The Scanguard Active Scanner Monitor is the world's first Laser Projector Scan Failure Monitoring System that does not require pot-twiddling for configuration, for it uses a convenient USB connection to communicate to the PC during system setup.

The whole concept behind the Scanner Failure Monitoring System has been reliability, flexibility, and ease of use. The Scanguard Active Scanner Monitor excels in all these area, offering many firsts for any commercial scanner failure detection system. The Scanguard Active Scanner Monitor watches over many different characteristics of the scanning system and the overall system health, itself included, allowing increased levels of safety during your laser display.

Key Features

No Pots to Adjust – No Need to Open Case to Make Adjustments

Scanguard is the world's first scan fail detection system not to require trimmer pots to be adjusted to make any adjustments. All adjustments are carried out remotely on a PC via a USB link, without the need to open the laser projector enclosure. Older style scan fail monitors that relied on pots or oscilloscopes to set up parameters, often just ended being disabled by the user, or incorrectly set up.

Compatible with most Closed Loop Scanner Systems

The monitor watches the movement from the scanner driver's feedback signal. Most Closed Loop Scanner Systems have this signal available as an output on the driver. The Monitor has been tested with several of the Cambridge Technology scanner systems.

Active Monitoring of Scanner Movement

The system uses multiple high speed analogue to digital converters to capture scanner movement, then process the movement data within Scanguard's uProcessor. If any of the characteristics are not as expected, the output can be shut down immediately.

Scanner PSU Health Checking

The scanner's PSU is constantly under surveillance to look out for any problems that might affect the scanner's performance, or cause an unsafe situation to occur.

Fail Safe Design with Multiple Redundancy

The system has been designed with multiple redundancy and fail-safe design incorporated into the module. This increases the level of assurance that the system will perform when required, even under arduous conditions.

Define Multiple No-Go Areas within the Scanfield

Using the software on the PC, you can set which parts of the scanfield that you want the scan patterns not to cause any problems with the audience. In these areas the effect will be terminated immediately.

Define Multiple Safe-To-Go Areas

In certain parts of the display's scanfield it may not matter if the scan patterns exceed the MPE, you may even want to put static beams onto remote targets. In these instances you can define multiple areas where it is safe for the beam to go.

Store Venue Configurations to Reuse at Future Dates  

All the parameters used to set up the monitoring module for a specific venue can be stored and recalled on the PC. This allows you to store previous show configurations

Watchdog Monitor and uProcessor Clock Failure Detection and Backup Clock

The Scanguard system has a watchdog monitor and system clock failure detect to keep a constant eye on Scanguard's ability to safely monitor the scanning effects. In the unlikely even the main clock driving the uProcessor fails, a secondary back up system takes over automatically ensuring the system is able to function in as safe state.

Extremely Fast Initial Shutdown for Four Colour Channels <200us

Up to four colour channels can be configured to have their colour signals routed through a very fast onboard attenuator network. The attenuators each have failsafe and fault protection on them, in the case of a power failure

Fast Overall Secondary Shutdown <1ms

High Speed Miniature Relays are available on the board for the colour signals to be routed through, which can provide a further degree of protection in the case of a fault condition.

Opto-coupled Output  

A fast Opto-Isolated output is provided to terminate the laser output via a shutter or AOM.

Provision for Optical Input Monitoring and Second Independent Processor

An input is available to which an optical sensor can be connected to the system to provide a higher degree of safety if necessary. Provision for an optional secondary ARM based processor board will be available, (at additional cost), to provide the maximum levels of redundancy, and surveillance.

System Status LEDs

Four LEDs mounted close the USB port give a quick visual indication of what is happening on the system. Full system information is available by connecting the PC.

USB Link to PC for Laser Display Configuration

An industry standard USB port is provided for connection to virtually any PC running Windows. The system comes with a Plug and Play USB Driver, so your PC will automatically detect the presence of the Scanguard Monitor.

Easy To Use Windows Based Software for Configuration

The Windows compatible software allows you to set up all the system parameters for a particular display, and save them into the projector containing the Scanguard Monitor. Changing parameters takes seconds using the software.

The software also handles any Scanguard Operating System updates that can be upgraded with the internal Flash memory on Scanguard's processor.

Compact Two Part Design

The system has been designed to be as flexible as possible when it comes to integration into Laser Projectors. The Scanguard Monitor consists of two separate PCBs; one is the USB and LED Header board (56mm x 33mm), whilst the larger board (80mm x 100mm). This arrangement means that valuable space at the edge of the enclosure only needs to accommodate the small board that has the USB connector and LEDs on it. The main processor board can be mounted deeper inside the enclosure where it may be more convenient to do so. The boards are linked via a 300mm ribbon cable.

Doesn't Pangolin already have beam monitoring with its Beam Attenuation Maps (BAMS)?

It is true that Pangolin has a feature to help increase levels of safety by allowing you to define attenuation maps that can be used to control how the beams behave as the scanners move to different parts of the scanfield. But… whilst Pangolin's BAMS do increase the levels of safety over projecting raw laser effects, and are a useful feature, the problem is that the Pangolin interface (or any other interface for that matter) is not able to know if the scanners are working correctly, or have malfunctioned. Therefore BAMS should not be relied upon for scan fail monitoring. This is why separate monitoring of the actual scanners is required. Using Pangolin's BAMS and Scan Fail Detector provides double monitoring. The Pangolin watches the software whilst the Scanguard Active Scanning Monitor keeps a close eye on the scanners.