Video vaults

One impact of the rapid increase in broadband speeds in recent years is that we watch a lot more video than we ever used to. While video used to require tapes and disks and come in lengthy, hour-plus segments, now, we can now fire up our PCs (or iPhones) and download and view clips just a few minutes long.

YouTube is, of course, the most obvious example of an internet video source; and while it started out as more of a fun and entertainment site, there is now a plethora of information useful for automation professionals. Just try a few search terms – PID, PLC, SCADA, etc - and you’ll be amazed at what great (i.e. instructive and useful) stuff comes up.

But while video has made an impact in this personal arena, it is still not a widely used technology in industrial plants. For the most part, video here still denotes a CCTV surveillance system and a security guy looking screens and trying not to look bored as he scans for anything that could be amiss.

Notably, one company in the US, Longwatch, is actively looking to change this. Interestingly, Longwatch, which is just over five years old, is no clichéd garage start-up staffed by earnest twentysomethings, but was launched as an entrepreneurial venture by a group of seasoned automation industry professionals, including Stephen Rubin and Alpin Chisholm, co-founders of Intellution.

With a mission to provide integrated video capability for operational and security applications, Longwatch has developed a system that can transmit video over existing plant HMI/SCADA networks, such that remote locations can be monitored without necessitating significant infrastructure costs, and the same operator can monitor video events on the same screen that provides process values, alarms, trends, etc.

As John Curtis, Longwatch vice president, explains: “An operator can call up a video image of the process in question, then pan, tilt and zoom the camera to see what is happening. Once the problem is discovered, he can view video from seconds, minutes or days before the incident occurred to determine why it happened. Maybe someone hit the valve with a forklift truck three days ago. Perhaps the operator forgot to add an ingredient to a batch.”

One of the company’s latest releases is a Console Recorder, which records images generated on the HMI screen, including mouse movements as the operator moves and clicks around on the screen, and produces a video file identical to that which would be recorded by a real camera positioned behind the operator’s shoulder.

Playing back what the operator was actually seeing and doing at the time of an incident can be a valuable tool not only for event diagnosis but also for training and even ergonomic screen design. Indeed, as Stephen Rubin writes in this issue, “Video feedback is a simple yet effective technology that closes the forgotten loop of human activity in the automation system.”