I was wondering if anyone else out there is using this platform or anything like it.
If you are unfamiliar with it, it’s a plantwide OTDR that works hand in hand with a mapping program.
I’ve got almost 700 individual sites on it through 4 Hubs and so far, it’s been great at finding cuts and degradations when they happen.
You place a unit in in every Hub site and then hook it up to every site or fier run you want to monitor. It has filters so you can monitor live fibers if needed. The unit also connects to the internet so if you have more than one headend or Hub site they will feed all information back to the one control unit.
As I said it works hand in hand with a mapping program. You need to enter the fiber routes including all your storage loops, splice enclosures and anything else you need.
Once you have everything setup the system monitors everything connected to it in a round robin at each hub. I have one hub with 177 sites and it takes about 4 1/2 minutes to cycle through all sites.
We’ve had this system in place and operational for 2 years now and I’m happy with it. We’ve had several cut fibers and this thing has put us within 2’ of the cut every time. Good news for those underground cuts. When a monitored fiber is cut the system sends an email and text to whoever you want it to. This gives you all the info and even GPS coordinates. Part of the set up is picking the info you want encluded in the alerts. I can remotely log into the mapping and pull up the closet splice point, slack span, pole number. Makes getting the repair crew on site a lot faster and easier.
It does take a long time to enter all the information into the system because now you just can’t upload auto-cad maps, you must draft everything but I believe that is what makes it so accurate. We’ve been overlaying our system maps over google earth then drafting the routes and it is working well.
As I’ve said we have over 700 government sites on it and it’s helped us locate everything from a micro-bend and fiber that is affected by temperature to major cuts.
If anyone else is using anything like this I’m curious about your thoughts.
