The Samuel De Champlain Bridge is two miles long and crosses the St. Lawrence Seaway in Montreal. The bridge’s deck and towers feature nearly 7500 Lumenpulse LBL fixtures connected to 188 Lumenpulse ArtNet CBXs. This control network, as well as every fixture on the bridge, is monitored by the Horatio system.

The Setup

This system was somewhat unique in that in May 2018, BPI went to the Lumenpulse factory in Longueuil to install the Horatio Bridge Device temporarily while the system was undergoing the Factory Acceptance Test. This allowed us to refine the monitoring on a smaller-scale system, as well as provide valuable feedback and reports to the engineers as they completed the FAT. Once the system scaled to the entire bridge, we returned to the project site in Montreal to finalize commissioning the system.

Tuning the Alerts

The client’s main reason for using Horatio is to be notified when network devices or fixtures go offline, which is primarily caused by electrical maintenance within the system. The Horatio is able to distinguish between losing a CBX and losing an individual fixture on that CBX, so if a CBX goes offline, the client receives an alert for that CBX, but not for each individual fixture connected to it. This reduces the number of unnecessary alerts the client receives and allows them to quickly and clearly see where the problem lies. Alerts are also tuned so that major issues impacting the network devices are immediately sent to the client, but alerts about smaller problems involving loss of contact with fixtures are sent on a longer timescale. This allows these alerts to trigger maintenance work orders in a somewhat autonomous manner.

Long-term Data Collection

For long-term predictive maintenance purposes, the Horatio also collects sensor data (voltage, temperature, and LumenLife). In order to not overwhelm the network, this sensor data is collected slowly – about eight seconds between each reading – so we receive data from the entire system about once every 16 hours.