On 5/14/2010 10:59, Tom Beecher wrote:
I'm presently doing some research into a SNMP-enabled device to monitor a set of aux contacts on our transfer switch in order to be able to monitor it's status (on generator or on commercial) from our monitoring platform. I've seen a few interesting devices out there that can accomplish this, however I thought I'd query the list to see if anyone has thoughts about a particular unit they've worked with.
I went a different way with my electrical gear and used modbus. For me, the benefits are multiple devices on the 485 bus, monitoring lots of parameters and I can execute remote commands. I paid something like $300 for the xfer switch modbus card, which was cheaper than any SNMP contact closure device I could find at the time. I talk to it using Perl Modbus::Client with my monitoring server as the modbus master. It ended up being less of a hassle and much more flexible in the long run. You may or may not have your mind set on dry contact monitoring, but it's something to think about. ~Seth