Automated communication specialists ANT Telecom are pleased to announce a new product to their alarm and monitoring portfolio called DRAC (Digital Radio Alarm Concentrator). Designed by awarded winning engineer Peter Swayne, DRAC was designed as a cost-effective solution to alert staff to an incident such as a machine failure, fire or lone worker alert.
DRAC monitors equipment or in many cases people such as those that are considered ‘lone workers’ and should the machine fail, for whatever reason or the lone worker requires assistance, DRAC will alert colleagues around the plant.
DRAC has different interfaces such as contacts in / contacts out and RS232 to integrate directly with a machine or fire panel and will simply monitor those devices and relay a message if they fail or report an alarm. If a machine does fail, staff around the plant can by alerted in several ways including; by a siren, flashing light, display board or by sending an alarm message to colleagues’ digital radio handsets.
Similarly, if staff are working alone around a plant DRAC can be used to distribute lone worker alarm messages. So, for instance if an alarm was triggered via a panic or tilt alert on a radio handset the DRAC can be used to alert colleagues by siren, flashing light or alarm message directly to colleagues’ radio handsets.
Peter Swayne ANT Engineer and designer of the DRAC says, “we’ve spoken to many companies in the past where monitoring their machines or staff would be really beneficial but the costs of the systems and software has been prohibitive. We designed this system for the smaller businesses where the knock-on effect of machine failure doesn’t amount to thousands of pounds a minute. We have already installed the DRAC at Glenfarclas Distillery and connected it to their effluent system and to Peter Brotherhood who use it to protect their lone workers in a paint spray booth. So far, I’m really happy that the system is working well and really helping those businesses.”
Future possibilities
Another key benefit of DRAC is that it distributes messages wirelessly over large areas and therefore can be a massive benefit in other scenarios and environments too. For instance, it could be deployed in conjunction with a “help point” at reservoirs or at bus stops, so the public can call for help and speak to someone back at a control point. It could be used in distribution yards to help direct trucks to the correct loading bay by displaying the trunk’s number plate and bay number on a display board.
As Peter Swayne points out “the cost of running cable outside a business premises is really costly and therefore, distributing both verbal or visual messages can be really difficult especially where there is little or poor mobile signal. DRAC helps to overcome this issue as it is really cost effective solution, far cheaper than having to run cable especially when considering the costs of having to dig up a path to lay it.”
