building2building is used for long distance (100 - 800m) transport. A vial arrives at a rotor and is detected by a vacuum sensor. It is then rotated to the correct orientation and aligned with a through hole, through which it is sent, typically from one building to another e.g. on a large site.
A building2building system consists of a pair of Transceiver units connected by a Pipe. Each Transceiver also has a Pipe leading to a lab2lab Sender, Collection Point or Router. The Transceivers have a 90° indexing pneumatic rotor and are capable of sucking and blowing vials in either direction. Vial detection is by vacuum sensor.
Control of the Transceivers and communication with the external devices is handled by the building2building software application (latest version: 1.5.2.9, requiring 64 bit Windows 10). This can be installed on any PC on the network, ideally one with at least 8Gb RAM.
3.12.1 building2building configuration
The system can be configured in numerous different ways. The figure above shows the user interface of the building2building application when the system is set up to connect two lab2lab systems but building2building can also be used purely as a standalone vial transfer system with a Sender at one end and a Collection Point at the other, as shown below.
Between those extremes, building2building can be configured to receive vials from a Sender unit and send them to a lab2lab system or to transport vials from a lab2lab system to be sent to a Collection Point. While transporting a vial, various elements of the user interface are animated or change color to illustrate the current activity. When a vial is being sent between the two Transceivers the time taken is displayed above the connecting Pipe.
When sending a vial to a lab2lab system, building2building handles the long distance vial transfers while lab2lab processes local vials. lab2lab only becomes aware of a vial sent via building2building when it arrives in the local Transceiver. At that point handshaking takes place between the two software applications and the vial is sent to the Router.