Regeneration of Cardiff Bay area

Cardiff Council is using the dataTaker DT50 data acquisition system to monitor water table levels in the area surrounding Cardiff Bay marina.

Cardiff Bay has been impounded in order to create a freshwater lake with the key objective of stimulating the regeneration of the Cardiff Bay area. In certain areas of South Cardiff, a series of wells were sunk to control any rise in the water table and dataTaker loggers were chosen to monitor the system and check the pumps are operating correctly.

Twelve sites are linked to a central host PC at council headquarters using a mixture of GSM and PSTN phone lines. The host displays the status of each site and data is automatically downloaded on a daily basis to a database from which status reports are run off. The DT50 loggers will raise alarms if water levels exceed pre-defined limits and automatically dial back to the host to alert the operator.

The Series 3 DT50 data logger features up to 10 analog channels and eight digital and counter channels. For high-speed data logging, the DT800 can record up to 198,200 data points using internal memory. ATA Flash PC cards provide removable data storage of up to 198,200,000 data points. RAM is battery backed to prevent any loss of data.

Internal memory allows up to 165,000 data points to be recorded. Replaceable internal lithium batteries protect data and programming during low battery or power brownout conditions. SRAM memory cards are supported to 4 Mb (1,400,000 data points) for greater flexibility and improved speed of data transfer. Flash memory firmware can be upgraded direct from a PC.