On September 13th I will be taking part in the Pedal for Pounds North event raising money for the  cancer research charity Yorkshire Cancer Research. This will be the third time I’ve taken part in the sponsored bike ride, it is always very enjoyable cycling through 50 miles worth of beautiful, rolling countryside around Harewood House.

This year has a little more significance to it because my Father has recently been diagnosed with cancer. So, whilst I will be enjoying the country side, I will also be thinking about my Father and his looming battle.

If you’ve got a few spare pounds kicking around I’m sure Yorkshire Cancer Research could use it wisely. There’s an on-line page for donating to this worthy cause here.

Thank you.

After what feels like an eternity, TimeTag has finally hit its first beta release. It has taken two years! Far too long I know. Had I known precisely how much code it was going to take I probably wouldn’t have started in the first place. Still, its all done now and I’m quite proud of it.

What’s next for TimeTag? Well, I think an easier way to view the graphs would be an obvious place to start… so a Vista sidebar gadget would seem the sensible place to start. It won’t take another two years though, I promise.

Just because it’s Christmas doesn’t mean we’ve been slacking in the Chambers this week.

If you’re lucky enough to be using Microsoft Vista we now have a sidebar gadget for displaying the current readings from your Sensatronics temperature monitor. You can have multiple gadgets in your sidebar in case you’ve got more than one Sensatronics device.

The Vista Gadget can display the current readings for any of your Sensatronics devices.

OPENXTRA HotSpot SDK has also been updated to work on Vista too.

A minor release with a big version change.

We’ve changed the HotSpot SDK to use an in-proc DLL instead of out-proc for the core COM object.

Not a big change, but using a DLL will make the core component far easier to deploy. Many deployment tools, like the one shipped with older versions of Visual Basic, will quite happily install an in-proc DLL but not an out-proc EXE. Don’t ask me why, that’s just the way it is.

One side effect of the change over to in-proc has been a nice code speed-up in the order of around 50%. Not too shabby

We’ve also fixed a minor anomaly with the Senturion when an external probe was removed.

We are pleased to announce the availability of Intellipool 3.3.

The headline feature for us is the support for the Sensatronics Senturion, the new rack-mounted environment monitor. There is plenty more for everybody though.

We are pleased to announce the Senturion rack temperature monitor. You’ve been asking for a rack mountable solution for a while and here it is.

Main highlights include:

• 1U 19″ rack mountable form factor, perfect for your data centre cabinets. Thin unit so it can be fitted behind other equipment to maximise your cabinet space;
• Built-in temperature, humidity & light sensors. External sensors are supported;
• Built in alerting via audible/visible alarm and email;
• Fully compatible with your existing Intellipool investment. Manage all of your Senturions from a single console;
• Firmware upgradeable via Internet;
• Instant set-up and self-configuration. No more need for serial cables;
• Colour LCD display showing live sensor readings and alarm status;
• Expandable.

News on availability to follow soon. Links to follow when available.

Figure 1: Senturion Front View

Figure 2: Senturion Live Display

PLEASE NOTE: OPENXTRA are currently experiencing problems with our email service, therefore to contact us please call +44 (0)1943 465918 or use the Boldchat Service available on the right hand side of each page. Our apologies for any inconvenience and we hope to have resolved this shortly.

Update: It’s all sorted out now…I will be blogging about the experience though

We are pleased to announce the availability of the OWL single mode fibre optic cable testers. The shop now has a dedicated Fibre cable testers section.

The OWL products provide great features for an unbeatable price, starting at just £230. Features include:

• Germanium photodetector
• 2.5mm Universal Adaptor Port
• Multimode and Singlemode ready
• NIST Traceable at all wavelengths
• Separate zero reference for each calibrated wavelength
• Ergonomic robust protective rubber boot
• Long battery life – up to 250 hours on a 9v battery
• Bright 4-digit display allows accurate readings in dBm, dB and uW

A lot of the terminology wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of Star Trek. I’m sure Spock used to use a Germanium photodetector!

Intellipool have announced the immediate availability of Intellipool Network Monitor 3.3 beta. Registered customers can download the software from the Intellipool customer portal.

The following improvements have been made:

• Reports: rewritten from scratch to give a better user experience;
• Performance: further enhancements to make better use of your current hardware;
• Layout: better use of modern higher resolution screens;
• WMI: addition of a WMI query class to the LUA scripting language;
• CLI: introducing a command line interface for administering your INM installation;
• Red Hat Enterprise Server R5: support the latest and greatest offering from Red Hat;
• And lots more…

Please don’t use in a production environment just yet. Final release is expected within a few weeks.

The end of August sees a bank holiday in the UK. We will not be available on Monday, 27th August for one day only! The online shop will be open for business, items will be shipped on Tuesday.

We are open as usual today, and will re-open on Tuesday morning as usual. Enjoy your break…looks like the weather is going to be fine!