motor control remotely from distance!!

[mayomagneto]

hi there guys,,i'm counting on getting help from anyone that could advise me in how to control 3 motors from distance,,,,here is the situation!!!!...
I work for this company that supplies wáter for this Little town ,,5 miles distance,,well on a everyday basis someone has to go to this town and turn on 3 motors that work pumping wáter and at a certain time this very same person has to comeback and turn off motors and open up some valves so the wáter can run directly onto people houses,,im wondering if there is anything nowdays that could help to manipulate these motors from a distance like surveillance cameras do..control them,,turn them off and on remotely and open up valves as needed and be notified in case of overloads and issues,,,I have knowledge of transporting internet from distance,...
any help would be very appreciated...

just for the record,,,as i was thinking while i was going to sleep,,i had this thought,,what if there is like Smart card that its installed on the motor or control panel and have this Ethernet port to be controlled remotely on any pc and software as well.....(was i close to reality?)

 

[CylonRaider]

Sounds like a job for a Raspberry Pi

 

[jj4091]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_control_system

 

[mattylad]

It's not going to be cheap - a pi will be totally NOT the thing for this, it's too unreliable.

This needs an industrial control system that will protect things should it fail - not a pi that will just fail.

 

[foxhole]

Control the power supply with a simple time clock?

 

[Spark123]

If it isn't going to be manned there will need to be some sort of remote alarm should something fail.
It goes back to using a proper industrial control system, I'm pretty sure water companies in the states will have something similar elsewhere.

 

[AlanE]

Control the power supply with a simple time clock?

That's OK for the motors but what about turning the valves?

 

[jj4091]

Control the power supply with a simple time clock?

That's OK for the motors but what about turning the valves?

Motorised valves, surely.

 

[ericmark]

Most PLC's can interface with scada with in turn will allow control through the cloud.

What has to be remembered you can't rely on the cloud so the PLC will run everything on an automatic basis telling the controller what it is doing who can in turn issue instructions but should these instructions fail it will still fail safe.

The question is why anyone should need to manually control a pumping station? On all the systems I have worked on the telemetry is in the main to relay a failure requiring manual intervention be it renew a fuse or press a re-set button on the design stage we have decided if that needs doing some one should be looking at why it needs doing.

Be it monitoring pressure, flow rate or levels the PLC should be able to auto start and stop pumps as required and all that is required is for the maintenance to be told when it has failed.

Using scada is really so levels, pressures and flow rates can be monitored where a manual intervention has to be made for example a pipe burst then yes one can get in and over ride to tell the system to switch off a pump or close a valve but that we would hope would not be on a daily basis.

 

[Dave54]

This is quite an old thread, but I remember looking at it at the time and thinking that the water supply to a "small town" is hardly DIY stuff.

I also notice that the OP hasn't been back.

However I'd agree with you Eric that the system should be fully automatic in it's own right. Also that any reliance on external agencies like phone lines or the internet should be only for monitoring, and not relied on for the operation of the system.
Should be multiple pumps arranged in "cascade" at a guess too.

Industrial systems are much more robust both mechanically and electrically than domestic type systems. I'd have thought that a system like this needs to be professionally specified and installed.