Designed for harsh environment operations, the Mercury Modem provides for remote instrument access and data collection. The modem board can be retrofitted inside existing ECATs and ERs or installed into a separate enclosure as a stand-alone modem. Stand-alone modems may also include a variety of I.S. Barriers, power options and multi-port operation. Instruments connected to a Mercury Modem may be called by host computer systems to retrieve data, or the modem can call in utilizing Mercury Instruments' Alarm-Link software when an instrument alarm occurs.

The standard modem configuration is a single channel, battery operated 2400 baud field modem. On-board surge protection components are incorporated to provide reliable operation. Circuit board jumpers permit setting the local baud rate for the connected instrument to be different than the modulated baud rate. This feature permits leaving the instrument's baud rate set at 9600 baud for direct connections with a laptop even though the modem operates at 2400 baud.

The modem comes standard with either an Alkaline Disposable Pack or Alkaline Receptacle Pack, but an optional Lithium Power Pack may be substituted. A DC Power Supply with battery backup is also available as an option for locations where AC power is available. An optional expansion board permits three additional serial ports (and alarm channels) to be added so that a total of four instruments may be accessed by a single modem on one phone line. Modem port-switching is handled automatically by the software when using Mercury Instruments' Link software package. When using the multi-port feature, it is not necessary that the instruments or devices be of the same type.