2020 Year of Collaboration

Collaboration in 2020

Collaboration is a key ingredient to secure opportunities. And a lack of Collaboration is a big impediment. So I was very pleased to see Manufacturers’ Monthly covering a recent project we did that needed Collaboration from multiple industry partners to work.

 

I presented this case at the IoT Impact 2019 manufacturing stream. I’ll include the main slides for that below. And this is for a product that was Made In Australia, not just because we want to, but because it was the only way it could happen in time.

 

Collaboration Case Study

The Collaboration Case Study is for the IND Technology Early Fault Detection system that was deployed to a rural SWER Line Monitoring trial as part of the Victorian bush fire amelioration program. This required us to coordinate the program and also do the primary electronics and embedded software design along with our supply partners gearing up for PCB Assembly, Cable and Loom Assembly and mechanical design and production for boxes, mounting and solar panels. All this in parallel with web services. For a new technology category. So we needed to work together very closely.

 

Successful Endeavours - CCBA Manufacturer of the Year 2019
Successful Endeavours – CCBA Manufacturer of the Year 2019

 

Collaboration Partners

It takes a team of partners to pull off a project like this. So here are some of the people we collaborated with:

And of course IND Technology were highly Collaborative as well.

 

IoT Impact Slides

These are the slides from the presentation.

 

A common IoT problem

•Buyers want a catalogue for solutions
•Catalogues don’t contain a viable solution
•There are plenty of sensors available
•Hardware platforms don’t fit the opportunity
•Software back ends are also often a barrier
•Total cost of ownership ends up too high

 

A possible solution

•Rapid design of a suitable hardware solution
•Get it made locally (in Australia)
•But the catch is that unless very confident, you don’t invest in this until you get the order
•So how quickly can it be done?

 

Example IND.T

•IND Technology EVFD – finds power system faults – reduces outages and bush fires
•Got the order for 65 trial units end of July 2017
•For Delivery in November 2017 (< 16 weeks)
•For a product not yet designed
•With features not yet confirmed eg. turned out most units had to be solar powered

 

IND Technology EVFD solar powered

IND Technology - EVFD Solar
IND Technology – EVFD Solar

Above is an example of one of the solar powered units as built but without the cover plate over the FPGA based processing systems that samples at 250MSPS.

 

Collaboration Ecosystem

Below is the Collaboration Ecosystem where Collaboration was needed.

IND Technology - Collaboration Ecosystem
IND Technology – Collaboration Ecosystem

The areas with dark borders are the parts we handled internally as well as overall coordination and integration. Each of the other areas was handled by one of our supply partners.

 

Precision Electronics Technologies received a supplier award for their contribution.

Precision Electronics Technology Staff
Precision Electronics Technology Staff

As did Connect Electronics.

Connect Electronics Team
Connect Electronics Team

And the overall result won the IoT Innovation Award for 2018.

IoT Innovation Award 2018
IoT Innovation Award 2018

So a very good outcome all round. And the trial was a resounding success showing that we have another weapon in our arsenal of bush fire prevention strategies. And isn’t that very timely at the moment?

 

So I’m looking forward to doing more Collaboration in 2020 and especially in IoT where it really needs whole ecosystem to deliver a solution.


Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development, focusing on products that are intended to be Made In AustraliaRay Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for more than 30 years.


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This post is Copyright © 2021 Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.

 

SWER Line Monitoring

SWER Lines

In rural distribution of electricity, Single Wire Earth Return (SWER) is used to reduce the cost of wiring by running a single wire for the active and using the Ground (Earth) as the return path. Because these lines run for long distances through sparsely populated regions it isn’t as likely that a fault will be detected or that obvious preventative maintenance issues will be easily seen.

 

Which is one reason event like the Black Saturday fires can get out of control. No-one knows a fault has occurred until the fire is well established.

 

 

And example of a failing insulator leading to a pole top fire.

 

SWER Line Monitoring

This is why the Victorian Government is keen to find new ways to prevent bush fire events and a new technology developed in Melbourne is leading the way in making this happen. We can share some of this with you because we were engaged to do the primary development work for the product and it is now publicly available information.

 

IND Technology are a start-up out of RMIT University commercialising a PhD project. It uses very high speed sampling of electrostatic signals on the power lines (250Msps) and using mathematics and atomic clock synchronisation, courtesy of the GPS satellite network, can then determine the location of a fault. Recent detection of the sort of event that could have lead to a bush fire has shown the potential of the product.

 

EVFD Mid Span Conductor Snap Detected

EVFD Mid Span Conductor Snap Detected

Above shows a single strand of an overhead SWER power line has snapped mid span. Because of the elevated voltages, the sharp end points generate corona discharges and the cable slowly deteriorates until it severs and falls to the ground where it can start a fire.

 

This is detected by the IND Technology EVFD devices which, in this instance, were solar powered and pole mounted approximately 5km apart.

 

EVFD Wood pole installation

EVFD Wood pole installation

The detection of a fault like this is a world first and an example of the potential of the technology which can also detect failing insulators, partial discharge and even tree branches rubbing against overhead wires on windy days.

 

 

#9News

A world-first trial of technology that detects electrical faults before they cause bushfires has had a breakthrough south of Ballarat.#9News | http://9News.com.au

Posted by 9 News Western Victoria on Wednesday, July 11, 2018

 

High Technology IoT

And this is a great example of a product that is a very high technology IoT device using the Internet as the communications medium for delivering the data back to the central web services that do the correlations. And it is Designed in Australia, and Made in Australia.

 

The development of this version of the product was awarded the IoT Innovation Award 2018 for Australia at the recent IoT Impact event at UTS in Sydney.

 

IoT Innovation Award 2018

IoT Innovation Award 2018

News Resources

potentially disastrous fire prevented by new power line technology

 

EVFD Pictures

IND Technology SWER Unit

IND Technology SWER Unit

 

SWER line fraying

SWER line fraying

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development, focusing on products that are intended to be Made In Australia. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for more than 30 years. This post is Copyright © 2018 Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.

 

IoT Innovation Award 2018

IoT Impact Awards

This year saw the first IoTAA IoT Impact Conference and Expo. As part of that, there were three IoT Impact Awards presented for:

 

  • Enablement in IoT Award
  • Industry in IoT Award
  • Innovation in IoT Award

IoT Innovation Award 2018

And we are very pleased to announce we won the IoT Innovation Award 2018.

 

IoT Innovation Award 2018

IoT Innovation Award 2018

This was a great celebration of IoT and we are also pleased for the other category winners. The awards was given for the IND Technology EVFD system that detects faults and problems in SWER electrical distribution systems to help prevent bush fires.

Some more pictures from the night.

 

IoT Innovation Award 2018 Announcement

IoT Innovation Award 2018 Announcement

IoT Innovation Award 2018 Trophy

IoT Innovation Award 2018 Trophy

IoT Innovation Award 2018 with IoTAA MWG Chair Danielle Kennedy

IoT Innovation Award 2018 with IoTAA MWG Chair Danielle Kennedy

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development, focusing on products that are intended to be Made In AustraliaRay Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for more than 30 years. This post is Copyright © 2018 Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.

Endeavour Awards Finalist 2018

Endeavour Awards 2018

We are excited to announce that we are finalists in three categories for the 2018 Endeavour Awards. These are run by Manufacturers’ Monthly.

 

Endeavour Awards

Endeavour Awards

The categories are:

 

  • Environmental Solution of The Year
  • Australian Industrial Product of The Year
  • Most Innovative Manufacturing Company Award

And our clients are also in the award mix including:

 

  • Water Synergy Group – Waterbook
  • IND Technology – EVFD

IND Technology EFD

IND Technology Early Fault Detection

The awards dinner is on 12th July 2018 and we will find out who the winners are then. These are national awards so we are very pleased to be finalists and also pleased for our clients who are also finalists.

 

The full list of all finalists is available at Manufacturers Monthly Endeavour Awards 2018 Finalists.

 

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development, focusing on products that are intended to be Made In AustraliaRay Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for more than 30 years. This post is Copyright © 2018 Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.