Rugged chassis to protect subway systems

Public address and controller systems to use chassis with enhanced air input filtration and drive mount ruggedisation, to meet the harsh environments encountered in the New York City subway.

Chassis Plans has won a contract from Siemens Transportation Systems to support the PA/CIS AP Upgrade for the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA).

The contract, a follow-on to the original installation contract awarded to Chassis Plans in 2005, provides for 312 industrial rack-mount computer systems delivered by year end to upgrade 156 stations.

Each public address/customer information screen application processor includes two rugged, WindowsXP-based systems housed in slightly modified version of Chassis Plans' C3 rugged enterprise chassis.

Both the Internet Protocol public address (IPPA) platform, and the station controller (STC) platform use a version of the C3 with enhanced air input filtration and drive mount ruggedisation, to meet the harsh environments encountered in the New York City subway infrastructure.

With the IPPA controlling the audio public address system, and the STC providing the digital sign functionality, Chassis Plans fully integrated platforms will ensure riders on the NYC Subway System a reliable source of information for many years to come.

Each ruggedised computer system comprises the C3 chassis, a long life industrial motherboard providing a 3.0GHz P4 processor and Intel 915 chipset, two port isolated RS422 communications, watchdog timer card, Digigram audio processor and drives.

A -48V DC 350W dual redundant power supply powers the system for fault tolerance.

"Chassis Plans was chosen by Siemens from a field of international companies to fulfil this requirement due to our years of experience in providing cost-effective, rugged computing platforms that are truly fit-for-use in the application environment to which they are fielded", says Jack Davis, Vice President of Sales for Chassis Plans.

"By understanding the rigorous use these platforms were likely to see, we delivered the right level of ruggedisation required to meet both the environmental concerns inherent in this installation without exceeding the customer's total cost of ownership expectations, providing a low risk, high value solution to the installation".

Because of the numerous logistic challenges in implementing this upgrade, Chassis Plans was asked to gear up quickly to meet Siemens' production demands.

Chassis Plans' manufacturing team was able to meet customer requirements while maintaining the strictest standards of quality, reliability and supportability, satisfying all Siemens' expectations.

Chassis Plans will continue to support this customer throughout the systems deployment, through extended warranties, managed sparing plans and world class technical support.

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