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| Moxa is helping provide safer and easier travel along the Gateway Bridge |
One of the world's leading LED lighting designers has chosen Moxa's ioLogik E1212 Ethernet remote I/O for the Gateway Bridge upgrade project in Brisbane, Australia.
The $1.88 billion project is the largest bridge and road project in Queensland's history, comprising the refurbishment of the existing Gateway Bridge, along with the construction of a second Gateway Bridge, including a dedicated pedestrian and cycle way. The project will deliver many benefits, including safer and easier travel along the Gateway Bridge Motorway, reduced travel time, improved links for business, industry and tourism, easier travel between the Gold and Sunshine Coasts, and improved access to the Australian TradeCoast precinct.
The city agency in charge of the bridge opted for an Ethernet-based architecture for the bridge's lighting control system, a challenge given the size of the project: the total length of the bridge is 1.2 miles, it stands 250 feet off the ground, and its height is equivalent to a 20 story building. The lighting system itself uses 2500 customized LED strips making up some 90,000 individual LEDs and over 45,000 meters of cable. Moxa needed to develop a cost-effective design that satisfied strict cabling layout criteria and was guaranteed to provide long-term performance.
"System requirements were for an open Ethernet-based protocol and a deployment that was as cost-effective and compact as possible," explained Steve Frank, business development manager, Moxa. "In addition, the government wanted a partner that could provide long-term support and services to assure maximum reliability for the lighting system."
Moxa Solutions
With Moxa's V462 embedded computer and ioLogik E1212 Ethernet remote I/O server, network managers were able to manage the bridge's complex lighting system with local control capability and a very attractive cost-to-performance ratio.
Moxa's ioLogik E1212 Ethernet remote I/O unit has a 2-port embedded Ethernet switch with 8 DIs and 8 DIOs in a compact package. Thanks to its two embedded Ethernet switch ports, the ioLogik E1212 gave the lighting designer the option of creating a daisy-chain Ethernet topology that can be deployed quickly at reduced costs. The simplicity of the daisy-chain architecture makes it easy to wire and maintain, and the cascading connections permits the creation of multi-drop I/O control networks, which are perfect for applications that extend over a distance of 1.2 miles. In addition, the two Ethernet ports can also be used to construct a backup link to ensure network redundancy and stability.
Moxa's Active OPC technology makes it possible to build a seamless connection between field devices and an iFix SCADA system. Event-driven communication from the ioLogik E1212 is able to provide faster and more timely updates than a traditional poll-based architecture.
"The use of smart communication technology resulted in highly reduced need for wiring and Ethernet routers and considerable savings overall for the bridge lighting system," said Steve Frank. "This combination of quality engineering, high reliability, and smart design will continue to be the decisive factor for similar projects."
