About Realtime Network Scientific Data Collection and Monitoring

Network-based environmental monitoring has advantages over older monitoring technologies. These include flexibility, speed and ease of installation, cost, reliability, redundancy, and the scope of both data collection and alarm notification. Are all network monitoring systems the same? What are the considerations/tradeoffs of these systems in the network world?

Universal Time

When you can collect scientific data in real-time from anywhere in the world, such as the temperature from a low temperature freezer, what time is the data tagged with, and displayed with? Is it the local time of the data collection server? Is it the local time of the scientific instrument being monitored? Networked Robotics tags all measurements with universal time, so for timepoint labeling it doesn't matter where either the data collection server or the data collection source (the monitored device) are located. Measurement times however are always displayed in the local time as defined by the time zone of the viewing computer.

Redundancy

There are some very important things stored in our customer's instrumentation. Yet "events" happen that can affect monitoring processes. Some customers will attempt to assure data monitoring by boosting the reliability of power or network. Yet these methods have limits - for example power backup systems only last so long. How can you be double-sure that data will be collected and monitored? Triple sure? Is there a way to "level-up" the monitoring game for things that are really important? Our Tempurity System adds another tool to the reliability arsenal, that of redundancy, the ability to monitor redundantly.   

The internet was created originally for US Department of Defense and was engineered in such a way that communications could occur even in the event of a nuclear attack. Redundancy and automatic recovery is built into internet communication - even over long distances. We decided on an architecture that allows infinite redundancy. In our approach you could implement ten data collection and monitoring servers all over the world if you wish - all monitoring the same thing - but subject to different kinds of "outages" that could affect each one differently. In layman's terms this allows a "Don't put all of your eggs in the same basket" kind of strategy for the monitoring of important samples or product.

Data Collection Hardware as Client or Server

When we designed our system a major consideration was whether our hardware would act as a "server" or "client" - in other words would our hardware make the connection to the data collection engine (server computer) or would the data collection engine  make the connection to our hardware? That turns out to be a major issue. We decided that the data collection engine would make the connection to our hardware.  This was not an easy decision at all and it involved multiple trade-offs. 

Expandability vs Regulatory Validation

In systems designed for FDA GxP use the requirement for validation becomes an impediment to rapid change. In the Tempurity System flexibility is handled by new hardware, the software in the system does not need to change. There are a central core of functions that apply to all "monitored devices" of any type as long as they are producing data continuously.

Networked Robotics' Hardware Products for Network Temperature Monitoring

Enhanced regulatory compliance and qualityare just a step away. Call Networked Robotics today.
 

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