Marine Technology Reporter, March 2011

<BODY> <div> products Birns Introduces the Aurora Light BIRNS, Inc., launched the BIRNS Aurora, new high intensity Light Emitting Plasma (LEP) deep submergence light provides 14,000 lumen brilliance. LEP is a new lighting technology that the company touts as a more powerful and efficient alternative to LED, Tungsten Halogen and Metal Halide lighting. Its light sources use a solid-state device to gen- erate Radio Frequency (RF) energy to power a plasma light source. The BIRNS Aurora does not require metal electrodes to drive power into the source, thus has a more robust quartz vessel. This unique LEP light has a 30,000 hour lamp life, and produces a continuous spectrum, and delivers an exceptionally high lumen density—in fact, the single bulb (approximately 2 mm long) produces 14,000 lumens of brilliant white light at 5,300K, at a Color Rendering Index (CRI) of 94. The BIRNS Aurora offers physical dimensions that are smaller and more efficient than metal halide systems, according to the company, and is engineered with a robust aluminum housing with a tempered 6km borosilicate glass lens. It has an overall length of 11”, and a housing length of 5.5’’. With a mounting diameter of 2.5”, it can be tailored to fit large or small vehicles, and runs on 28Vdc with a 9.3A power draw. www.birns.com 58 MTR March 2011 Range Ultrasonic Tool (LRUT) designed to be deployed by ROV and clamp around vertical or horizontal jacket tubulars. Fugro GRL created a simu- lation of the deployment of the tool by ROV and a simulation of the tool’s operation in attaching itself to the tubular. Carrying out a simula- tion of the tool’s operation was useful in reducing risk and cost prior to the underwater trial, in providing an early learning opportunity for engineers, and to allow design changes to be made based on the simulation rather than waiting to discover problems in the trials phase. The sim- ulation has provided important proof of concept for the application of the tool. Using DeepWorks, FGRL was able to model the articulated mechanism of the ultrasonic manipulator as well as its electro-hydraulic supply system from the ROV. The tool could be tilted up and down, rotated and clamped around vertical and horizontal tubu- lars. The LRUT model was quickly generated using CAD models supplied by TWI. DeepWorks’ drag and drop interface allowed the model to be rapidly configured and early simulations were possible within a day. Refactoring and modifications were carried out by engineers without the need to use simulation specialists. www.fugro.com New Ethernet Fiber Optic Multiplexer Moog introduced a new expandable Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) fiber optic multiplexer. The Focal 907-GEM mul- tiplexer provides four independent and switchless 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet links, as well as expansion capability through a PC/104 connector. Typical applica- tions are remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), video sys- tems and advanced sonar systems. A key advantage of the Focal 907-GEM multiplexer is its low-latency switchless design needed for today’s increased use of real-time Ethernet for critical control systems and digital video. This multiplexer signifi- cantly reduces size and total system cost when com- pared to standard media converter solutions, as it replaces four separate Ethernet media converters with a single board and single fiber link. In addition, support for non- Ethernet signals via expansion cards allows for expandable and reconfigurable multiplexer solutions. The 907-GEM can be stacked with up to 6 standard Model 907 expan- sion cards to add up to 48 additional data channels, including serial formats (RS-232/485), analog signals (sonar, ADC/DAC, audio), CANBus and other standard protocols. Email: staylor@ moog.com </div> <span id="lblContents"></span> <br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.digitalwavepublishing.com/" title="Digital Magazine">Digital Wave Publishing</a> </BODY>