Controllable Snow
Here at R-DNA, we pride ourselves in listening to our customers. If the functionality currently on offer doesn’t quite match what you need, then we react and adapt accordingly. One such situation occurred recently with our partner Van Walt, and some specific requirements they needed to be able to achieve at the Cardrona Alpine Resort in New Zealand.
The Cardrona Alpine Resort is a relaxed and family friendly ski and snowboard resort located between Wanaka and Queenstown, New Zealand. Van Walt were working with the resort to place sensor and data logger hardware at various locations in order to monitor river flow and levels, and based on those values trigger a relay. The relay would then control the functionality of a snow generating device that turns the river water into snow in order to prepare the slopes in times of insufficient snowfall.
Whilst R-DNA already contained a multitude of functionality in terms of data reporting and monitoring and remote control of those devices, it didn’t provide any reactive push-back to those hardware nodes in terms of automated control. So, we set to work to enhance R-DNA to provide these new additional requirements.
The mechanism for achieving this was controlled via the GSM network and utilised much of the remote control functionality already present in the system. We already had in place facility to remote control various data-logger hardware options to perform functions such as hardware configurations, restarts and so on. This requirement necessitated an enhancement to allow control of those relay switches and open up an expanse of possibility.
By allowing R-DNA to directly and automatically interact with hardware it now operates as a true Internet of Things (IoT) system that doesn’t rely on any human intervention to control hardware. The software will sit and smartly monitor data and automatically respond to that data based on pre-defined rules.
In this example the new functionality monitors water levels and turns off/on a snow making device, but it is clear that the system installed at Cardrona can be implemented in any number of scenarios – from the simple, such as the opening of a relay switch to sound an alarm when a door has been left open, to much more complex requirements, where the only limitation is your imagination.
