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company: CERN www.cern.ch

Advanced Serial Port Terminal

• industry: scientific research
• location: Geneva, Switzerland
• employees: more than 50
• representative: Georges Burdet, Electrical Network Monitoring

Victoria Veligodsky: What challenges made you search for this kind of software?

Georges Burdet: In the Electrical Network Monitoring domain, we have to inegrate IED (Intelligent Electrical Devices) communicating with various protocols on various supports. We needed some software to make basic communication exchanges for communication diagnostics.

My concern was to have a product that we would use episodically on one of our target machine (around 50) in case we have to debug/diagnose some communication problem with IED (Intelligent Electrical Devices).

Victoria Veligodsky: How did get to know about this Advanced Serial Port Terminal?

Georges Burdet: We searched for the product on the Internet. After finding Advanced Serial Port Terminal, the first thing we noticed was its rather long trial period. It is suitable for some of the IED that we currently manage.

Victoria Veligodsky: Did you try other products for the same task before choosing Eltima solution? Why did you prefer our product?

Georges Burdet: We also use Labview application when data processing is necessary. But your Advanced Serial Port Terminal was the only software we use for out testing/debugging purposes, as it suits us perfectly well.

As I have already said, your software attracted us, at it has quite a long trial period, which was more than enough to test it and to make our final purchasing decision.

Victoria Veligodsky: Please, describe how you are using our product now.

Georges Burdet: We use pattern messages stored in text files to send the basic messages required by the IED for disgnostics. Once the correct communication has been established, the IED is integrated to the normal & permanent monitoring system.

So, after I bought an official licensed version, I installed on a portable PC, that we use in case we need to perform such a test/diagnose. I used it once with an UPS (uninterruptible power supply) from APC (American Power Conversion), now part of SCHNEIDER Group. I will inform this UPS supplier that your SW was useful to diagnose their product

Victoria Veligodsky: How did you benefit from using Advanced Serial Port Terminal?

Georges Burdet: The usage of text pattern simplifies the message construction and avoids mistyping errors. I tested your Advance Serial Port Terminal, basically to check for serial port settings and basic communication tests, and it covered our needs. We just need to connect remotely (RDC), from time to time (once per month per PC), to one of these 40 PC's and run locally your Advance Serial Port Terminal for some tuning/debugging.