FORM 2
THE PATENTS ACT, 1970
(39 of 1970)
As amended by the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005
AND
The Patents Rules, 2003
As amended by the Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2005
COMPLETE SPECIFICATION
(See section 10 and rule 13)
TITLE OF THE INVENTION
A fail safe modular and pluggable system and method for condition monitoring of equipment.
APPLICANTS (S)
Crompton Greaves Limited, CG House, Dr Annie Besant Road, Worli, Mumbai 400 030, Maharashtra, India, an Indian Company
INVENTOR (S)
Pardeshi Suraj, of Crompton Greaves Ltd, Electronic Design Centre, CG Global R&D Centre Center, Crompton Greaves Limited, Kanjur Marg, Mumbai 400 042, Maharashtra, India; an Indian National.
PREAMBLE TO THE DESCRIPTION:
The following specification particularly describes the nature of this invention and the manner in which it is to be performed:

FIELD OF THE INVENTION:
This invention relates to the field of transformers and systems and methods for transformer monitoring.
Particularly, this invention relates to a fail safe modular and pluggable system and method for condition monitoring of systems.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION:
A transformer is a device that transfers electrical energy from one circuit to another through inductively coupled conductors—the transformer's coils. A varying current in the first or primary winding creates a varying magnetic flux in the transformer's core and thus a varying magnetic field through the secondary winding. This varying magnetic field induces a varying electromotive force (EMF), or "voltage", in the secondary winding. This effect is called inductive coupling.
For efficient working of a transformer, a plurality of its working conditions need to be monitored. This includes, oil level monitoring, dissolved gas monitoring, and the like. For such monitoring, various cards are used to receive sensed data from relevant sensors. This sensed data is communicated to the a processor, typically, having a backplane. Various interfaces are used such as RS485, RS232, CAN, I2C, Ehernet, USB or the like to communicate between the backplane and the plurality of sensors, parallely, or synchronously,
It is possible that these interfaces may get blocked due to huge block of data transfer or due to processor getting hanged in between processes. It is plausible

that a critical decision needs to be taken by the main processor in case of any circumstances wherein the interface bus is over-loaded. Delay in such processes may be catastrophic to the condition monitoring of the transformer, and the transformer health, in general.
Hence, there is a need for a system and means for achieving fail safe architecture is to form a hybrid back plane with mixed interface, one such as dual redundant RS485 interface combined with CAN interface.
OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION:
An object of the invention is to provide a fail-safe architecture and system in order to provide a multimodal communication interface between a master processor and its slave interface cards.
Another object of the invention is to hybrid architecture and system in order to provide a multimodal communication interface between a master processor and its slave interface cards.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION:
According to this invention, there is provided a fail safe modular and pluggable system for condition monitoring of an equipment, said system comprises a hybrid interface comprising a master processor means along with a plurality of slave interface cards communicably coupled to the master processor means, said communicable coupling enabled by a first communication means between said master processor and a first slave interface card, and further communication

means between each successive slave interface card with a preceding slave interface card.
Typically, said first communication means comprises at least one RS485 dual bus, a CAN, and a GPIO, said GPIO adapted to reset corresponding communication link.
Typically, said further communication means comprises at least one RS485 dual bus, a CAN, and a GPIO, said GPIO adapted to reset corresponding communication link.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE ACCOMPANYING DRAWINGS:
Figure 1 illustrates a condition monitoring system of the prior art.
The invention will now be described in relation to the accompanying drawings, in which:
Figure 2 illustrates a schematic of a fail safe modular and pluggable system and method for condition monitoring of systems.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE ACCOMPANYING DRAWINGS:
Figure 1 illustrates a condition monitoring system of the prior art.
According to the prior art, there is a backplane (BP) with interfacing ports. The interfacing ports are communication ports. There are provided a plurality of such communicating ports for communicating with a plurality of cards (CI, C2,

C3, C4, C5, C6), correspondingly, parallely or synchronously. A communication bus (CB) is provided which acts as the interfacing medium or the as the communication medium between each interfacing port and each card or between each communication port and each card. The communication bus may be a RS485 or a PCI or a GPIO interface.
According to this invention, there is provided a fail safe modular and pluggable system and method for condition monitoring of systems.
Figure 2 illustrates a schematic of the system.
In accordance with an embodiment of this invention, there is provided a hybrid interface comprising a master processor means (MP) along with a plurality of slave interface cards (SLC1, SLC2, SLC3, SLC4) communicably coupled to the master processor means.
In accordance with another embodiment of this invention, there is provided a communication means (CM) between the master processor (MP) and a first slave interface card (SLC1). A second slave interface card (SLC2) is connected to the first slave interface card (SLC1) by means of the communication means. Each of the further slave interface cards is connected to a previous slave interface card by means of the communication means (CM).
Typically, each of the communication means comprises a RS485 dual bus, a CAN, and a GPIO. RS485 relates to a standard defining the electrical characteristics of drivers and receivers for use in balanced digital multipoint systems. It essentially aids in full duplex communication between nodes. CAN relates to Controller-area network which is a bus standard designed to allow

microcontrollers and devices to communicate with each other without a host computer. GPIO relates to General Purpose Input/Output which is a generic pin on a chip whose behaviour (including whether it is an input or output pin) can be controlled (programmed) through software. The communication is effected through the RS485 bus. If the communication is jammed due to any reason, the CAN interface is invoked as a back-up. If the CAN interface also fails, then GPIO pin is activated by the main processor. The GPIO pin, herein, is pre-configured to reset communication on that communication means if there is transmission interruption or transmission jam. Thus, identification of communication means' jam location is also possible.
The master processor means (MP) requests information to one or many of the slave interface cards (SLC1, SLC2, SLC3, SLC4) through the communication means (CM). This provides a hybrid interface mechanism and system.
Typically, one RS485 interface is used by the main processor means (MP) for requesting the slave interface cards and the slave interface cards will send the information back on the same communication bus. If the bus is blocked due to any reason then the main processor means (MP) will switch on a second RS485 bus. In case the second bus is also blocked and the main processor means needs to send some urgent data, then the third bus, CAN, is used for broadcasting the message to slave interface card. In case the third bus also fails, then GPIO (general purpose input and outputs pins) are used to interrupt the slave card and wake up the slave card. In case that also fails, then the master card of the master processing means (MP) will reset the slave card with one of the GPIO pin.
While this detailed description has disclosed certain specific embodiments of the present invention for illustrative purposes, various modifications will be

apparent to those skilled in the art which do not constitute departures from the spirit and scope of the invention as defined in the following claims, and it is to be distinctly understood that the foregoing descriptive matter is to be interpreted merely as illustrative of the invention and not as a limitation.

We claim,
1. A fail safe modular and pluggable system for condition monitoring of an equipment, said system comprising a hybrid interface comprising a master processor means along with a plurality of slave interface cards communicably coupled to the master processor means, said communicable coupling enabled by a first communication means between said master processor and a first slave interface card, and further communication means between each successive slave interface card with a preceding slave interface card.
2. A system as claimed in claim 1 wherein, said first communication means comprising at least one RS485 dual bus, a CAN, and a GPIO, said GPIO adapted to reset corresponding communication link.
3. A system as claimed in claim 1 wherein, said further communication means comprising at least one RS485 dual bus, a CAN, and a GPIO, said GPIO adapted to reset corresponding communication link.