Digi International today announced that Heliodyne is using its Rabbit RCM5450W Wi-Fi core module, available from Dominion Electronics for network connectivity and intelligent control of Heliodyne's industry leading thermal solar energy system.
An important component of a solar water heating system is the controller. The controller monitors the system, reads the sensors, and signals the pumps when to turn on and off. The RCM5450W provides the intelligent control and connects the controller to the Internet via Wi-Fi. This allows Heliodyne's customers to monitor and manage their solar water heating systems from anywhere an Internet connection is available.
"We are currently the only American manufacturer to offer remote energy monitoring and control," said Mike Starkey, lead engineer, Heliodyne. "The Rabbit products are super easy to use and enabled us to offer an advanced program and controller that gives us something truly unique in the market."
In addition to creating a competitive advantage and being extremely easy to use, the RCM5450W reduced development time by 50 percent. Because the RCM5450W featured all of the necessary Web libraries, an embedded Web server and FCC certifications, Heliodyne could concentrate on other aspects of the product design leaving the wireless networking and control portion with Rabbit.
"If I had to write all these interfaces it would've been at least twice as much work," Starkey said. "All that CGI stuff was taken out of our hands through the RabbitWeb libraries and embedded Web server. It was pretty much design a Web site and put in a few variables, and we were up and running. It saved us a lot of time."
The RCM5450W RabbitCore module provides Wi-Fi/802.11b/g functionality and enables customers to create low-cost, embedded wireless control and communications solutions for embedded control appl