As most customers are aware, access to RAy and RipEX is already available via Wifi/USB adapters. Resulting from positive feedback received from the market and RACOM’s reputation for setting trends, these and other tools for our products are being introduced to the market as mobile phone applications.

RAy Tools is the first of these and Antenna Alignment, the first tool.

Just leave your laptop and voltmeter at home when you go to adjust your antennas!

Antenna Alignment key features:

• Simple intuitive interface
• Displays 4 key values [RSS & SNR for each end of the link]
• Selected value enlarged and shown in the centre of the display
• Selected value indicated acoustically

The RAy Tools App is supported from RAy fw 2.1.28.0 and is available for download on Google Play. iOS and Windows mobile versions will follow soon.

RAy Tools can access the link configuration web interface and can also perform a basic link availability calculation

Your feedback is welcome – pm@racom.eu

Early April and back on the road, in what has been a busy first quarter for our Sales managers; this time to attend UTCAL in Brazil. Always a busy and informative event, this year was no exception with the summit being hosted in Salvador, Bahia, the oldest city in Brazil situated in the North East of the country. Salvador was in fact, Brazil’s capital before Brazilia was planned and built for the purpose.

Over 400 delegates from the utilities sector converged on the summit from all parts of Latin America to discuss market issues and in particular spectrum requirements, new business models, the impact of Big Data on our telecommunications networks, smart grid requirements, cybersecurity and infrastructure issues.

It is from taking a central role in these types of discussion that RACOM can secure a robust understanding of market requirements now and in the future and gain the necessary feedback to ensure our product lines continue to innovate and set trends in their markets. Interestingly, feedback from many of the utilities we talked with, confirm that the demands being placed on them in South and Central America are the same as those we hear from utility companies in other parts of the world; more comprehensive levels of engagement with customers, addressing cyber security issues and providing solutions to manage renewable energy sources.

RACOM look forward to providing continued levels of innovation and support to the Latin American market and come away from this summit, secure in the knowledge, that our current and future product lines will provide solutions to the issues currently being addressed by our markets, whether that be in migrating legacy networks to meet current demands or in designing and commissioning new networks to cater for future demands within the industry.

And finally, obrigado [thank you] to UTCAL, for again hosting an excellent summit. See you next year!

MUM’s European flagship event recently took RACOM to Milan, Italy. All our event passes were taken up by customers and partners keen to meet us, to discuss the market in general, future developments within RACOM and specific orders currently being processed.

Pavel Nespor, one of our Sales Managers, ably assisted by Jiri Hlavac from our Product management department in a Technical support capacity represented RACOM in Milan. Both were kept busy throughout the two days meeting with many current and potential customers from throughout Europe and beyond and fielding a wide range of discussions; since many ISP’s are migrating from unlicensed 5.8 GHz, there was a particularly high request for information about our 17 and 24 GHz license free band RAy microwave units.

General visitors to our stand, coming to find out exactly who we are and what we do, particularly enjoyed the company video we had on a loop and especially the sections of the video which show our in-house PCB manufacturing processes at our custom facility in Blansko, Czech Republic. This facility was developed to serve part of RACOM’s overall strategy to perform all processes in-house; to protect our high-levels of know-how as well as full control over product quality. This particular part of our in-house manufacture generated much discussion among visitors, keen to find out more about the processes involved.

Although this was MUM’s European flagship event, we also received visitors to our stand from further afield including Africa and North and Central America, all of whom were not only interested in what we offered, but in representing us in their particular regions.

Thanks, to all those who visited our stand and spent time with us. We are happy with what we achieved during our time in Milan and with the amount of follow up work we generated as a result of attending the event. Now the hard work begins in earnest, converting that interest into new partnerships and confirmed orders! Watch this space.

RACOM were recently invited to attend events with partners to showcase our product lines and services.

On 15^th and 16^th March we were in Poland at the invitation of our Polish partner, Sabur, to showcase our Radio modems, Cellular routers and Microwave units at Automaticon in Warsaw. A show that targets the fields of automation, control and measurement, our products attracted considerable interest with new applications for the products being identified. Our time in Poland also provided the opportunity to meet with long term as well as new customers, to chart the progress we have made in the market in the recent past and generate forecasts of the opportunities that lie ahead.

One week later, Vincent Bulot, our Regional Sales Manager, was exhibiting at M2M in Paris. Although the event specializes in the IoT market, the show attracted visitors from many related industry sectors including utility companies. Our product design and specs were received favorably by all who visited the booth.

One feature of our flagship radio modem, RipEX, that generated a lot of interest was the performance at 169 MHz. This frequency is license free in Europe when radio power is reduced to 0.5W. Using the allowed channel of 50 KHz, RipEX can utilize the full data rate of 166 kbps, something none of our competitors can compete with.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to visit us at both events. We look forward to continued positive dialogue over the coming months and years ahead.

And we look forward to future opportunities to visit these two beautiful cities again!

UTCAL Summit / Brazil / 5th to 7th April

M2M Paris / France / 22. – 23. 3. 2017

MUM Italy / Milan / 30. – 31. 3. 2017

AUTOMATICON Warsawa / 15. – 16. 3. 2017

booth no. A-2 / B-1

One of RACOM’s flagship products is RipEX, a best-in-class radio modem renowned for overall data throughput.  Thanks to the intuitive web interface, anybody with basic IP knowledge is capable of starting up RipEX within a few minutes and can maintain the network quite easily.

To support users and our claims about how easy it is to design and maintain a RipEX network, RACOM produced a calculator to ensure the robustness of RipEX networks in any application, by choosing the most effective parameter options and calculating the efficiency of RipEX networks. The latest version includes the functionality to perform calculations in networks using our new Base Driven protocol.

Although the calculator can be used by anyone who operates a RipEX network, it is a particularly useful tool for network designers and operators.

Network Designers will find the following functionality particularly useful:

• Calculating estimates of network throughput and latency
• Average round trip times
• The total polling cycle
• Average message delivery time
• Deciding which network topology is the most applicable
• Testing digital network efficiency whilst planning a network migration from a legacy network using the RACOM Migration Solution

Within networks that are already commissioned, Network Operators can use the above functionality to support resilient operation of their network and diagnose faulty or low network throughput

Although the RipEX calculator is an invaluable support mechanism for network designers and operators, we still have our professional Support team on hand to provide additional levels of support as and when required.

Every RACOM product supports remote management via an IP network, e.g. Internet or GSM. If and when necessary, RACOM specialists can assist with a specific issue, wherever on the globe you and your device happen to be.

2016 has been quite a year in more ways than one!

On the global stage Donald Trump triumphed and is destined to become the 45th US President and in Europe, the major seismic political event was surely the decision by the people of UK to leave the EU in their Brexit referendum.

Whilst not receiving the same global media coverage, RACOM has produced its own defining moments over the last twelve months.

RACOM is proud of its reputation as a market leading, trend setter and in 2016 released a solution the SCADA market has been requesting for years; a Base Driven protocol, primarily optimized for TCP/IP (IEC104), but also suitable for collision networks when a remote is not be heard by other remotes and/or different Rx and Tx frequencies are used. This firmware has the potential to revolutionise the SCADA industry!

We also documented our RipEX Migration solution to provide an optimal solution for upgrade to a modern, future proofed radio network using staged funding and available manpower. The solution is designed to allow a scaled upgrade with no network outages in the legacy network.

On other fronts our latest microwave radio had production scaled up to maximum capacity in 2016 and is now providing effective communications within various applications. Our digital footprint continues to expand and our customers can look forward to further expansion of our Web and other online services in the coming year.

At our global Sales Camp, decisions about parameters to be incorporated into new models in each of our product lines were reaffirmed as those being requested by the market. Development remains on schedule and will enable RACOM to continue as a market leader during 2017 and beyond.

May we take this opportunity to wish all our customers, suppliers, partners, colleagues and friends a well deserved break over the festive period and a successful 2017.