“Wire to Wireless Ethernest”

First Author#, Second Author*, Third Author#

#
First-Third Department, First-Third University
Address
1
first.author@first-third.edu
3
third.author@first-third.edu
*
Second Company
Address Including Country Name
2
second.author@second.com

I. INTRODUCTION

Power plant and similar large scale industries are spread in large
areas and have hundreds of equipment for it’s operation, but
displaying all these equipment parameters and their control from
the operation control room is very difficult as well as costly.
Monitoring and control of many non-critical equipment are left
outside of control room which may result in intermittent local
monitoring and frequent breakdown of these equipments. Also the
reasons for breakdown are missed out due to unavailability of
equipment record. This demands a very flexible and low cost
system that can be used to bring such equipment’s parameters and
control to operation control room. In this paper we have shown a
method of using wireless platform for plant remote equipment
control and it’s related parameters to be displayed in Unit Control
Room. The wireless platform that has been developed comprises (Structure)
of WiFi enabled microcontrollers, sensors, actuators and a PC in
which an interface is developed for monitoring and control.
III. IMPLEMENTATION

II. THEORY
The structure of our system comprises of four components

In order to develop the system to get remote equipment control and
equipment parameters in the operation control room the structure
we thought was to setup a wide spread wireless area network using
WiFi or LoRa WAN (Long Range Wireless Area Network ) and
enable communication over this network. The information to be
communicated over this network was the sensor data and control
signals. To achieve this we have selected ESP8266 WiFi microchip
as it gives a full TCP/IP stack (Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol) and has microcontroller capability.
Having TCP/IP as base setting up communication was well
structured as each component of our system was programmed to
have static IP address and microcontroller capability ESP, easily
interfaced with sensors for capturing equipment parameters. As we
have selected WiFi to create wireless area network to make the
network wide spread WiFi repeaters were used, done by
programming ESP microcontroller.
A. Web Server Module :
We have used ESP8266 microcontroller for this module, it is
programmed to create a wireless area network and setup a web
server on the same network.
B. Web Client Module :
A similar microcontroller ESP01 with more hardware functionality
is used for client module. It is programmed to connect to web
server module and transmit as well as receive data to and from web
server. Sensors are interfaced to this module to sense concern
parameters.

C. WiFi Nodes :
 The current sensor probe of client module was kept in proximity of
WiFi Nodes are essentially WiFi repeaters that are used to extent compressor power cable to detect it’s running status.
the range of main server WiFi range. These nodes are also
constructed by programming ESP8266 microcontroller.

D. Interface :

The interface of our system is designed on excel visual basics, it

serves as HMI and have equipment running/stop mimic, parameter
recording with time stamp as well as equipment start/stop control
buttons. The only requirement from the computer which will be
running the HMI program is that it should be connected to the
server WiFi network.

IV. SETUP AND WORKING

The wireless platform we developed for remote equipment control
and status was tested on hydrogen dryer compressor of our station.
It was required to show and log the hydrogen dryer compressor
running status in unit control room with ON/OFF time stamp.
Other than this running status of LDO pumps was also shown in
control room.
A. Setup for Hydrogen dryer compressor :
i. Server Module :
B. Working :
When the server module is plugged in power socket it immediately
creates a WiFi network and web server on the same network. After
connecting the current sensor of client module to power cable of
hydrogen dryer compressor and switching on the client module it
automatically connects to server Wifi network and starts sending
compressor running status to the web server, which is then updated
on a webpage hosted on web server. Either the status of hydrogen
dryer compressor can be seen on web browser of UCR pc by using
client IP as web page address, or by using HMI developed by us.

The server module shown below was plugged in near to unit control
oom, so that the server WiFi signals range could cover our HMI pc
n control room and the client module at Hydrogen dryer
compressor.

ii. Client Module :

The client module shown below was interfaced with current sensor
to detect ON/OFF status of the hydrogen dryer compressor. For
testing we used self developed non contact type current sensor to C. Results :
prevent any need of modification need in hydrogen dryer module.
When setup was made as described above running status of .
hydrogen dryer compressor could be seen in unit control room .
HMI pc also there is provision to log ON/OFF time stamp and
running/stop duration of hydrogen dryer compressor. VI. RESULTS
.
1 .
.
.
.
.
.
.

V. HMI USING VISUAL BASICS VII. CONCLUSION

.
.
. VII. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
. .
. .
. .
. .
. .
.
. REFERENCES
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.