Plant safety status lights ideas

Upon entering our plant, we have a traffic light set up to indicate the safety level of our plant. Green means safe, yellow means non-recordable or first aid required injury, and red means a OSHA recordable injury.

We are wanting to add similar type of device to our different production areas boards. We have 9 total areas, so buying traffic lights for each is not economically feasible. Also, several of the boards are on wheels and move so running 120V power to them would also not be feasible.

Basically what i'm asking is for a brainstorm of ideas of how to make a device that can be battery powered and light up a LED light (doesn't have to be big but still be noticeable) and as inexpensive as possible. It also needs to look nice and neat since it they will be for everyone that comes into the plant to see.

phoenix contact makes wireless IO that can do what you want but it wont be cheap.

I immediately thought of building something using the Arduino platform. If you're unfamiliar with it, it is a small open source AVR development board. People are always using it to turn on LEDs. Low-power, low-cost. There are even RF modules for running it wirelessly.

AutomationDirect just announced a series of stack lights that could fit the bill:

http://www.automationdirect.com/adc...ts/WERMA_Stack_Light_Components?banner_121411


As for controlling them, consider using their DL-05 PLCs with an Ethernet card in each, connected to a Buffalo router:

http://www.amazon.com/Buffalo-Technology-Wireless-G-Antenna-WHR-HP-G54/dp/B000AOKTJ8


The stock firmware is rubbish, but if you flash the routers with the Tomato firmware, they work like champs. I'm running Tomato v1.27 on a pair of these routers, one set up as a router, and the other set up in bridge mode as a client.

I have a pair of AD DL-06's and a C-more HMI communicating over the WiFi link with no issues. It was a piece of cake to set up, and the links are solid (not sure of distances in your case).

On power-up, the bridge-ed router finds the base station in about 5 seconds. The routers run from 5v, so a dc-dc converter from your 24v source is an easy way to run them.

Another bonus is that you can program all the PLCs over a WiFi link from one laptop. Just connect the laptop to the base station router and away you go!

Let me know if you need any more specifics on this setup. I'm happy to go into a little more detail if you need.

Of course, you could just put a R-Y-G stack light on a little cart with a 24v battery and a 4-pos switch and pay the guy who sweeps the floors to keep them charged and set correctly


-rpoet

Do you have any TV's or monitors at each location? If so, Redlion makes the PTV http://www.redlion.net/Products/HumanMachineInterface/ProducTVityStation/ProducTVityStation.html

Real nice system and cost around 3200.00

rpoet said:

Of course, you could just put a R-Y-G stack light on a little cart with a 24v battery and a 4-pos switch and pay the guy who sweeps the floors to keep them charged and set correctly


-rpoet

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I think with the meanings of these lights as the OP describes, this would not be a place that I would like to work if they were switched so often that an automated solution was warranted.

Shawn