Electronics 2000

Hi all,

I have built a pump controller that controls system pressure and reports faults such as loss of AC power, loss of DC power, loss of pressure, flow switch operated etc.

As the pump controller is off-site, I want the pump controller to send any changes in state to a mobile phone, land line or website. For example, on loss of mains power, a fault buzzer operates and an orange LED operates. I have a spare volt free contact that also closes on AC fault, and other volt free contacts that also closes on 7 other different faults.

I purchased a small auto dialler that sends a text message to my mobile, but the autodialler only has 2 channels and costs £75 + VAT

Cost is a major issue, as we have many of these pump controllers, I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction for a cost effective solution that I can mount within the pump controller.

My perfect soultion would be:

1. The eight signals converted into an eight bit number, each bit prepresenting one of the fault conditions, such as bit 3 would be AC power loss
2. Then an email or text is sent that would say the pump controller location, with 00100000

Is there a simple solution to this?

Thanks for your help.

Hi,

I don;tt know of an off-the-shelf solution, although I'm sure such a thing must exist. If you want to investigate building your own, EPE magazine published an SMS controller design back in March - May 2007. Even if this doesn't quite fit the bill, it might give some information to point you in the right direction. Back issues should be available from the publishers (www.epemag.com).

If you had existing internet access at the locations, you could look at adding a LAN interface, e.g. using a PIC microcontroller with an inbuilt Ethernet interface. However I'm guessing that these things need to be self-contained.

You could set up all your monitoring lights and a time clock onto one panel, then point an IP camera at it like this

http://www.maplin.co.uk/edimax-triple-m ... era-514043

you would then see on your home computer which fault light had gone on and at what time for example. Doing it optically like that would completely isolate the reporting gear from your equioment.
If you could get the fault to trigger some motion (ie a slider or buzzer perhaps) then this would trip the motion sensor in the camera and automatically send you a message

just an idea