Efficient and precise maintenance

SONOTEC’s prod­uct port­fo­lio is extend­ed by the new acoustic cam­era SONASCREEN. The cam­era gen­er­ates acoustic images from both the audi­ble and ultra­son­ic fre­quen­cy ranges. The device enables main­te­nance per­son­nel to quick­ly locate leaks in com­pressed air and vac­u­um sys­tems. The com­pa­ny thus offers its cus­tomers anoth­er device for pre­ven­tive main­te­nance as well as for ener­gy audits to ensure oper­a­tional safe­ty and ener­gy effi­cien­cy. To make the acoustic cam­era acces­si­ble to a wide range of cus­tomers and their appli­ca­tions, the cam­era is offered at an attrac­tive price.

The prod­uct local­izes sound sources and visu­al­izes com­plex acoustic infor­ma­tion in real time as an acoustic image in a live video. The device thus visu­al­izes phys­i­cal process­es that the eye can­not see and the ear can­not hear. This is made pos­si­ble by a process known as beam­form­ing, which deter­mines the posi­tion of sound sources in sound fields.

Thanks to the intu­itive oper­a­tion as well as pre­set pro­files (e.g. for leak detec­tion), even inex­pe­ri­enced users can reli­ably eval­u­ate mea­sure­ment results at a glance. With its high­ly sen­si­tive array of 72 micro­phones and IP54 pro­tec­tion class, it is ide­al­ly suit­ed for use in indus­tri­al envi­ron­ments. Com­pared to oth­er cam­era designs, the cam­er­a’s spi­ral micro­phone array achieves excel­lent acoustic dynam­ic range.

The wide fre­quen­cy range of 1 Hz to 100 kHz allows the cam­era to be used for audi­ble and ultra­son­ic sound source detec­tion appli­ca­tions. The acoustic images are dis­played on the high-res­o­lu­tion dis­play at a frame rate of 100 fps in real time. A glob­al shut­ter is imple­ment­ed to avoid rolling shut­ter effects, allow­ing the user to cap­ture fast-mov­ing objects with­out dis­tort­ing the image.

The adjustable band­pass fil­ter allows the user to focus on dif­fer­ent fre­quen­cy ranges and band­widths depend­ing on the appli­ca­tion. Depend­ing on the fre­quen­cy range set, sound sources at a dis­tance of up to 150 m can be detect­ed. In addi­tion, the cam­er­a’s dynam­ic range can be adjust­ed to mask noise sources even in noisy indus­tri­al envi­ron­ments. The device also pro­vides acoustic feed­back via indus­tri­al head­phones. This allows the user to lis­ten to the mea­sure­ments in addi­tion to the visu­al evaluation.

PC software and reporting

Record­ed images and videos are stored direct­ly on the cam­era and can be export­ed to a PC/laptop for report­ing. The soft­ware pro­vides para­me­ters for fur­ther pro­cess­ing and analy­sis of the mea­sure­ment results. For train­ing pur­pos­es, tech­ni­cal sup­port or eval­u­a­tion of record­ings over long dis­tances, the SONASCREEN can be oper­at­ed via PC soft­ware over Ethernet.

One camera for multiple applications

Leak­ages in com­pressed air and vac­u­um sys­tems cause con­sid­er­able costs. Quick repair of leaks not only saves mon­ey, but also reduces CO2 emis­sions at the same time. SONOTEC thus pro­vides its cus­tomers with anoth­er inno­v­a­tive inspec­tion device in addi­tion to its prod­uct fam­i­ly for achiev­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy tar­gets. With the help of the acoustic cam­era, large areas/plants can be quick­ly scanned for leaks. This saves time and money.

Acoustic imag­ing has nev­er been eas­i­er: the pre­set leak detec­tion pro­file makes it easy to get start­ed with leak detec­tion. Mul­ti­ple leaks can be eas­i­ly locat­ed simul­ta­ne­ous­ly and dis­played on the live image. Intu­itive report­ing is com­ple­ment­ed by a tool for esti­mat­ing com­pressed air loss and the asso­ci­at­ed poten­tial ener­gy cost savings.