Biological Cultures

THE PROBLEM

The Institute of Hygiene of Uruguay’s Ministry of Public Health has as a mission the conservation of biological samples sensible for human health as well as performing studies and cultivations. With this purpose it is equipped with dozens of refrigerators and freezers, which must be kept under strict temperature ranges, to avoid damage to the material. For biological cultivations, they also use several stoves, where temperature is a key variable that has to be strictly controlled and recorded, in order to ensure reliable results. They also use stoves and autoclaves for the sterilization of materials. The equipment is distributed over several stories in different laboratories.

THE CHALLENGE

Replacing the manual registration of temperatures, which is difficult and unreliable, by an automatic and continuous recording. The preservation of the information must be secured; the remote access must be allowed for supervision purpose, and it must be ensured the issuing of alarms in case temperature values move outside accepted ranges, requiring human intervention to make corrections.

THE SOLUTION

CONTROLTEK proposed a solution based on installing adequate temperature sensors on each piece of equipment. The ranges of temperature and the precision of each sensor are selected according to the requirement of the equipment on which it will be installed.
As the different equipments are relatively close o each other, it was decided to cable the labs with a simple and single telephone pair. This is cheap and adequate for signals based on “1-wire” technology, which is the one used by most of the sensors. The “1-wire” sensors are serially connected over the telephone pair. The sensors of the pieces of equipment which are close to each other are grouped on a concentrator. Each concentrator is connected to a FLAMENCO GREEN BOX (FGB) acquisition equipment.

There are a small number of sensors that must comply with stricter conditions (temperature range, extreme temperatures and precision), which utilize Ethernet signals for communication. These sensors are connected through Ethernet cables, directly to a FGB device. The FLAMENCO GREEN BOX devices transmit the information captured to a server via Ethernet. Our MeterManager software, which is installed at the Institute’s offices on a simple PC, stores the temperature readings, and allows to visualize and export them on compatible formats (PDF, Excel, flat files, CSV, etc.), for further utilization by other applications. Ii is possible to visualize the readings by just having the corresponding permits and a browser connected to the Institute’s internal network.

In the presence of deviations outside given ranges, which are parameterized for each piece of equipment, MeterManager sends alarms to warn those with a responsibility. The alarms could be sent by electronic mail, SMS or mobile phones.