HOME

Sitemap

Home » City Services » Services » eThekwini Transport Authority » Departments » Traffic Control » Telemetry Fault Reporting

Most Important numbers

General Enquiries:
031 311 1111
Fire Department &
Metro Police
031 361 0000
Water and Traffic Hotline
080 131 3013

Online Tools

Goods and Service Quotations

Quality of Supply

Community Profiles

Check your Lights, Water & Rates Balance

Press Releases and Newsletters

Fresh Produce Price Reporting

Council Minutes and Decisions

Indigenous plants for your garden

Telemetry Fault Reporting

TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT BRANCH

Telemetry Fault Reporting

The Remote Fault Monitoring System (commissioned in September 1988) was introduced to supplement the existing Area Traffic Control System, to enable automatic fault feedback from traffic signals in the outlying areas via telephone lines. Operational problems, including unreliable fault reporting and costly maintenance of the transmission units and hire of telephone lines, motivated the investigation of a telemetry system to report basic controller faults (including mains failure, controller flashing, lamp and detector faults) and to synchronise time at the controller.

An evaluation project is being conducted in conjunction with this Department's consultants, Online Systems, and uses a Remotronic type 301 data-radio which has the following features:

54 Mhz band (no licence required at present)
1 analog & 8 digital inputs
8 digital outputs
low battery & mains fail indication
battery operation during mains failure
range of 15 - 30 Km

These radios are manufactured locally and are currently widely used for water telemetry applications. Each unit can be set up as a repeater for other sites that are either too distant or out of direct line of sight from the Control Centre. A 2m dipole aerial is required, which can be mounted on a street light / signal pole.

A single radio unit installed at the Control Centre can monitor 200 controllers with the reported faults being displayed on the Sentinel ATC System and automatically transferred to the Traffic Signal Database to be included in the management reports.

This system has been tested in the Department's Signal Workshop and is currently being evaluated, operating live at the Northway / Umhlanga Rocks Drive traffic signal.