Detecting Vehicles On Your Tanker Track While Ignoring A Milk Tanker

March 15, 2012

“We do not want to know when the milk tanker arrives – just any other vehicle…”

A dairy farmer in Taranaki put this challenge to us recently and we were able to provide a solution within two weeks. This question has come up several times before so our design team decided it was time to provide a solution.

We decided the best way to tackle this was to set up a special configuration of two detection beams, one mounted the standard way directly across the tanker track and at the recommended height of 800mm above ground – this would detect cars and vans.

The second beam was to be much higher – tanker height – and draped diagonally across the track, symmetrically intersecting the lower beam and stretched out to 30 metres. Regardless of whether the tanker was arriving or leaving, the upper beam would always be triggered first, telling the receiver to not respond to the triggering of the lower beam a moment later and remain silent.

Should a car or van enter the configuration, only the lower beam is activated and an alert is generated.
The system was sent to the customer for real-life testing and two-weeks later was reported to be ‘working a treat’ at which point we thanked him for his business and charged his credit card.

This version of the product is not a stock item quite yet but can be supplied within two weeks of ordering.