FAQ

Yes, it has been proven onboard vessels ranging from 15m with 80 signals/IO up to 200m with 8000 Signals/IO. The technology actually is not limited to these numbers, and basically can be delivered to the largest vessels in the market. 

Yes. We continuously develop the X-CONNECT® platform in accordance with market trends, and this will always be available for X-CONNECT® customers.

X-CONNECT® can present real time data as a basis for improving your daily business decisions. Please read about our cloud service BLUE BOX.

Our open software platform supports off-the-shelf hardware, and will at any time support the latest hardware. The new hardware is backward compatible also when mixed with the old installation. 

X-CONNECT® supports remote update on low bandwidth internet connections. Adding, removing and general updates are made easy through our configuration tool. No engineers are needed onboard for complete update. 

X-CONNECT® welcomes changes. This is one of the great benefits going from a traditional SCADA/PLC automation system to a configurable software platform. This is extremely efficient during handling of changes throughout the project phase, commissioning and the future life-cycle of the vessel. 

You can contact our partner that installed the system, or us directly. We will then remotely connect and change parameters as you desire. If you are a system integrator supporting your customer, you can either contact and hire our service engineers, or take a Tool Suite course and get qualified for doing the changes yourself.

Yes, X-CONNECT® is built on an architecture that easily allows implementation of custom functionality. Simpler functions can be created with the X-CONNECT® Suite configuration tool. More advanced systems and features can be developed by Blue Ctrl's team, and made available in the X-CONNECT® Suite library to be configured and deployed remotely by the partner or our engineers. 

High! The data has military grade encryption and stored on a cloud service running on a professional data center.

We believe that the first step in making a good system that supports the operator is to present information in a clear and precise manner in one place, which will help the operator to safely survey all ship systems. Our interaction designers involved ship operators when creating the X-CONNECT® platform, to make the most efficient and clear interface presenting the necessary information when needed and in an understandable way. 

Yes, our experts and partners can provide a range of different X-CONNECT® courses. You can either book courses directly or attend planned courses.

Depending on the required X-CONNECT® functionality, vessel size and what operation the ship is designed for, a minimum of 1 computer and 1 sensor/IO cabinet is required.  Our standard IO-cabinet is 120x100x30cm, and can manage about 200-400 signals/IO from machinery equipment and other sensors depending on interface type. The size of the cabinet can be customized. 

For ships with any of the X-CONNECT® products already installed, it's just a software feature that can be activated and configured by remote. Installing a BLUE BOX on a ship with other makes only requires a small cabinet; 40x40x20cm.

Ship Owners:
Open the "get a quote" link in the bottom of the page, and fill in the form. We will forward this to our local partner, or if you prefer to order it directly from Blue Ctrl, this can be arranged. The partner will go through your building specifications or requirements, and present a solution that suits your needs. After this you will get a quotation with all necessary details. Installation can be arranged through our partners, or your preferred installer. 

Partners, yards and agents:
Our sales personnel will help and guide you through the wizards and provide you with the desired amount of hardware and functionality. You can then choose to order the products on a fixed price basis as a package, or only order license from Blue Ctrl and hardware directly from our suppliers. Installation and commissioning can also be ordered separately in case you prefer that.

Traditional SCADA/PLC requires continuous heavy investments in development of the architecture for an integrated automation system to meet market demands. With X-CONNECT architecture and functionality for maritime applications are ready to use. On top of this X-CONNECT provides you with configuration of standard features instead of programming in core code.

Yes, it has been proven onboard vessels ranging from 15m with 80 signals/IO up to 200m with 8000 Signals/IO. The technology actually is not limited to these numbers, and basically can be delivered to the largest vessels in the market. 

X-CONNECT® welcomes changes. This is one of the great benefit going for a traditional Scada/PLC automation system to a configurable software platform. It is extremely efficient in handling of changes throughout project face, commissioning and in Life-Cycle of the vessel. 

No hidden costs. Scope is well defined, and all additional functionality and hardware has fixed price, presented in a price list. Since all functionality are predefined and configured, add-ons are handled time efficient .  

Yes, we enable our partners to handle the whole value chain in terms of automation delivery, from engineering, production, software configuration, commissioning, and aftermarket. 

The benefit is quality, as human errors due to manual project work is minimized. Also faster response for changes and deviations are possible.

This can be handled remotely trough our X-CONNECT® Studio tool. You can either contact and hire our service engineers to perform the task, or take a Suite course and get qualified for doing the changes yourself. 

Yes, X-CONNECT® is built on an architecture that easily allows implementation of custom functionality. Simplest functions can be created with the X-CONNECT® Suite configuration tool. More advanced systems and features can be developed by Blue Ctrl's team, and made available in the X-CONNECT® Suite library to be configured and deployed remotely by the partner or our engineers. 

Yes.

The tool is free, and Blue Ctrl provide training to our partners for free. 

Yes. All documents, drawings, BOM, operation guidelines and market material are standardized, and available for our partners for free.  

High! The data has military grade encryption and stored on a cloud service running on a professional data center.

Depending on the required X-CONNECT® functionality, vessel size and what operation the ship is designed for, a minimum of 1 computer and 1 sensor/IO cabinet is required.  Our standard sensor cabinet is 120x100x30cm, and can manage about 200-400 signals/IO from machinery equipment and other sensors depending on interface type. The size of the cabinet can be customized. 

For ships with any of the X-CONNECT® products already installed, it's just a software feature that can be activated and configured by remote. Installing a BLUE BOX on a ship with other makes only requires a small cabinet; 40x40x20cm.

Redundancy is provided through availability and reliability. As most redundant systems are running in pairs (HOT-STANDBY) or triple redundant, you do not get both availability and reliability. In both cases you have availability, but the reliability is reduced as you introduce more likelihood of error with an extra redundant system. The way we have solved this issue is by segmentation. This means to split the control system into parts, that you as an end-user of the control system can decide the level of acceptable fault. Since all hardware eventually will fail, we have focused on what would happen and what to do with it.