Offshore cranes: main hoist load visualization

About the project 

Huisman Equipment is a global company that specializes in designing and building heavy construction equipment. The company, in their constant strive for innovative new solutions, have successfully completed testing the possibility to display the main hoist load of a crane on CCTV.

Arjan Degenaar from Huisman Equipment explained the main idea behind this project: “the operator has the most defining indicator available while looking at the CCTV screen of the main hoist.” This successful end product was visualized through the use of an Axis camera in combination with CamStreamer applications and a specifically developed micro application. 

Technical solution 

Huisman Equipment utilizes OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA): a machine-to-machine communication protocol for industrial automation. Degenaar described the particular technical setup for this project: “We make big offshore cranes. Most control aspects are done with Siemens S7 PLCs which have an OPC UA server running on the PLC. We communicate with the PLC with our atvise visualization. This visualization can itself be a third-party interface OPC UA server supplying data to the camera. Within this CCTV AXIS camera is the CamScripter App we have gotten from CamStreamer which displays the main hoist load on the camera screen.” 

How it works

 

The result 

By combining our existing applications with a custom-developed micro application CamStreamer has shown the flexibility of their apps and the ability of the dev team to respond to new challenges and fulfill clients’ requirements. The result is a custom solution that can be used for various offshore projects including building offshore windmills. “I’m happy our dev team was able to meet the client’s needs. This project is another success for us and we’re looking forward to the next challenge,” said Filip Hanek, the Product Manager of CamStreamer

Download PDF