California Classical Radio: Remote Radio Tower Facility Monitoring 

• Customer: California Classical Radio
• Industry: Broadcast
• Location: California
• Challenge: Radio broadcast control system lacks remote facility monitoring and control capabilities.
• Solution: ControlByWeb programmable I/O controllers provide native remote access and control for flexible use, including facility management.

Radio Tower Monitoring for Broadcast Companies 

Ron Thompson, Director of Engineering with California Classical Radio, is a long-time customer of ControlByWeb. At first, he used CBW controllers to turn radio transmitters on and off, running his broadcasts with basic relay control. Many radio stations do similar things on an automated schedule or manually. However, when they decided to make the jump to a purpose-built broadcast management platform, they learned their CBW devices were still indispensable. The broadcast control system was great at broadcasting but gave them no visibility or control over anything else. They were blind to their remote tower facilities spread throughout Southern and Central California.

Broadcast control system hardware is purpose-built, and gives no features to monitor generators, lights, temperatures, weather, and a host of other data points that matter to Ron. His primary concern is uptime, and anything like a power outage or runaway equipment temperatures could disrupt the broadcast. He needed a flexible remote monitoring system for his various radio towers that are spread throughout southern and central California.

Facility Monitoring and Building Automation 

Ron turned to his old friends at ControlByWeb. He already had some older hardware to test the application, and he knew the product line well. Our controllers provide him with easy remote access to monitor temperatures, leaks, security camera status, dry contacts, generator status, fuel level, and more.

Today, he uses a variety of our 400 Series units, like the X-410 and X-408. This gives him critical data points from his facilities that alert him and his staff of problems as they arise. He can react quickly and avoid unnecessary downtime.

How CBW Made a Real Difference at Remote Tower Sites 

There are a number of reasons why ControlByWeb is a perfect fit for radio stations like California Classical. They all start with our streamlined, browser-based user interface that enables user programming for nearly any application. With our innovative “soft” features, Ron can monitor nearly any sensor or dry contact, create conditional and scheduled logic with or without code, and send remote notifications in real time.

User-Interface 

The browser-based UI is a huge advantage for Ron and others like him. There is no software to program or run our controllers. Everything is embedded in the device. And it’s all packaged in an easy-to-use web browser experience. This means that it’s not only simple for Ron to program and deploy these controllers, but it’s straightforward for his staff, too.

The features available on the device, and accessible through the UI, are not purpose-built, but open, flexible, and useful in a variety of applications.

Sensor Compatibility 

ControlByWeb IoT devices are perfect for remote data acquisition. Ron can monitor temperature sensors, current transducers, liquid level sensors, dry contacts, and more. Our modules have several inputs including:

• Digital inputs for contact closures
• Analog inputs for 0-10V and 4-20mA signals
• Modbus RS-485
• 1-Wire for temperature sensors

This gives anyone monitoring remote tower sites the compatibility they need to have eyes on the ground.

Logic

Relay, notification, and logging control can be either scheduled or conditionally triggered. Importantly, for radio stations and telecom companies with remote towers, there is reboot logic which is useful when cameras, modems, routers, transmitters, and other IP equipment become unresponsive.

This offers granular control over when notifications are sent, when data is logged, when relays are triggered, and even when network equipment is rebooted.

Notifications

ControlByWeb modules connect directly to SMTP servers to send emails using existing email service providers like Outlook and Gmail. This is a simple process for most email providers and offers a valuable service at no additional cost. No cloud dependency. No 3rd party paid service required.

From there, broadcast engineers and technicians can send notification emails to up to 8 email addresses. Send emails to other automation services to turn email notifications into texts and push notifications as needed for each unique organization.

There are a host of tools that take email notifications and turn them into virtually any other kind of notification. Some are even free. But this approach gives ControlByWeb users ultimate flexibility and control, built on the reliable and truly ubiquitous email service backbone.