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

How do you get a variety of building systems and machinery to communicate with a central system controller, when they use different protocols? 

Swedish system integrator Processcomponent AB had to solve this problem when they installed an energy monitoring system in a large apartment building in Gothenburg. 

Topics: Energy management, Case studies, Remote monitoring, optonews, Integrators, Building management, Modbus, OptoNews 2015-11-18, M-Bus

Usually our case studies feature Opto 22 customers solving an automation problem.

But this time we're the customer. 

Some of you probably remember when we switched the groov Box from the larger GROOV-AT1 to the more compact, fanless GROOV-AR1. 

Topics: Case studies, Videos, groov, optonews, OptoNews 2015-09-09