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Safety - February 2004A safer working environment for power engineersBluetooth and serial PC add-on specialist Brainboxes is working with Power Isolators, a division of Oxford-based Lucy Switchgear, to improve the safety of power engineers working on electricity networks. Lucy Switchgear develops a wide range of pole-mounted switchgear for power utility companies. Brainboxes' Bluetooth wireless technology will enable power engineers to communicate with Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) safely at a range of up to 100m. It seems that the demand for such Bluetooth wireless access is likely to increase as more emphasis is placed on workers' safety.Bluetooth is well known as a rapidly growing wireless technology designed originally for the cable-free connection of PCs, printers and other office equipment. However, it is finding increasingly wide usage in other areas such as mobile phone headsets, in-car handsfree and many industrial applications. Brainboxes' Class 1 Bluetooth products provide a simple and low cost solution to this problem by permitting wireless access and control up to at least 100m from the RTU. Since most RTUs have RS232 serial ports fitted as the standard interface, wireless operation is possible without any configuration. The RTU's Bluetooth serial converter simply communicates with a similar Bluetooth adapter plugged into a laptop PC via any USB, CompactFlash, PCMCIA or serial interface. Brainboxes is initially supplying Power Isolators with its BL-521 RS232 Bluetooth converter and the BL-565 Bluetooth CompactFlash card with PCMCIA adapters. The Brainboxes BL-521 converter can turn any RS232 serial device, such as a PC, printer, oscilloscope or any device which can be connected via a simple serial port. The company says that future generations of RTUs may be designed with embedded Bluetooth technology, such as Brainboxes BL-730 Class 1 Bluetooth module - fundamentally the same device fitted in the BL-521, also capable of 100m wireless operation. "We are keen to bring safety enhancements to our range of GEMINI-RTUs as quickly as possible and the Brainboxes Bluetooth devices will make it possible for us to upgrade all RTUs without creating additional configuration or installation issues," said Ernie Woollard, Director for Power Isolators at Lucy.
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