Hello,
I am designing a Canopy network to be used in an oil exploration field. It is required for the equipment to offer, be certified to operate in explosive environments. The electric specifications should specify something like “Level 1- Area 1” at this respect.
Does Canopy fulfill this type of electrical specifications? If not, what is the Canopy rate in this matter?
Thanks and regards
Juan Valbuena
Makuna Telecom
The short answer to your question: No, they are not suitable for use in that environment.
With that being said… We have used Canopy in several refineries here in the Houston area that have the same requirements - you can usually get around it by mounting the equipment 30’ or higher, putting the power supply or CMM in a NEMA rated box and running the cable in conduit.
Discuss this with the project manager, if this is not acceptable you might have a hard time finding something affordable!
The standard equipment isn’t certified for that but I can’t see any reason why it couldn’t be if supplied with a much more expensive power supply. You might want to talk to last mile gear about their cyclone which is just canopy put in a different box.
As far as just mounting it higher or more out of the way, that may or may not work. There are two major reasons for the explosion proof, one is to make sure the device isn’t going to spark (canopy can when you plug in the ethernet) or they want it to keep working after a nearby accident (which is typical for comms equipment so they can turn off valves or check on what happened).