US-based Northrop Grumman Corporation has unveiled a new generation of marine alarm, monitoring and control solutions, designed to provide cost-effective solutions for small- to medium-size commercial and naval vessels.
The new alarms, marketed by Northrop Grumman’s Sperry Marine business unit under the VisionMaster label, are being offered in two basic configurations – VisionMaster Alarm Management System (AMS) and VisionMaster Machinery Control System (MCS).
Northrop uses commercial, off-the-shelf industry-standard components for all key building blocks within the system. This helps to control initial capital costs and also ensures cost-effective through-life support using industry-standard parts, it said.
The systems are based on a dedicated redundant-switched ethernet local area network for complete field-to-server data links. The ethernet ring is structured around two servers to provide redundancy in hot back-up configuration for control and monitoring of all subsystems.
The systems’ open architecture permits the connection of monitoring stations anywhere in the vessel. The thin-client technology provides for expansion with new fixed and mobile workstations on the network.
“The VisionMaster AMS and MCS solutions are designed to provide an easy ‘drop-in’ replacement for legacy machinery automation systems, as well as newbuilds, with serial interfaces to the sensors on diesel engines from most major plant manufacturers,” said J Nolasco DaCunha, vice president of Northrop Grumman Sperry Marine. “They can be installed as stand-alone alarm, monitoring and control solutions, or integrated with the Sperry Marine VisionMaster FT integrated bridge systems.”
