The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in London houses over 10,000 works of art in its primary collection, and precise management of the environment in which they are shown is essential to avoid long term damage.
In an unusual application of industrial control technology, a range of Rockwell Automation hardware and software provides the environmental control required.
The demands of the NPG are such that, rather than a conventional building management system (BMS), it uses a range of Rockwell Automation industrial control hardware and software to manage its building services. This includes Allen-Bradley SLC500 logic controllers and motor control gear as well as a Rockwell Software RSView32 Active Display Server supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system.
The new system uses 16 SLC5/05 processors linked to an RSView32 ADS server and three client workstations via a 10MB EtherNet/IP fibre and copper network. The outputs of the SLC500s are hard wired via I/O racks to the HVAC plant and 1-10V actuators, and take 4-20mA or 0-10V analogue inputs from a range of sensors.
