April 9, 2018 - Otek Corporation, located in Tucson, Arizona, has created an analog meter which has no needle, magnet, rotor or bobbins and like analogs is 100% signal powered.
The Solid State Analog Meter (known as SSAM) is designed to replace 100% form, fit and function analog signal-driven meters used for current loops, ac/dc Volts, Amps, Watts, Frequency and other signals capable of producing five (5) milliWatts or more. The all- hardware (no microcontroller) SSAM has no Critical Digital Assets (CDA) as defined by NRC/NEI 10-04 & NEI08-09
The design of the SSAM presented an engineering challenge to Otek’s staff to replace the microcontroller design of their New Technology Meter (NTM) with a hardware-only design without exceeding the minimum quiescent current typically required by an analog meter. It was another challenge to replace the “smarts” of the microcontroller in the NTM which drives the automatic tricolor LED display with a hardware-only solution.
After Otek replaced the smarts of the microcontroller with “dumb” hardware only, the next challenge was to add color to the display to provide further visual cues to the meter reader. Typically, a traffic light pattern of the colors green for good, yellow for warning and red for danger is used on LED meters. Otek developed a COLOR-EX system that uses white LEDs with translucent color film overlays that can be combined to cover the entire color spectrum to suit the customer’s needs. The result is a tricolor bar and digital display driven by the signal that it measures, just like analog meters. Otek also developed replacements for other common signal inputs besides the popular 1-5, 4-20 & 10-50 mA dc current loops.
They rearranged their signal conditioners to offer ac Volts, Amps, Watts, Hertz (for household power lines 120/240V, 40-440 Hz) and dc inputs (up to 140Vdc).
Further refinements enable the customer to add optional “on-off” alarm outputs, 4-20 mA retransmission and serial output.
