Even in today’s technologically advanced world, keeping critical infrastructure running smoothly is a big challenge.

Located on Cerro Pachon Mountain in Chile, the South Gemini astronomical telescope, after the introduction of VTScada, allows users to overcome the harsh climate, achieve the need to monitor various key equipment in the observatory at the remote end, and through the integration with AR, make inspection and verification simple and convenient.

VTScada successfully implemented remote monitoring of astronomical telescopes

The Gemini South Telescope, along with a sister telescope on the island of Hawaii, carries out important astronomical observations. In order to ensure that the astronomical telescope can maintain a high precision operation state all year round, electrical engineers need to regularly maintain various key equipment of the astronomical telescope.

However, in the routine maintenance of these critical equipment, electrical engineers have encountered no small challenge:

With a height of 2,700 meters, the mountain becomes difficult to maintain when the weather changes. Even if the remote monitoring network is established, but limited by the security protection requirements of key equipment, the monitoring network can not always series all systems in the firewall, so that the remote monitoring of the astronomical telescope is ineffective, bringing hidden dangers to the normal operation of the astronomical telescope.

After the introduction of VTScada, all these difficulties are solved. VTScada has strong hardware compatibility, supports more than 100 industry standard and proprietary I/O communication protocols, and can connect complex systems made up of different brands of products in one station, and electrical engineers quickly connected VTScada with the observatory’s multi-brand PLC and SNMP equipment.

The solution implements the following functions:
• Monitor the operation information of key equipment such as UPS devices, air compressors, fire alarm systems, precision cooling facilities, etc., to ensure the stable operation of the astronomical telescope.
Customize the system display so that remote observers of the telescope can quickly access critical information such as sky stars, shutter positions, heavy rain, earthquakes, and communication anomaly alerts.
VTScada’s powerful software redundancy features ensure the stability of system progress and data security.

Tandem AR and VTScada, inspection inspection is easier

After realizing the remote monitoring telescope and mastering the observation data, electrical engineers further applied the emerging technology Augmented Reality (AR) to enhance the view function of VTScada remote monitoring.

After the integration program is realized, the inspection and verification of electrical equipment in the astronomical museum becomes very convenient. Electrical engineers do not need to walk around with the check table, only need a handheld terminal to point to the equipment that needs to be checked, you can call the amperage value of the equipment monitored by VTScada, pull up the real-time data trend chart, analyze and view the average value change per hour/day/week.

At the same time, the integrated solution can also automatically provide built-in system maintenance records to provide a reference for making long-term stable maintenance decisions.

VTScada remote monitoring solution upgrade preferred

Over the past 35 years, VTScada has been continuously optimized to provide functional diversity, ease of operation, greater compatibility, and security, enabling managers to access critical equipment information remotely and in real time in more scenarios.
• Features are easy to own: You can have all the functional components in one installation.
• Intuitive and simple operation: graphical display and pre-integrated interface, you can design various monitoring screens according to user needs.
• No downtime: Seamless redundancy and synchronization for more secure data.
• Monitoring: Easy network deployment, equipment monitoring can be achieved through any terminal such as computers and mobile phones.