Enesys developed CubeLink, to provide a scalable ultra low cost control system platform for all industry sectors and especially processes that are distributed over large geographic areas ( e.g. agriculture, algae etc) CubeLink is a modular system that enables a high level of automation to be easily and economically applied to any mechanical, hydraulic, electrical and thermal system especially over long distances. Cublink’s affordability and adaptability means projects with tight budget can access automation that was once not available to them. CubeLink’s unique input and output structures enable: Cheaper manufacturing and installation- decrease installation costs Adaptable, retrofittable and bespoke Increased diagnostics of system health Real time data collection Can communicate over vast distances and can be managed via IoT Low Power Scalable distributed hierarchy Increase Process Availability Simple Configuration Reduced maintenance and downtime costs CubeLink consists of modules that communicate with or control individual components of processes (CLIOs- CubeLinkInputs and Outputs) and modules that process data to and from distributed CLIOs and communicate with higher level systems or devices (CLIPs-CubeLinkInterface Processors). In automated systems, there is a large component cost and technical limitation in the devices that communicate with and control mechanical, thermal and monitoring equipment (such as pumps, valves, temperature and flow sensors). Some of these systems are contained within a single package (e.g. a functional device in a box) and some are distributed over large distances (e.g. a pump on a river filling a tank on a hill).

Case Study
Asta Algae Project- Far North Queensland Part of the Asta project included 260 highly controlled and hygienically sealed vertical growth columns (VGC). The independent control, monitoring and data logging of each VGC included: Automatic filling of inoculum, water or chilled water and simultaneous dosing of any mass ratio of four nutrients. Automatic sampling of pH, ORP, tank level, and temperature. Automatic % ratio of CO2 and Air, Blanketing and Anti-vacuum Valves. Automatic emptying and transfer to Raceways. The cost of conventional Instruments and PLC infrastructure to read so much data and automatically control over 1,500 valves would have crippled the project. TPO installed its own distributed control system called CubeLink as a large-scale trial of this home grown system. One Cubelink module was mounted under each of the 260 tanks to control the equipment. The CubeLink modules only require a common three-wire data cable and a common power cable for the valves. In this way PLC costs were reduced by 80% and cabling costs were reduced by 90% because the average cable run length was reduced from 35m to 1.5m. TPO installed 450 CubeLink modules in the project to monitor and control 3,200 devices. CubeLink and CubeHMI are capable of winning awards on their own.
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