Who we are
Alphawave is a well-established software and hardware development company based in the UK specialising in the remote management of equipment for fixed and dynamic satellite communications. We have hundreds of installations of our flagship Alphawave Satellite CAM software at government, broadcast and transport industry sites around the world.
An increasing part of our business is the remote management of digital cinema installations. Alphawave Cinema CAM enables proactive and reactive maintenance of equipment by specialised engineers within large organisations or by system integrators targetting smaller operators. Centralised control of projectors and other audiovisual equipment leads to reduced costs for the organisation and a better service for the customers.
What we offer
Custom control
Alphawave can also provide custom software and design embedded or additional hardware to allow remote control of your specialised or legacy equipment, or to allow it to be integrated into a CAM management network. Take a look at our case studies for some real world examples.
Satellite control
Alphawave CAM is Europe’s leading provider of remote control and management software for fixed and dynamic satellite communications equipment. We supply systems to government and military communications partners; news gathering and outside broadcast providers; and any business with a need for robust, resilient and secure management of their satellite communication networks.
Cinema control
Alphawave Cinema CAM enables centralised and remote management and monitoring of cinema equipment such as projectors, media blocks, amplifiers and audio processors in cinema and audiovisual installations. It is aimed at engineers within large organisations, systems integrators and installation providers.
Some of our clients
Case studies
Foreign Office
The network consists of a large number of remote sites throughout the world, linked to one of three earth stations, two in the UK and one in Canberra, Australia. The earth stations themselves are linked via land lines and VPNs. Engineers at the NOC and those on call are able to monitor the status of the network using a CAM GFX connection to the prime CAM server in the network, thus allowing the status and configuration of any piece of equipment to be viewed or modified.
The CAM alarm system is configured to watch for significant events throughout the network and flag these to the engineers. At the most basic level these are shown as flashing indicators on the GFX terminals, but in certain conditions the alarm system generates email and SMS text messages in order to alert the operators.
The redundancy controller of the SSPAs does not have a computer interface, instead relying on closed contact relays, so a custom piece of switching hardware had to be built in order to supply enough switching current. Alphawave designed and built a control board with a microprocessor, 16 digital inputs and 16 high voltage/current relays which is fitted at each remote site and connected to the CAM machine on site.
Ministry Of Defence
The MOD have a network of 16 flyaway VSAT terminals and three UK based earth stations. Once deployed, the terminals need to be monitored and controlled in the Cable and Wireless NOC in London. Additionally, a secure, read-only, SNMP link needs to be provided to HP Openview.
Each earth station is fitted with a rack-mount PC running the CAM software. All the remote devices are controlled from these PCs via the async overhead channel (or engineering service channel) of the modem. The connection to HP Openview uses CAM’s SNMP ‘proxy’ ability. CAM can act as a gateway between the non-SNMP aware hardware connected to the CAM network and SNMP-based NMS systems.
Since 2009, the network has expanded to include first one, now two in-country earth stations linked back to the UK sites and all the deployable terminals have been upgraded.
Middle Eastern newspaper publisher
The client published a daily newspaper for the Arab speaking world. The main editorial office was in London, but with contributions from Jeddah and Riyadh. The final copy needed to be distributed to the 12 printing presses situated in Europe and the Middle East. The whole network needed to be managed on a day-to-day basis to ensure equipment down-time was kept to a minimum and the paper hit the newsstands every morning.
Every earth station and VSAT site had at least one CAM terminal. These were used for two main functions: monitoring and control of all the baseband and RF equipment on site; and managing the primary data links between the offices using custom hardware and software designed and built by Alphawave.
Over the duration of the project, half a dozen other daily papers were added to the portfolio; the main title was updated to colour and IP-based networking added to the existing inter-office video conferencing and voice circuits. This was all easily integrated into the CAM system.
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What people say about Alphawave
Our company E4C Group has been operating an uplink station for satellite broadcasting built by Gigasat in 2008 in Prague.
For remote control and monitoring of uplink equipment we use CAM software from Alphawave. This software was upgraded in 2011 and works all the time fully to our satisfaction.
Ceska Televize
The Alphawave CAM software was deployed on the UK Foreign and Commonwealth office remote sites enabling these sites to be monitored and controlled on a 24/7 basis from our UK network operations centre. Having the ability to diagnose, and in many cases resolve, issues remotely proved invaluable and saved a great deal of time and money by eliminating unnecessary site visits. The CAM software was an essential part of providing a stable and serviceable network to our customer.
Datasat Communications
Latest news
New website
Alphawave are delighted to present their new website.
NEC digital projectors now supported
The NEC range of Digital Cinema Projectors is now supported by Alphawave CAM. This extends the capabilities of CAM to remote manage large audiovisual and cinema installations. The top models […]
CAM version 2.44 released
Version 2.44 of Alphawave CAM has been released for download and installation today. As well as a range of updates and improvements across the whole package, version 2.44 has some […]