What is more, creating such an installation is no longer as difficult as it used to be, as students of the Zespół Szkół Elektronicznych learned during training conducted by F&F from Pabianice, which once again agreed to prepare the classes.
F&F was established in 1992 on the basis of a commercial and service company operating in the electronics sector. Its previous experience—both marketing and technical, in the fields of electronics and electrical engineering—made it possible to create a company offering a wide range of electronic control devices. Initially, the company’s product range consisted mainly of twilight switches, staircase timers and phase-failure sensors. The company’s strategy is based on continuously expanding its range and occupying attractive market niches. Today, F&F’s product range covers many devices related to home and industrial automation.
At the very beginning of the workshop, the company’s current projects were briefly discussed: F&Home, F&Home Radio, which the students worked with later in the training, and Proxi. Then the instructors conducted first-level training in installation creation, greatly assisted by specialist equipment supplied for the presentation by the guest.
For several hours, the students had the opportunity to learn how the system works and to create scenarios themselves. Last year, the project concerned simulating the control of roller shutters depending on the level of light intensity and the time of year, whereas this year’s meeting focused mainly on creating a simple system covering the entire house. The students had a light bulb, an LED strip or a motion sensor at their disposal. As it turned out, such small and seemingly insignificant elements allowed the participants to construct the most imaginative and creative projects.
Considerable attention was also devoted to creating complex yet clear graphical interfaces for ordinary users in a quick and convenient manner. These were only small examples, however, intended to show the participants how advanced and, at the same time, versatile projects can be. The entire training was conducted in a very pleasant atmosphere, and the instructor could barely keep up with answering the questions of the future installers.
At the end of the meeting, each participant received a first-level installer course certificate, a catalogue containing the full range of products offered by the company from Pabianice, and an invitation to a free second-level course qualifying them to work as a fully certified installer.
At the same time, training was conducted on automation-related products (a product presentation). The first group of devices presented consisted of time relays for various applications, adapted for manual adjustment of the required parameters. This group includes twilight relays, staircase timers, push-button-controlled dimmers, lighting lamps with motion sensors (lighting control), auxiliary relays, control clocks and roller-shutter controllers. The devices listed were adapted for manual programming using knobs and buttons.
The next group consisted of remote-control relays (radio-controlled), enabling, for example, lighting control (on or off buttons). Radio communication makes it possible to position these buttons anywhere without the need to install additional cabling. It is worth mentioning the group of time relays programmed traditionally and also using NFC technology, that is, by bringing a smartphone with the “Konfigurator” application and the implemented program close to the device.
An interesting group of devices manufactured by F&F consists of controllers for:
- automatic transfer switching, or ATS (e.g. emergency power supply for hospitals)
- intelligent motor protection with dry-run detection, the ability to reproduce the motor’s thermal characteristics, phase presence and sequence monitoring, and protection against overload and overheating
- freely programmable MAX controllers, used for remote monitoring and control of a smart home via GSM communication.
The training took the form of workshops with the opportunity to practically test the operation of the devices presented. This type of training provides extensive, up-to-date knowledge about the industry; moreover, learning through practice brings a double benefit—it provides knowledge and skills sought by future employers. Such forms of learning outside the classroom are a constant and proven practice at ZSE.
Łukasz Burdyna, class 3T/ii