This is not an issue with the Flovac wireless monitoring system. In earlier trials we used a GSM signal at each pit which sent a signal to the cloud. Lower costs from telecommunication companies made this sound very attractive.
Problems with this idea were soon evident. And there was also another downside for us in that it inhibited two way communication which we see as an important operational tool in vacuum systems.
The main issue became costs, despite low carrier costs, the number of messages in a system were very high. We expected a lot of information from the pits, not only alarms. We wanted to know about valve timing and possible infiltration and wear and tear on parts.
The other issue was with how the signals were sent to the operator. For example, if the vacuum pump was off at the station creating low vacuum in the network, one of our operators received 300 text messages from a system, 5 minutes later another 300 messages, 5 minutes later another 300 messages. Clearly this was not what the operator deemed useful.
We do use a Sim card at the Gateway which sends all of the information to the cloud. In some areas where this signal can be unreliable then we can hard wire the signal into the vacuum pump station communication protocols and possibly into the SCADA network of the clients.
