater collection and treatment, oil and gas pipelines, large communication systems and water treatment and distribution.

Also potentially covered by SCADA systems are facility processes in various public and private buildings, ships, airports and space stations, with the likes of ventilation, heating and air conditioning systems being monitored and controlled. There are various subsystems that tend to make up a SCADA system, including the human-machine interface or HMI that presents the human operator with processed data, which enables the monitoring and control of the process. Other subsystems include a supervisory (computer) system that acquires data and sends demands, as well as the remote terminal units (RTUs) that connect to sensors, converting sensor signals into digital data that is then sent to the supervisory system.

When people talk about SCADA, they are generally referring to centralised systems for the monitoring and control of entire sites, if not complexes of systems of a large geographical spread. So the term could refer to the processes of one industrial plant, or an entire nation. It is the RTU at which the remote monitoring systems begin acquiring data, with the resultant meter readings or equipment status reports being communicated to SCADA as required. This is followed by the compilation and formatting of the data in such a way that supervisory decisions to override or adjust normal RTU controls can be made by a control room operator making use of the HMI.

Those with an interest in the most reliable, scalable and powerful telemetry systems – of which AWAX SCADA software can be a key part – are advised to get in touch with Oriel Systems’ (http://www.orielsystems.com) technical team. The company’s own SCADA software connects to its own range of remote units, as well as to most programmable logic controllers (PLCs)and various other hardware types, including the remote units of other vendors. Continual program development has seen the introduction of greater functionality to the software, so that it embraces the most recent technological advances and remains absolutely relevant to current needs.

One of the definite selling points of turning to Oriel Systems (http://www.orielsystems.com) for the supply, installation and support of a telemetry system has long been its ability to cater for a genuinely wide range of requirements across the oil and gas, water, printing and chemical industries. The high technology industrial services provider has spent more than 25 years developing an understanding of the most specialised demands that can arise, accordingly developing systems that are flexible, scalable, high-performing and affordable.

With a list of valued customers that includes BP, Unilever, Virgin, Roche, Chick Master, Thermo, AAK, Aviagen, Nestle, Oxfordshire County Council, SunChemical and many more instantly recognisable names, prospective customers may be interested in Oriel Systems’ work with them. Such assignments have included the supply and integration of CCTV and remote monitoring and control systems into the Driver Controlled Delivery system of BP, at every single BP LPG site across the UK. Each site saw the installation of a PC based Control and Monitoring software system, which meant that when a tanker arrived out of hours, a voice communications channel would be opened between the filling site and the Scotland-based Central Control Station.

On another occasion, Oriel Systems was contacted by the King’s Lynn Consortium of Internal Drainage Boards, which is responsible for providing 16 member IDBs with administrative and engineering services. The total area that it looks after spans some 100,000 hectares, so it wasn’t perhaps so surprising that the firm entrusted Oriel Systems with the creation of a feasibility study and proposals on the best means of achieving a cohesive telemetry strategy. Oriel Systems played an integral role through successive phases of the project, not only installing the entire system but also managing, supporting and maintaining it from a nearby East Anglia office.

Whatever the exact remote monitoring requirements, Oriel Systems has continually met them for so many different organisations, as was the case when Cambridgeshire’s Middle Level Commissioners got in touch about a replacement telemetry system that needed to meet strict criteria. With two disparate systems already in use, providing useful information and having been purchased relatively recently, the MLC did not want to abandon them in one go. This led to the choice to have an Oriel Systems telemetry system installed that offered enhanced functionality and enabled the integration of the disparate systems into one.

From the implementation of VMI software that enables the confident monitoring and control of all manner of remote sites, to systems that can communicate over the likes of radio, PSTN and GSM, there are so many specialised telemetry requirements that only a firm with the innovative, but cost-minded approach of Oriel Systems (http://www.orielsystems.com) can realistically meet. When companies from a wide range of backgrounds get in touch with the firm about their own big or small project, they too can discover the extent of its technical team’s expertise in everything from wireless telemetry to SCADA systems as part of the complete telemetry service.

How many telemetry systems providers can claim to cater for the full breadth of needs that customers may have? Oriel Systems (http://www.orielsystems.com), with its more than 25 years of industry experience, is one firm that can certainly claim to cover all of the bases through its telemetry services. As soon as a prospective client gets in touch, whether by phone or email, the technical team can provide the most tailored advice on their requirements, and how an Oriel Systems solution can cater for them.

It doesn’t matter whether the project is big or small, consisting of the most elementary coupling of a telemetry outstation to the most obvious sensors, communications and technologies, or instead one that calls upon the company’s most specialised expertise in oil and gas, chemicals, water or printing industry telemetry. Certainly, Oriel Systems’ knowhow in many different industries allows it to offer solutions offering certain specific functionalities. An outstation for the water industry, for example, can support various pumping profiles based on the client’s energy tariffs, enabling energy usage cost savings, while for chemical industry clients, a complete range of sensors – including Radar, Ultrasonic, Guided Microwave and pressure transducer – is offered.

Oriel Systems is renowned for its choice of groundbreaking hardware, including a video outstation that can transmit as many as 8 live feeds over the Internet from a remote site. Video can be transmitted at various resolutions by the streaming unit, so some clients may opt for a low network bandwidth system for cost or other practical reasons, or a high bandwidth system if the wish is to transit television quality video. Oriel Systems’ Intelligent Telemetry Outstation (ITO) is also highly flexible, with many types of IO module able to be attached to it. Even the lower power outstation – designed for small solar panel and/or mini-windmill power – allows the client to have as many analog and/or digital inputs as they require.

The Awax SCADA software that Oriel Systems offers is also designed for both small and large projects – including the possibility of the former needing to become the latter. That’s because most PLC systems and various other hardware, including the remote units of other vendors, can be connected to it. This allows for the easy upgrading of existing systems without a client’s existing remote units needing to be replaced.

But in many ways, it isn’t a series of specific products and services, but rather a truly all-encompassing approach that allows the company to provide the most suitable telemetry installation for seemingly any and every circumstance and level of need. Scalability and connectivity to all manner of remote plant and equipment are qualities integrated into Oriel Systems’ (http://www.orielsystems.com) remote monitoring systems from the very start. It all helps to explain why the firm has become such a consistent port of call for such a wide range of prestigious and valued customers, from BP and Virgin to Unilever and Nestle.

Now that we’ve all enjoyed the great summer we’ve had and you’ve attended to all those summer jobs of weed control, bank cutting and pump station refurbishment and now as the autumn & winter seasons will soon be upon us, it may be a good opportunity to review and make some plans for improving the resilience of your current Telemetry System.

The term resilience seems to be a commonly used phrase at the moment within the drainage industry and for good reason.  Have you thought what would happen to your telemetry system if you have a power failure ?  If a local electricity substation that you are dependant upon is flooded ? Or your computer crashes ?  How will you get your vital telemetry information ?

Luckily for you if you’re an Oriel customer a number of solutions are available.  We’ve been installing Intelligent Telemetry Outstations with dual-communications options for our customers over a number of years.  The dual-comms option ensures that you will always have a “fall back” position of an alternative communications method if your primary communications network goes down.  For instance if you have a radio-based system which gives you real time live data from around your area, we can add a mobile broadband option offering GPRS/3G (or 4G when available in your locality that will automatically and seamlessly switch over in the event of your current communications network failing.

What about if your main Telemetry PC crashes or the hard disc fails, what about your archived data ? How will you recover your important data ?  How long will it take to restore ? Are you performing back-ups as regularly as you should ?

Again, if you’re an Oriel customer, we can offer you a number of options.  From providing regular automated back-ups to a secure area of your computer network or whether you require a “hot-swap” system which essentially “mirrors” your current system and gives you the ability to have an instantaneous change-over with no loss of data to a new PC to ensure there is no down-time to the system and no loss of data.

Alternatively, we can also offer you a totally internet-based system which is hosted by our secure server and again will allow you to access all your vital telemetry information on any internet connected device.

We can also offer you a parallel internet cloud based system which is hosted by our secure servers and again will allow you to access all your vital telemetry information on any internet connected device, in the event of your normal system going down the remote sites will instead communicate and send all the data to the cloud. Control actions, e.g pump start or stop, weedscreen or penstock control can be sent from the site view area of the internet application.