Dosing equipment

The latest development in a long line of Nutriox^® dosing control systems is the IDA.

Our staff have carefully designed the IDA Control System, taking into account knowledge and experience gained over the last 12 years both in the UK and worldwide.  The design also looks to the future by taking advantage of the latest proven electronic technology.

The IDA Control System can be considered as offering similar functionality to an I-Box.  It builds on the I-Box's "programmability" by offering new tools that create many new possibilities for control.  Physically, the IDA Control System introduces a radical new architecture.  The Controller can no longer be thought of as a "box".  The established S-, N- & I-Boxes take the form of an "all in one" physical unit combining the electronics (inputs, outputs, power supply and processing) and housing.  The IDA differs in that the input and output (I/O) electronics can be physically separate from the processing electronics and also the power supply.  This type of architecture is called "distributed input/output" or "remote I/O".  The new architecture allows one or more I/O Units to be attached to one central controller, offering vastly increased flexibility.

Within the IDA Control System we, therefore, have a central controller (a.k.a. an "IDA Controller" or "Head Unit") and the I/O Unit(s) each referred to as a "minIDA Controller."

This distributed I/O architecture gives us the capability to expand the number of inputs and outputs as required by adding extra minIDAs to the system.  Also, the minIDAs do not need to be located physically close to the IDA.  Each IDA and minIDA unit is built into its own small housing which can  be assembled either into a purpose built cabinet, or the units can be mounted individually into any other suitable housings such as a customer's panel.

These days the IDA Control System hardware has a lot more in common with regular PCs and Laptops.  In fact both the IDA and minIDA are regular PCs.  They both have operating systems, hard disks and displays.  Each device has been set up to auto-run which  means that when the power is switched on, everything starts up automatically.  Using operating systems gives us the platform to take advantage of the latest technologies, perhaps the most visible example is the colour touch screen on the IDA.

IDA was named in honour of Ida Birkelund, wife of Kristian Birkelund, one of the co-founders of Norsk Hydro, and the man responsible for the process which made calcium nitrate  in the early 20th century.  Clearly our Nutriox^® business owes a debt to Mr & Mrs Birkelund.