Fantastic Installations and Where to Find Them

Back in 2001, all of fandom rejoiced as bestselling fantasy novelist J.K. Rowling announced that she was penning a new novel in the Harry Potter canon – a prequel of sorts this time – called Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and last year the book was adapted for the big screen and joined the pantheon of films that are the reason that Miss Rowling lives in a castle. But I digress. 

The story follows the fantastically-named Newt Scamander (which also happens to be the nom de plume that Rowling used when she wrote the novel), a writer and renowned purveyor of all things mythical, as he travels to 1920s New York in search of more fantastic beasts to document in his authoritative work. However, chaos ensues when several creatures escape from Newt’s magically-expanding suitcase and the protagonist must do everything in his power to stop the two worlds that exist side-by-side from colliding.

While we certainly don’t claim to be experts on finding fantastic beasts (the Kruger National Park is probably a good place to begin one’s search), we do know where to find a fantastic access automation installation, or three, as evidenced by these winning sites from around South Africa. 

Automated pool deck



What: A 5300mm x 3400mm wooden pool deck fully automated using a sliding gate motor

Where: Lichtenburg, Northwest Province, South Africa

The hardware: 1 x CENTURION D5-Evo 500kg sliding gate motor

Installer: JD Elektries, Lichtenburg jd@jdelektries.co.za 

Stargazing bed on rails

What: A fully-automated, retractable stargazing bed on which to whisper sweet nothings into your beloved’s ear under a bejeweled night sky with the gentle murmur of the Vaal as background music

Where: On the Vaal river near Parys, Free State, South Africa

The hardware: 1 x CENTURION D5-Evo 500kg sliding gate motor

Installer: Derk van den Brink dmvandenbrink@gmail.com

Moving targets

What: Exactly what the name says

Where: The Mpumalanga traffic department training college, Mpumalanga, South Africa

The hardware: 8 x D2 Turbo 250kg sliding gate motors

Installer: Pulse Electronics, Nelspruit pulse.electronics@vodamail.co.za

Synchronising Two D5-Evo Sliding Gate Motors

Many industrial installations call for two sliding gate motors to be synchronised, meaning that they will operate – move and stop – simultaneously.  This type of setup is ideal for entrances to premises with extremely wide driveways such as airplane hangars and factories; it is, however, crucial that the two gates operate exactly in tandem as one of them falling out of sequence could potentially affect the other one and result in the entry being rendered inoperative.

In the past, your best bet was to make use of a synchronisation card of sorts to connect the two gate motors.  Typically, their trigger and ground signals would be linked so that when one gate motor is activated, the second unit would also respond.  But with the advent of our D-Series range of controllers, synchronisation has become much, much simpler and there is no longer even a need to purchase additional equipment to achieve seamless synchronisation. 

The diagram below shows how you can link two D-Series gate motors by simply connecting two inputs and changing a few settings on the controllers.

What this essentially means is that, when D5-Evo 2 is triggered, an output will be generated on XIO which will in turn activate FRX on D5-Evo 1 and, because their commons are also linked, there will be a valid ground.

NOTE:  The Gate Status settings need only be changed on and remotes only learned into D5-Evo 2, but the Autoclose settings need to be changed on both of the motors in order for them to close at exactly the same time.  Remember that FRX will only initiate an opening cycle, and never a closing cycle.

The remote function can be set as either Trigger Gate or Open Only.

The Auxiliary Input / Output can also be used for interlocking, which will be the focus of a future blog post.