The government power company in the province of Mendoza, Argentina (EMSS) had a big problem. They had to develope a remote and automatic system for the management of power transformer stations in remote areas outside urban sites in places which were difficult to access.
The system which was developed is based on TS1000 boards with software on EPROM’s and with the remote stations linked to the head office by VHF radio.
The TS1000 in the main office reads the telemetry sent via the VHF link from the remote 33 KV and 13.2 KV stations and sends back the proper instructions to each remote Station.
Today the EMSS company has several of these systems operating. Incidentally one of these TS1000 systems manages the transformer station for a whole oil field.
Some days ago I had a conversation with my friend LU3MAM (a ZX Spectrum user), who is a member of the EMSE technical staff. He promised to send me in the future a more complete description of this system which can be published in QZX. It does seem like a useful system which combines the best features of our Sinclair computers with VHF radio.
Remember that an engineering task is to find the minimum means that will solve the problem. The solution described here shows that you should not undervalue the little TS1000 for a big task in the real world.