SNMP Monitoring of a Transfer Switch relay

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1

I'm presently doing some research into a SNMP-enabled device to monitor a set of aux contacts on our transfer switch in order to be able to monitor it's status (on generator or on commercial) from our monitoring platform. I've seen a few interesting devices out there that can accomplish this, however I thought I'd query the list to see if anyone has thoughts about a particular unit they've worked with.

Thanks in advance,

Tom

2

I've had good luck with devices from DPS; http://www.dpstele.com/
-Keith

3

I went a different way with my electrical gear and used modbus. For me,
the benefits are multiple devices on the 485 bus, monitoring lots of
parameters and I can execute remote commands. I paid something like $300
for the xfer switch modbus card, which was cheaper than any SNMP contact
closure device I could find at the time. I talk to it using Perl
Modbus::Client with my monitoring server as the modbus master. It ended
up being less of a hassle and much more flexible in the long run.

You may or may not have your mind set on dry contact monitoring, but
it's something to think about.

~Seth

4

I have used the APC Environmental Manager (EMU) to do this. In our
case we ran a 4-pair line from the generator to the EMU. One pair was
connected to the EMU so that we could monitor and alert on the
run-cycles of the generator. Our transfer switch did not have these
capabilities, but you could apply the same configuration we used for
out generator.

The EMU has built-in alerting as well as the ability to send SNMP traps.

- Chris

5

I've found the Weathergoose II to be a good general-purpose SNMP monitoring
device. They also have something called the Relaygoose which can accommodate
more inputs and trigger relays as well.

http://www.itwatchdogs.com/p_product_detail.php?pnum=1

-Nick

6

Once upon a time, Tom Beecher <tbeecher@localnet.com> said:

I'm presently doing some research into a SNMP-enabled device to monitor
a set of aux contacts on our transfer switch in order to be able to
monitor it's status (on generator or on commercial) from our monitoring
platform. I've seen a few interesting devices out there that can
accomplish this, however I thought I'd query the list to see if anyone
has thoughts about a particular unit they've worked with.

We have some old NetBotz (now part of APC) in our NOC, and ours have dry
contact ports, so we hooked one up to our transfer switch. Works like a
champ.