Wireless Silo Weighing

A company was looking for a cost effective way of displaying the weight of four silos on large LED displays in a control room which was 50 metres from the silos.

The Problem:Wireless radio strain gauge acquisition modules connected to load cells transmit the weight of a structure to a telemetry to serial output converter some distance away and displays the value on large LED displays.

A cost effective solution was needed. Historically this would have involved cables to be run from each measurement point in the silo and then back to the control room which was not only expensive, but involved several days of installation.

The Solution:

The solution was achieved by connecting a radio telemetry T24-ACM-SA strain gauge acquisition module to each vessel. The T24-ACM-SA can interface to sensors as low as 85 Ohms so were easily able to connect to the four load cells mounted on each silo.

The T24-ACM-SA modules were permanently powered and transmitted their weights at a rate of three per second. The T24-SO, mounted 50 metres away, monitored these transmissions and reformatted the data into a serial output which was fed via RS232 to four addressable large-digit LED displays.

Mantracourt’s T24 Remote Data Collection device (T24-RDC) was also conveniently located onsite and within range of the silos. The T24-RDC unit was utilising the GPRS network to automatically gathers weight data at pre-set intervals and transferring the data via the network. The T24-RDC was reporting the weight data to multiple destinations including servers, email addresses and mobile phones, allowing for world wide access to data for recording and monitoring. Key personnel were alerted via text/SMS if a pre-set limited had been reached and could log into a custom web portal which was displaying data delivered by the T24-RDC as HTTP POST to a web server. 

Products used in this application:

Wireless Sensor Transmitter IP67 Enclosure

Wireless Sensor Transmitter IP67 Enclosure

T24-ACM
Wireless Telemetry USB Base Station Extended Range

Wireless Telemetry USB Base Station Extended Range

T24-BSue
Wireless Receiver with Data Port for Display or Printer

Wireless Receiver with Data Port for Display or Printer

T24-SO
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