A 96-signal main switchboard watched from a phone, with no PLC and no SCADA

An operation with several buildings centralises electrical protection in a main switchboard: differentials per line, ventilation contactors, silo feeds, pumps, generator and UPS. Close to a hundred status contacts that, until now, could only be seen by opening the cabinet door.

When a differential trips at night, the affected building loses ventilation and nobody knows until the first round. Conventional 8 or 16-input alarm units fall short, and the usual alternative is a PLC with SCADA, an integrator and a months-long project.

Management wanted three things: to see the whole panel from a phone, an alarm call that says exactly which signal on which module, and the ability to arm and disarm the whole thing at once during maintenance work.

On a single Aviot controller, six 16-input modules were chained over Modbus, each with its own address. The controller joined the site WiFi, configured from the app itself without opening the unit, with mobile data as backup.

The app opens straight onto the panel mimic: six modules, 96 inputs and each one's live state, highlighting whatever just changed. Below it, the controller card with battery, phases, connected network, coverage and firmware version. A single master switch arms or disarms all monitoring.

Every input was named from Settings, and the voice message was adjusted to say "module 3" rather than "house 3", because a module is not a house. The controller's own electrical signals (phases, battery, generator) are evaluated once, not once per module, so no duplicate alarms.

Commissioning took two days with the operation's usual electrician: five modules on day one and the sixth on day two, hot-added through a remote update without touching the ones already wired. The app header confirmed from the start which network the unit was on and how many inputs it could see.

The first real alarms were used to fine-tune: a current signal being evaluated without data and a voice message misnaming the source were both found and fixed. Since then every call names the module and the input, and battery and power-cut history is one tap away from the mimic.

The outcome is a main switchboard of nearly a hundred signals watched by the same unit and the same app as a single house, with no PLC, no SCADA and no integrator. When needed, another module is added.