THE FIRST BURNER CONTROL SYSTEM USING A MICROPROCESSOR DIDN'T COME FROM A BIG COMPANY.
Only a small visionary team could spend time to make "sensitive microelectronic devices" work in harsh environments: project started in a garage workspace, based on an high density NMOS microcontroller manufactured by Motorola.
The first mature product will come 4 years later, introducing several original solutions and safety techniques into a very conservative industry.

Only a few devices can use a single electrode shared between ignition and flame detection. To prevent disruptive failures, the poor implementation widely adopted for domestic appliances (surge arresters) has been replaced by a sequence relay performing a zero-voltage switching. All the logic and the ignition transformer embedded into the unit: perfect for any existing flame supervision system.

Keep it compact. The new burner control device for semiautomatic operation becomes smaller and available in both DIN43900 48x96mm and 3HEx9TE rack enclosure. An input to start the burner and an output to give the status has been provided to operate the unit from remote.

It's time to build the first commercial microprocessor based device. For the first time a simple display giving information on cycle steps and failures detected by autodiagnostic system becomes available on a compact and cheap burner control unit.
Commissioning, troubleshooting and maintenance are now easier than ever. Another significant improvement is the complete configurability through a TTY serial com port; for this purpose a free software utility is released (freeware in 1989!). A set of strong safety techniques coming from academic and research fields were used to guarantee a safe and reliable operation, many years before norms and regulations.

Definitely the distributed control will be our mission. Boss is the first burner control unit built on essential requirements of EN298:1992, with expandability option by means of piggyback boards.
Remote control through cheap TTY interface and a new concept of completely removable electronic, entirely fitted on the top enclosure, for easy installation and maintenance.

The Gas Appliances Directive, relating to appliances burning gaseous fuels, will came into force, subject to certain transitional provisions, on 1 January 1996. The CE marking is mandatory on all gas-fired domestic and industrial appliances to be sold within Europe. EN298 became the reference and our products are compliant! It's time to certify the product and, before to start this time and money expensive experience, let's make a re-engineering to improve the manufacturability.

Two handy programmers introduced for an easy configuration of burner control units directly on field. Injector is the big one to manage all the features, Palmarino is for network parameters only.

This is the first time (worldwide) a flame safeguard built on single microprocessor is under assessment for EC-type certification. Although any European Notified Body can make the assessment, we want a certificate released by real authorities having long experience and good reputation... and do it outside of our Country to avoid any speculation: DVGW is the choice and TUV will carry out the test! After a long and stressful time both EsaBossII and EsaQuad received the EC-type certification based on EN298:94. It was May 6th, 1996.

It seems that GSM network offers great opportunities of innovation. Remotely controlling and managing devices and systems will have a large influence on modern business processes. Situations can much faster be acted upon. Faults will be detected faster and malfunctions will be repaired sooner. It's time for another challenge: let's build a "black box" to manage installations from remote. Later this will become a completely independent business.

Already written: we was naive. Meanwhile we was developing the new product, our former partner decided to use the technical file that we provided to ask another Company to build clones.

Not a really good product, but the original concept still in it and that Company tooks the contacts with the customers during last years.
We was obliged to close our production facility and a sense of frustration frozen everyone for some time. Naive, but not stupid: in a signed agreement between parties we reserved the intellectual property. Could be hard but we'll protect our rights against such shameful action, the new Quad is a good product and we don't want to throw it away. A civil action against the "genius" inventor will start.

On October 17th, 2001 after 7 months inspection trial, Quad receives the EC-type certificate from DVGW. Test was carried out at TUV Suddeutschland.
Since this device can be managed from remote and current version of EN298 doesn't have any specific requirement on this matter, we ask TUV to provide a specific confirmation about the fulfillment of all requirements, because Quad remote control is safe enough to be operated by generic supervisors (this means that you don't need a fail safe PLC to control Quad, whereas this falls under the integrator responsibility for competitors products).

A new flame safeguard needs a new UV sensor: it must be smaller, without ancillary parts and suitable for operation up to 90°C instead of 60°C of the previous sensor. The new UV4 is entirely made with thermal and electric insulating fiber, sealed to avoid a quartz glass in the middle and with cooling port. It's cylindric so it can be removed easily also on hot burners, thanks to its isolated enclosure.

… to complete the range a full featured unit, where the behaviour of every step of the cycle is configurable. Quad600 can control the positioning of an air damper (0...100%) from remote, without potentiometer. High temperature bypass control and thermocouple input (optional) are available. Four inputs and two outputs with configurable behaviour.

A new enclosure: overall dimension are the same of the smallest old one, but more room is available inside and less weight for this epoxy coated aluminium die casting enclosure, featuring an innovative back shell.

Introducing a configurable temperature measurement unit supporting a wide range of thermocouple sensors. The relay output can be controlled from fieldbus or configured to activate above/below setpoint.
Installed within the enclosure of our Burner Control Units or as an independent unit with its own aluminum box. Use it as a thermostat or acquisition module, reducing the cost for compensating cables.

USB infrared reader that can be used with PC and Smartphone for BCU configuration and diagnostics.