Fire alarm systems are essential in providing an early warning in the event of fire. They help to save lives and protect property whilst also fulfilling the needs of insurance companies and government departments.Fire alarm systems typically consist of several inter-linked components, such as smoke detectors, heat detector, carbon monoxide, manual call points, sounders, alarm and buzzer. The fire alarm system should give immediate information in order to prevent the fire spread and protect live and property.To get maximum protection a shoe manufacturer in Indonesia opted for a new fire alarm system to monitor 13 production sites spread over 160 hectars. Although the company had an existing fire alarm system, it could not be monitored remotely.It was essential that the new system would be able to be monitored from a central control room. It needed to be able to connect to the existing smoke detector and manual call point. Information should be easily collected and passed on to the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. Furthermore, the system should have several features such as alarm management, auto reporting, being connected to many client computers without additional cost, and run 24/7 without fails. The company also needed a system which could be implemented without changing the architecture of the existing fire alarm system.

For people who live and work in big cities, growing their own fruits and vegetables is a dream which is often difficult to realize. But how about renting a greenhouse, and being able to remotely plant seeds, spray water and apply fertilizers through a webpage, and then watching how your crops are growing via streaming video from an IP camera while you occasionally pay a physical visit to your plants at the weekends or holidays to harvest and cook your vegetables at a feast? A group of young Taiwanese entrepreneurs are making their own, and other people’s dreams come true by establishing greenhouse plots for rent. Leveraging the latest Advantech technologies and features provided by the ADAM-6200 series Ethernet I/O series and WebAccess 8.0 HMI/SCADA software, they’ve created a greenhouse automation and remote monitoring solution from which their customers can control and monitor the environment via a virtual dashboard on a computer, smartphone or other web-based device in real time.