EC: New Technology Meter series

Process Control Systems: The New Technology Meter allows users to loop/signal or externally powered auto-tricolor bar-graph with signal failure alarm and isolated serial I/O controllers. This is a Control Engineering 2015 Engineers’ Choice finalist.

By Control Engineering October 20, 2014

The New Technology Meter (NTM) combines the two existing technologies in the industry, analog and digital. The series was designed to be drop-in replacements for both styles of meters, offering a replacement for virtually any old 1893 analog style meter and 20th century digital meters. The NTM harvests and uses existing energy produced by the signal, so it only requires >10 mW of power to operate. This makes it possible for the units to be loop, signal or externally powered.

Our New Technology uses ~1% of the power (10 to 80 mW) that current digital meters require. The NTM is 100% HMI compliant (analog and digital), is immune to environmental conditions and meets most nuclear, military, and EPRI requirements. Our lifetime warranty speaks for its quality.

It includes a new energy storage device that allows us to offer a unique (patent pending) input signal failure detection and alarm. Using the excess energy from the signal that has been stored, the display will flash the message "INPT FAIL" for ~30 seconds after the signal fails (post-mortem). The unit will also, via isolated serial I/O, send the data to the central computer for logging.

We adapted the world accepted red, yellow and green traffic light standard into our meters to increase HMI. We use red as danger, yellow as caution and green as safe. Our automatic tricolor bargraphs also include color set points and alarms that can be set by the user.

Most importantly, the units are interference (EMI/RFI) free and computer compatible. Built using high quality products the NTM is accurate, reliable and durable. Analog meters have never seen real competition in the industry, but the NTM is a true adversary.

No more stuck needles, uncertainty, parallax or shock/vibration damage associated with analogs. No more power hungry drifting digital. The NTM replaces both.

OTEK Corp., www.otekcorp.com