Vista Irrigation District, near San Diego in Southern California, is no stranger to change. 

For nearly 100 years the district has provided reliable water to farm and residential customers—through population growth, drought years, and changes in land use.

Topics: Case studies, Videos, Water & wastewater, optonews, Integrators, OptoNews 2016-09-28

Tasty and wholesome, the frozen fruit bars made by Natural Fruit Corporation must be stored at precise temperatures.

Although their cold storage rooms were automated, on weekends operators used to have to stop by the company's factory to verify that systems were running and temperatures were within range.

Topics: Energy management, Case studies, Food & beverage, groov, Internet of Things, Remote monitoring, IoT, optonews, Building management, OptoNews 2016-08-31

How do you get fresh apples in March?

California Controlled Atmosphere (CalCA) knows the secret: strictly controlled storage.

CalCA builds produce storage systems for growers in California and all over the world. Each system must be flexible to accommodate fluctuating harvests and individual produce varieties.

Topics: Case studies, Videos, Food & beverage, optonews, PACs, OptoNews 2016-08-03

Getting Useful Data from Big Data

At the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), researchers analyze mountains of data from widely differing fields, including:

• Supersonic aircraft
• The human brain
• Distant stars

Topics: Energy management, Case studies, optonews, PACs, Integrators, Building management, Modbus, OptoNews 2016-07-06

How do you control coatings on a device the width of a human hair?

In today's world, ultra-tiny micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) provide key capabilities in phones, cars, drones, and medical sensors, just to name a few places.

Topics: Case studies, Process control, Electronics, Machine builder, optonews, PACs, OEM, Integrators, OptoNews 2016-06-22

Say you own a 30-year-old enterprise data center in the Arizona desert, and you're starting to have some problems:

• Aging HVAC and mechanical systems are increasingly inefficient in the hot climate.
• Security systems are no longer adequate.

Topics: Energy management, Case studies, optonews, PACs, Integrators, I/O, Building management, Security, OptoNews 2016-05-25

If you live just about anywhere in the U.S.A., you can probably thank California Controlled Atmosphere (CalCA) for some of the fresh fruits and vegetables you buy. 

In fact, CalCA's industrial refrigeration systems for storing produce can be found throughout the world, reaching to India and China. 

Topics: Energy management, Case studies, Process control, Food & beverage, Remote monitoring, optonews, OptoNews 2016-05-11

From 1923 to the present, Vista Irrigation District has successfully battled THE two big Southern California issues: increasing population and drought. 

Transporting over 5 billion gallons of water each year, the district has hundreds of miles of pipeline and more than 30 remote sites. 

Topics: Case studies, Remote monitoring, Water & wastewater, optonews, PACs, Migration, Integrators, OptoNews 2016-04-27

Way back in 1883, the Frick Company started manufacturing refrigeration compressors. During the next 100 years they became well known for a variety of reliable refrigeration system components.

By the 1980s Frick began automating their systems with Opto 22 products, and they began to notice a new need in the industry: custom system design and integration.

Topics: Case studies, Process control, Food & beverage, Machine builder, optonews, OEM, Migration, Integrators, Building management, OptoNews 2016-03-30

As "green" power production from sun and wind increases, electrical grids can find themselves with a big problem: too much electricity at once. 

Solar and wind power generation work when the sun shines and the wind blows. But those hours are not necessarily when electrical demand is highest. 

Topics: Energy management, Case studies, Videos, groov, Internet of Things, Remote monitoring, IoT, optonews, Integrators, OptoNews 2016-02-03