Compact Design, Big Impact: New Bullhorn Test Point Remote Monitors: Virtual Brew 01/18/2024

Simplify your pipeline monitoring on hard-to-reach test station locations with the new Bullhorn RM5 Test Point Remote Monitoring Units.

Join Product Manager Andrew Wooster as he walks you through all the details, notable features, and configuration of the next generation of American Innovations’ Bullhorn RM5 Test Point Monitors.

The Bullhorn RM5 Test Point and Interruptible Bond Remote Monitors will release in early 2024.

Transcript

Introduction

Andrew Wooster
I’m excited this morning to talk about — as I first introduced back in the fall at our AI World conference — the next iteration of our RM5, our Next Generation RMUs. That’s in the form of our new RM540 Test Point Monitor, and we also have the RM520 Interruptible Bond Monitor. I’ve got one of the units in my hand right here, and I’ll go ahead and dive in.

RM540 Test Point Monitor

The RM540 Test Point Monitor — which also includes a grade-level test point option — is really a very fundamental, very simple monitoring device that you can put at the top of a test post along your pipelines. It has a single structure input, and you can connect two reference cells to it. The use case for this would be if you wanted redundant reference cells in the ground, maybe to compare their performance, or if you wanted a single reference cell on the ground, and then, at times when a technician wants to walk up and take a measurement with a portable reference cell, they could touch that second reference cell input and take that measurement, using the mobile app to read it.

All of these devices come with the option of a three-year data plan, with no overages — and that’s actually a model we’re moving to for all of our remote monitoring products, a no-overages kind of scheme.

In terms of critical specs, one of the biggest things is — we foresee a lot of these units being installed in the field for a long time, without you having to service them. You want them to do their job, and you get the benefit of just seeing the data without having to worry about them. So we’ve really focused a lot of attention on the battery life of these units — this device, in its typical use case, has a spec’d 10-year battery life. At the point where you do need to replace those batteries, 10 years down the road, it’s a field-replaceable system — you remove the cap and replace the batteries with off-the-shelf batteries.

The inputs are suitable for the measurement of typical pipe-to-soil readings, as well as a little higher voltage than that, and this comes with a typical DC accuracy of plus or minus 1%, with a little bit of offset at 1 volt. As you see in the bottom-left corner of the screen, that’s a picture of the grade-level mechanical enclosure option available for this — I’ll touch on that a bit more in an upcoming slide — but those are the two variants you see there: one in the upper-right corner sits atop a test post, and the one in the bottom left is what would go subgrade.

RM520 Interruptible Bond Monitor

And then the RM520 is our single-bond interruptible bond monitor. Again, this is another device that can sit atop a test post — the solid-state relay is a new solid-state relay designed exclusively for this product, and its dimensions allow it to go down into the test post beneath the RMU.

It has a two-structure input system, so you could be measuring — if you have a crossing of two pipelines — the pipe-to-soil on each of those pipelines, your own, as well as a foreign pipeline that’s bonded at that site.

Because of the nature of the application — it calls in more frequently than a standard test point, as well as the function of the relay — this unit has a five-year battery life. Relative to test points, which have a 10-year battery life, there are a lot fewer of these interruptible bond monitors that would be out in the field, so that’s another factor behind the five-year battery life. Similar DC and AC accuracy specs, and input ranges.

Installation

From an installation standpoint, both of these devices — whether you install them on an existing test point, or purchase one of our Triton test posts — we provide an interface cable to easily connect with what you’re used to seeing at the top of a test post, that vertical plate with banana jacks. We’re providing an easy installation approach for that.

Satellite and Cellular Options

Both of these new products are going to be released in both satellite and cellular options. You have test sites out in the middle of nowhere, maybe away from cell towers, and you just can’t get cell reception everywhere you need to — so we’re providing a satellite option for those locations. One of the benefits of our newer RM5 architecture is that we’re now using the Iridium satellite network — a low Earth orbit satellite network, so there are always satellites moving through and visible in the sky. That results in a much more reliable, consistent, fast data transfer.

On the cellular side, sometimes you’re near a cell tower, in an urban area, and you want the benefit of a lower-cost communication option — so we’re also providing an AT&T cellular option, which has wide coverage for a lot of the areas you’re using, and is again a lower-cost option, both in terms of the unit itself and the subscription plan, because of the lower cost of data transmission over cellular. Both of these are two-way communication — they’ll report data to you, and you can also program them via Bullhorn Web.

To comment a bit more on Iridium versus what we’ve traditionally done in our legacy RMU products, like the RM4211 and RM4251 DC test point units — previous, or legacy, units have used what’s referred to as a geostationary satellite constellation, where there’s a satellite that sits above the equator, in the same spot in the sky, and moves with the Earth. Devices communicating over that kind of satellite have to be very conscious of where they’re located — making sure nothing’s blocking them, making sure they have a view of the sky in the direction of that satellite — and sometimes this can create complications, sometimes it actually limits or prohibits the use of a satellite device at a site, because your device can’t get the visibility it needs.

With our newer generation of RM5 units, the low Earth orbit satellite constellation has a network of satellites constantly moving through the sky, sharing and handing off the satellite connection from your device — so it’s a much more reliable, much more consistent possibility that you’ll have visibility to a satellite. Basically, if you can see the sky, there’s going to be a satellite there for you to communicate with — this network is, in theory, able to get a satellite connection anywhere in the world.

Interruption-Aware Readings

Other notable features — one I want to highlight is, with the Test Point Monitor, we cannot do interruption on this — it’s a voltage measurement and reporting device. However, if you have an interruption happening on the asset the Test Point Monitor is connected to, you’d like to get a trustworthy measurement during that interruption. So what we’ve done is enable a feature where you can program the device with a known interruption cycle that’ll be happening — let’s say, in a couple weeks, I’m going to be running a survey during a certain time span, I can program that time span into my device, so it’s aware of that interruption cycle. If the device is programmed and it wakes up on its routine call to take a measurement and phone that data in, it will take an instant-off measurement — it assumes there’s an interruption happening, takes an instant-off measurement, and delivers that reading to you. Otherwise, it’ll just return a standard pipe-to-soil reading. The programmability of those interruption cycles is done within Bullhorn Web, and transmitted to the device ahead of when your interrupt survey would be occurring.

Grade-Level Enclosure

I touched briefly at the beginning on the RM540 and its grade-level enclosure — this is going to be available only in our cellular option, based on the constraints of having a unit in the ground, and a lot more likelihood of blockages to the sky. The targeted application for a grade-level unit would be in an urban area, roadways, and things like that, where it’s much more likely a cellular connection would be available.

We’ll be offering a cast iron valve box with a plastic insert lid — that plastic insert lid is particularly important, because it gives the communication signals the ability to pass through. If it were a cast iron lid, it would just be a Faraday cage that no signals could pass into or out of.

Another application we foresee, maybe in smaller quantities, would be users who have a field — say, a farmer who has a field where they can’t have a test post, or some other place where a test post is impractical — it’s a better fit to have a grade-level solution. That’s another application you could consider this device for.

Triton Test Post Compatibility

The other notable feature here — for those of you familiar with our Triton test post, more commonly in the past it’s been paired with our RM4210 and RM4250 AC monitors — we now have iterations of the Triton test post with compatibility for the RM540 and RM520, and those will be released at the same time as the 540 and 520. So you’ll be able to not only install these devices on test posts you already have installed, but you could also purchase the whole system from us, in the form of the Triton test post — it would include all the structure cables you’d need, reference cells, and all the interface cabling needed — you simply pop the device on top, check it with your mobile app, and move on to the next one.

Bullhorn Tools and Bullhorn Web

It wouldn’t be good for me not to mention that the programmability and configurability of all of these devices has and will continue to be enabled by our Bullhorn Tools mobile app and Bullhorn Web. All of these devices, upon release, will have the capability of programming and verification in the field with the mobile app — the mobile app is really oriented toward that field installation process, so you get the device wired up and installed on top of the test post, and you can do all the initial checks while you’re out in the field, before you leave the site — rather than discovering, once you get back to the office, that something might have been blocking its view, or a cable wasn’t wired up properly. That’s really the key usage for Bullhorn Tools. You can also do some programmability of schedules there, but most of the detailed scheduling work you’d do with these devices is going to happen in Bullhorn Web.

One of the key things I want to point out on Bullhorn Tools — when you first bring up the device and connect to it via Bluetooth, it’ll give you an indication of signal quality, which is a really key thing to check when you’re installing these. We’re making an enhancement in the newer release of Bullhorn Tools — previously, we had an indication with numbers associated with the power level, and you kind of had to pull out your decoder ring to understand what that meant. We’ve simplified that for you — we’ve taken those metrics and translated them into something easy to understand: is it a poor signal, a good signal, or a great signal? We’ll give you that indication, so you have an idea of what’s going on — and then you can also send a test packet from the field upon installation, which will confirm what we’re telling you about signal quality, that you can actually send and receive that confirmation of the device’s communication.

Q&A

Andrew Wooster
All right, and with that, I’ve left a few minutes here for questions and any other commentary the AI folks would like to add — but again, we’re really excited to get this out, we’re looking to have it out this quarter, all of these devices. So reach out to your sales representative — we’re in the final stages of finalizing all of our pricing right now, so you’ll be able to get that information soon. And I believe we now have the product pages live on the website, where you can access the data sheets for even more detail than what I’ve communicated here, as well as training videos that’ll be coming — some of those have already been completed, and are really showing you the ease of installation of all this. So, a lot of content available as of today, and I’m really excited to see these devices out in the field.

[Moderator]
I really appreciate it — Andrew, just for some clarification, could you hold that test point up again?

Andrew Wooster
This is what I mean — we’re really excited to be able to put this design out in the market. We’ve got a lot of — small, I think I need to move it closer to the camera. One thing we did — we embedded the data sheets, and they have QR codes that take you to the product pages. We’ll follow this up in an email as well.

[Moderator, relaying a question]
One question that came up from Brad was asking about — if you’re on a data plan that enables it, what’s the maximum sampling rate for the Test Point Monitors, Andrew?

Andrew Wooster
These Test Point Monitors are designed for a single measurement return — we have some products coming down the pipeline that will have data-logging functionality, but these particular devices are more on the side of single, instantaneous measurements. We think of these as low-cost, low-maintenance test points, to handle some of those areas that are maybe hard to reach — and we definitely have products coming very soon that’ll give you the data-logging capabilities everyone’s asking for. We’re very keen on listening to the market, so please keep pitching us on your needs, and we’ll hopefully keep designing products for you.

I don’t see a lot of other questions coming in, but if anyone wants to ask a question, it’s a great time — happy to answer, and we can always follow up after as well.

[Moderator]
Okay, well, again, if anything comes in the chat, we’ll get to it — but just to give a heads-up, we have our next Virtual Brew in February. One of the things we’re going to be going into — and, as always, we want to go through best practices, training, technical topics that help everyone in the field — we’re going to be going through our platforms and best practices for ECDA monitoring, so that’s CIS, DCVG, all those types of capabilities, using our tools, and also how you can optimize reporting and best practices in our platforms, like PCS and Survey Manager.

Attendee
Happy to answer anything you have — let me just unmute myself first. There’s a spec sheet that was provided in the chat by Justin, and it shows environmental specs, minus 30°C to plus 60°C, and 0 to 95% humidity. I’ve had some experience with condensation forming on products regardless — so, the place you might get high humidity, but as the temperature drops, you get condensation inside the test station heads, and on the circuitry and everything else. How bad is that — that’s the simplest way I can ask the question. Understanding that there could be moisture, if it forms into droplets, is that pretty bad for the circuitry, or does it have some sort of robustness built in that won’t have significant negative impacts, unless it was fully submerged or something like that?

Andrew Wooster
I’ll take this one — that’s a great question, and it’s something that’s come up on even our legacy RMUs. I’ll tell you that the testing we do in engineering — we have these massive humidity and temperature chambers in our engineering lab, where we put these units through the paces in terms of temperature ranges. We actually test beyond the temperature ranges we publish, to make sure we’ve got headroom. But those same temperature chambers can also provide a humidity environment, to really test the influence of humidity, and condensing humidity, to be more specific.

Along with that, we do extensive field testing of these units, to actually see them in the real world — because it’s one thing to test these devices through the paces in the lab, but it’s an entirely different thing to test them out in the field, where they’re actually being used. So, yes — that’s a very good point, on humidity having an effect on these devices, or any electronic devices, and we make sure to design for that.

One thing to also mention — if you’re using our foreign bond monitor, that comes with an Innovation of the Year award-winning solid-state relay, which is also fully potted — so there are multiple elements here, you’re talking about a full epoxy coating to help prevent things like humidity buildup inside the circuitry. So we obviously want to design for that — these are for corrosion, so they have to meet those requirements. We’ll continue expanding the data sheets and the information, based on our field trials and everything that’s ongoing now, and make sure we get that information out into the market.

Hopefully that answers a little of what you’re looking for, Brad — is there anything else we can clarify for you?

Brad
Yeah, actually answered my question very well, thank you. I have another one, regarding the temperature — lower temperature limits, minus 30°C. I live in Canada, so we had about a week and a half of that last week, and the week prior. Understanding that this equipment will be subjected to temperatures colder than that — sometimes down to minus 40, minus 45 — though it tends not to stay there too terribly long — however, in my life, I’ve seen three weeks where the high temperature was minus 30. So, when the equipment is subjected to those cold temperatures for, say, a week or two weeks, what sort of impact does that have? Does the system just freeze up, and you can’t use it — or is it still functional, but maybe not reliable for data? And I guess the associated question would be, how does that impact battery life?

Andrew Wooster
That’s a great question — I could get you a much more detailed answer from our engineering folks, I’d like to discuss with them on some of what you’re asking, but I will say that the published temperature range for operation is largely driven by the batteries, and their operation, function, and capacity across a temperature range — the rest of the electronics, not so much. I mean, they’re influenced by it too, for sure, but the battery operation is going to be most influenced by that. I’d like to follow up with you on the specifics of what that looks like — what would the symptoms be of a device operating outside of that range, and can it recover appropriately, and so forth. So, I will follow up with you, Brad, and answer that question.

Brad
Okay, I appreciate it — and if anyone else can add anything I’m missing, please do. AI team, have a good day.

[Moderator, relaying a question]
A question from William, asking about cellular network operations — especially in places like — so, what are the cellular carriers for the LTE that we’re going to market with, Andrew?

Andrew Wooster
We are going to market with AT&T — although we’re open to discussing other carriers, maybe international, at some point as well — we’re open to that, there are no plans for that right now. For any areas where there is not AT&T cellular coverage, the default would be to look at a satellite unit, that Iridium satellite unit — being that they’re a low-orbiting mesh network, they have just an incredible span. But for anyone with questions or concerns about coverage, you can always reach out to us, engage with your sales account manager, provide us with the lat/longs of the locations, and we can provide you with a heat map of which one might work better — a satellite unit or a cellular unit. We’re always here to be a resource, to answer those questions and give you the right configuration.

Closing

[Moderator]
All right, well, I think for no other questions, we’ll be happy to follow up and make sure we’re doing our part, and we’ll keep everyone updated — we’re really excited to have this product released. Again, you have the data sheets, and we’ll follow up with some communications, and touch base with everyone who’s asked questions here, independently.

Andrew Wooster
So — Cole, Christian — if we’re all good, I hope everyone has a great rest of your day. We’re really excited to see you out in the market, and please let us know any way we can help or be your support.

[Moderator]
Thanks — great rest of your week, and a great weekend to you as well. Thanks, thanks, everybody.