FGH Controls's RDA Remote Acquisition Unit monitors up to 10 thermocouples, 4-20mA, Volt or mV signals plus four volt free contacts. In it's water and dust-proof IP65 housing, RDA-W can be used in hot, wet or dirty industrial locations.

The RDA benefits from the following features:

Up to 32 RDA units communicate with a remote PC via an RS485/422 multi-drop serial link using FGH Protocol. RDA-W can provide dramatic savings in costs for cable runs of 60m.

Each of the RDA's inputs is isolated from all others to 250V and measurement is up 10 15 bit resolution with +/-0.2% overall accuracy. Built in signal conditioning can be set on a per channel basis for R, S, J, K, T, E, B, N, L, W, W3, W5 and NiMo thermocouples over their full specified spans, with automatic or manual CJC.+/-75mV and +/-10v linear ranges suit other sensor types and shunts can be fitted for 4-20mA transmitters. Scan rate is up to four channels per second.

The FGH transmission protocol allows users of FGH Proteus Series temperature controllers and profilers to monitor additional sensors economically on the same RS485/422 connection. Setting up is carried out from a PC, using a menu driven configuration utility provided free with the unit. DIP switches set baud rate and address.

The RDA can be fitted with an optional analogue retransmission output. This can be user set to retransmit the highest, lowest, average of a group of inputs or a computer generated value. This retransmission is engineered in thermocouple units allowing for example the hottest of the inputs to be fed to a controller such as the FGH Proteus Series 1000, 2000 or 3000.

The RDA-W's IP65 polycarbonate surface mount enclosure measures 200 x 150 x75mm, has internal screw terminal connections with individual sealed cable glands for each input and is specified for -10 to +50°C. A lower cost version, the RDA-P, is housed in a metal enclosure rated for clean "back of panel" environments. The universal power supply accepts 88-2645V 50/60Hz 3VA, or optionally, 12-24V DC.