ACOUSTIC MONITOR FOR POWER TRANSMISSION LINES

摘要

An acoustic monitor detects and logs events based on the acoustic characteristics of the event. The acoustic monitor is placed on a power transmission tower, and a baseline acoustic signature is established. Events can be defined by variance from the baseline, or by matching one of a set of predefined acoustic signatures. When an event is detected, the acoustic monitor logs the event. A repair person queries the acoustic monitors to narrow down where the event occurred to be between two towers, and can then query the acoustic monitors on those two towers. Using the timestamps of the event in each of the towers, and using the known speed of sound in air, the repair person can quickly calculate the location of the event from both towers. By knowing the location of the event, the repair person knows exactly how to quickly access the location to make the needed repairs.

主权项

1. An apparatus comprising:
a processor; a memory coupled to the processor; an acoustic transducer coupled to the processor; a time clock coupled to the processor; an acoustic monitor mechanism residing in the memory and executed by the processor that monitors data from the acoustic transducer, detects when an event occurs based on the monitored data, and logs a timestamp from the time clock corresponding to the event; and a communication interface that allows communicating the timestamp corresponding to the event to an electronic device external to the apparatus.