Over the last few decades, electrical loads in an automotive system have evolved from lighting and battery-charging towards infotainment, sensors and safety, thanks to component miniaturisation. This has made the car smarter and more fun to drive! While the trend of electronics in infotainment systems continues, a future trend is electronics in power train […]
by Hans van de Groenendaal, features editor, EngineerIT The concept of Industry 4.0 technology requires close cooperation between IT systems and automation. With this development automation systems are destined to meet the challenges the world will face over the next 20 to 30 years. Automation is the answer to numerous great challenges facing mankind […]
If the data centre of a financial service provider goes down due to a power glitch, the impact is significant – there’s potential damage to equipment, applications and systems. However, the greater impact includes downtime, business loss and damage to customer relationships. Speed and cost of recovery, and limiting damage sustained, will depend on […]
Information from Alien Systems & Technologies Corporate South Africa is moving more and more in the direction of good corporate governance. In the recent past, the King3 Report provided a framework whereby company directors are obliged to ensure governance is maintained at a level whereby key stakeholders such as shareholders, bondholders, employees and various […]
Thermography is not just pointing the camera at an object. You have to know what you are imaging and then how to interpret the image. Thermal imaging is not just about pointing a camera at a switch, a transformer or risky cable connection. As in photography, a “mik en druk” (point and press) camera cannot […]
Thermal cameras have many advantages, such as allowing users to detect people, objects and incidents in complete darkness and difficult conditions such as smoke, haze, dust and light fog. Eliminating the need for flood lights, they reduce light pollution. In addition, a thermal camera is a reliable platform for integrating intelligent software applications. A […]
Broadband connectivity in South Africa Despite national targets to achieve 100% broadband penetration in South Africa by 2020, the situation remains that infrastructure challenges have left thousands of underserved consumer, business and government users in South Africa. Even where infrastructure exists, connectivity challengescan vary between copper theft and subsea outages. It is now crucial […]
Optical fibre-centric companies often give the impression that satellite are fading out the picture, but in fact the opposite is true. Very small aperture terminal (VSAT) services are growing and remain vital in the communication mix. Satellites still remain popular and critical to connecting large parts of Africa where many areas have no access […]
Hello…hello…can you hear me…hello please can you move to another spot so that the signal can improve. This type of conversation is becoming more the norm than the exception in South Africa lately. With the mobile voice penetration in South Africa being almost 100% it evident that voice traffic is aprominent medium of communication. […]
M2M (machine-to-machine) communication brings valuable benefits both to device manufacturers and to end users: remote sensing, monitoring, tracking and data-logging bring a new dimension to the functions of machines in industrial, commercial, military and other market segments, in applications such as automation, vending, smart metering and logistics. Wireless is the preferred mode of communication […]
