Monitoring and control of a wood-drying kiln via virtual project stations

This paper discusses the development and setup of an infrastructure for real-time monitoring and control of industrial processes or machines remotely through the Internet. The main philosophy behind this approach is the use of a single web-server, which is connected to multiple industrial processes in a specific cluster. The Web-server pools all real-time information from the processes and distributes relevant information to remote users who are logged on to workstations called virtual project stations. A remote user is also able to control the local process through the Web-server. Live audio and video signals are streamed to the remote users enabling them to view the physical setup and behavior of the process. This Web-based monitoring and control strategy is particularly useful when applied to industrial processes such as wood-drying kilns. Specifically, several kilns may be monitored and controlled simultaneously from a centralized engineering operation, or anywhere in the world. Efficient round-the-clock production is then possible.