| Real Time Monitoring and Control Systems Introduction As a by-product of developing high performance electronic payments systems, we integrated a very high level of support to the monitoring and control of the equipment "at the other end of the wire." In mass transit applications our customers soon found that having very good information relative to the status of each piece of equipment in the field added to their ability to schedule maintenance personnel, reduced the need for additional personnel, reduced costs, and ultimately resulted in greater reliability and uptime performance of vending and fare collection equipment. The diagram below touches upon some of the features of Agent Transaction Manager relating to the on-line control and monitoring of vending equipment, point-of-sale terminals, and in fact, any type of equipment which can communicate with a remote host.
Features and Benefits Some of the major features and benefits of Agent Transaction Manager as a monitoring and control application:
Example of Real Time Monitoring and Control System This example consists of screen shots of the present monitoring terminal for San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit along with screen shots of the type of Java-based user terminal implementations we will be rolling out in the near future.
This is the overall system view showing the minimum status of all pieces of equipment at a station. If a station name is orange (for example) that means that at least one piece of equipment is showing an error condition and is probably out of service or is partially out of service. When the operator clicks on a station name (for example Coliseum) a stylized floor map of that station pops up which displays the approximate location of each piece of equipment and its status (using the same color coding as the system view).
From this view the operator can (if permissions allow) reverse the direction of gates, turn equipment on and off, inquire as to the monetary contents of a vending machine or the ticket supplies, and view any performance or sales data available at the station of equipment level. When the red icon is clicked, an equipment level screen is launched.
This view is a simulation of the interior of the equipment and gives the status of each major subsystem. From this view the operator can (if permissions allow) inquire on service histories, coin and bill vault contents, and error histories (which components have caused the most problems in the past). The following table is a summary of the event history of one component (Service Terminal) in the equipment highlighted above.
This is an excellent example of the level of detail available to the user of Agent Transaction Manager. Not only does the operator find out what the problem is and where it is, but also a complete history of all components of each individual piece of equipment and cross-referenced histories of that component in all like pieces of equipment. Along with the financial functions of Agent Transaction Manager, the real-time monitoring functions allow the profitable and successful use of remotely located intelligent equipment such as vending and fare collection devices. Please contact us if you have questions or comments regarding high performance real-time, on-line monitoring and control of any type of intelligent equipment for any type of application. Contact
Agent Systems, Inc. |
