Compact and powerful energy monitoring unit

Electrical Power & Protection

May 2022 Electrical Power & Protection Fieldbus & Industrial Networking

Opto Africa’s groov RIO EMU serves as a distributed power and energy monitoring device, plus more. It has the exact same physical form factor as others in the RIO family, like the MM1 and MM2 – while this might not seem significant at first glance, Opto Africa says it could be what makes the difference for a company’s energy monitoring initiative.

Why exactly is the form factor a big deal? Well, how many times have you had to shoehorn just one more bit of gear into an existing cabinet? The equipment may have been in place for years, but now you need to monitor power and energy as well.

The RIO EMU’s slim form factor is ideal for this sort of ‘just one more thing’ retrofit job. DIN-rail and panel-mount options mean it can be added to just about any existing panel layout or equipment. As with other RIOs in the range, the RIO EMU has two power supply options: 10-32 V DC or Power over Ethernet (PoE).

The built-in software is identical to the other RIOs, too. This includes groov Manage, Node-RED, MQTT with Sparkplug B, and a RESTful interface, to name just a few. This means there is no need to download, install and license any software, or find a PC to run it on.

The RIO EMU was built for life in 2022, with cost-saving setups. Due to the fact that the panel or equipment voltage tap (up to 600 V) and current transducers can be placed directly at the RIO EMUs keyed field connector, there is potential to save on labour, time and electrician costs by not having to run unnecessary wiring in a conduit back to a central location. All that is needed is an Ethernet cable tied back to the network.

Better yet, with a built-in dual Ethernet switch, one may not even need to run a new network cable. If you have an existing network segment in the cabinet or near the equipment, simply jack it into the RIO EMU's Ethernet switch first, then back out of the switch’s second port to the existing equipment.

The RIO EMU boasts all the cybersecurity features built into the entire groov family. Once securely logged into a RIO EMU with your own created account (no default login means no loophole), you can set your time zone, change your host name, generate certificates, set up LDAP accounts, configure the firewall, connect to an OpenVPN server, and more.

You can also use the secure web pages to configure the 64 channels of power and energy monitoring values that the RIO EMU supports. An energy monitoring unit with a VPN client and a firewall may sound unusual, but the fact is, an OEM that needs visibility into a machine’s energy and power usage needs to get that data without exposing the customer to any cybersecurity risks – therefore, gaining visibility shouldn’t add vulnerability.

If you want to quickly view your energy data directly on the groov RIO EMU, you can use the built-in groov Manage secure web server and explore the data from any modern web browser on a phone, tablet, laptop or computer. If you need a simple HMI, you can build an energy data dashboard with the Node-RED software included with the RIO.

Viewing your energy and power directly from the RIO EMU is ideal for commissioning and might be all you need once up and running. Many users will want to make the RIO EMU’s data available to other systems, so, just like all members of the groov family, there are plenty of options for moving your data off-device.

Share this article:

Electrical Power & Protection

Compact and powerful energy monitoring unit

Further reading:

Published by Technews