Cogeco Cable has purchased several Volicon Observer Remote Program Monitor (RPM) systems to automatically scan and troubleshoot its complete digital and analog channel lineup, the vendor said.

Cogeco will install the RPMs in its headends in Ontario and Quebec.

Cogeco said that installing the automated monitoring systems will free engineers from having to personally monitor channels. Currently, Cogeco relies on a number of automated and manual processes to monitor channels and troubleshoot transmission errors such as black screen, low or missing audio, black or static screen video, or macroblocking.

“With the Observer RPM, our troubleshooting capabilities will be much more thorough. Not only will we be able to solve problems before customers call, but our engineers will be freed from repetitive monitoring tasks,” said David Zand, digital technologies engineer at Cogeco.

When a problem is detected, the Observer RPM automatically sends an e-mail notification to the operator in charge with a direct link to the video containing the error, enabling the operator to diagnose the problem. At the same time, the RPM creates a video log and a clip to provide a visual reference of the fault.

The Observer RPM system’s Web-based interface gives operators the ability to search, retrieve, view, analyze, annotate, share and export video from the desktop.