“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower” – Steve
Jobs
The VECTOR2
linear swing gate operator is, to put it bluntly, a leader. It leads
(confidently, one might add) in terms of design, in terms of intuitiveness and
in terms of ingenuity. Let us not forget that not too long ago swing gate
motors still relied upon micro-switches for position control and offered
precious little by way of functionality. If you wanted any special features
such as an extended automatic closing or a wider pedestrian opening, you’d have
needed to order a custom-programmed microchip.
Archaic!, you
say. Barbaric even. Be that as it may, until quite recently swing gate motors
were mere pistons working mindlessly to provide only the most rudimentary of
automation solutions.
Even in today’s
intensely technology- and convenience-driven milieu, very few operators truly
stand out in terms of intelligence.
The VECTOR2,
however, is quite different as you’ll soon discover; for within its LCD
controller – one that is no larger than an average hardcover novel – is housed
the sort of intelligence that has the power to redefine an entire industry. Every
facet of the VECTOR2 operator’s firmware has been designed to be intuitive to
the point of precognition, even adapting its behaviour to accommodate any
hardware variations that it encounters.
What follows are
some examples of how the VECTOR2 makes life easier for installer and end-user
alike.
It Practically Wires Itself
As a general
rule, there is a hard and fast way that any given device needs to be wired in
order for it to work and, when it comes to gate automation, incorrect wiring
could very well metamorphose your beautiful wrought-iron gate into the world’s
frilliest wall.
So, does the
same bleak fate then await you, oh VECTOR2 owner, if you happened to
inadvertently wire, say, your master motor’s sensor wires to the slave motor’s
sensor inputs on the controller? Will the operator start moving drunkenly back
and forth, unable to determine whether it is the master or the slave?
Nein.
The VECTOR2
controller is intelligent enough to pick up on this little miscalculation and
rectify it electronically, saving you the time and effort of spending countless
hours trying to trace the fault. It is entirely possible to mix channels in
this fashion without adversely affecting the operation of the gate.
State of the Art Position Control
The VECTOR2
makes use of a double-redundant opto-electronic system for position control
which, in layman’s terms, basically means that the controller always knows
exactly in which position the operator(s) is/are. So intelligent is this
system, that it even counts pulses if the gate is moved with the operator in
the disengaged state.
But what is the
benefit of this?, you ask.
Well, let’s say
that a leaf delay of 20mm is active
because an electric striker lock or mechanical lip necessitates one gate
closing before the other. This scenario in itself would not normally pose a
problem.
But imagine, if
you will, the following conundrum: your gates have somehow fallen out of
synchronisation. Perhaps you were doing some maintenance on your master gate
that necessitated disengaging the operator so that you can move the gate around
freely by hand. The problem might now arise that the master gate is now closer
to the fully closed position than the slave - and remember, with leaf delay
enabled the slave always closes before the master.
Or at least, this
would have been a problem were it not for the aforementioned opto-electronic
system. In a situation such as this, the
VECTOR2 controller will keep the master stationary and move the slave past the
master until there is a gap of precisely 20mm of piston stroke between them.
Upon this gap being achieved, the master will be activated and the desired leaf
delay will be intact.
Fully Intuitive Setup
Traditionally,
the only way to get a motor to reverse direction (i.e. to change from, say, in
an inward opening configuration to an outward opening configuration) was to
swap the motor wires around; especially in a double-leaf swing installation,
this made for rather a hairy setup procedure. Fortunately, the VECTOR2
controller possesses the ground-breaking intuitiveness to automatically detect
in which direction the gate should be opening – as well as which gate it should attempt to open first during the setup –
and reverse the wires electronically.
So space-age is
the technology inherent in this controller, that if it is unable to move one
gate in either direction, it will automatically detect that perhaps it is
trying to move the incorrect gate and not only swap the motor wires
electronically, but effectively swap channels! This sort of fully automated
process saves valuable time onsite.
In conclusion,
one can surmise that the VECTOR2 linear swing gate motor is truly a marvel of
modern engineering and ingenuity; its sleek, slim line design, easy-to-install
construction and fast operating speed rivalled only by the incredible
intelligence housed within its controller.
