In Control

I had a conversation with a customer in Pennsylvania this morning. He asked if we could provide an additional feature in Xwire (what he wanted is irrelevant to this post).

I explained that we had deliberately kept Xwire conceptually simple and uncluttered, effectively foregoing possible features, in order to make it accessible to our users. Xwire simple allows a block of memory in one board to be automatically copied into another board, and vice-versa. It is very easy to configure, with little more to specify than the memory ranges and slave board address. Once started it runs itself automatically. It is (was) easy to document.

Click to continue "Making it accessible" »

We have become aware that some customers are running SPLat controllers with backlit LCDs 24/7. That can result in eventual loss of backlight intensity, as the lifetime of small white LEDs is around 3,000 hours (an inherent limitation of current technology). We have therefore put on our thinking caps and engineered some ways of extending the backlight lifetime by dimming or switching off the backlight when it's not being viewed.

Click to continue "Dimmable LCD backlights" »

Click to continue "Solar powered air conditioner" »

Peter wrote:

I need 4 isolated outputs operating on 24V. Outputs will be changing state 24 x 7 for many years. My thoughts were opto isolator transistor drivers.

The intended controller is a MS120.

This controller is going into an industrial situation and will be critical to monitoring production. Do you have any reliability recommendations?

Reply:

Hi Peter,

You didn't mention what the isolated outputs are to drive. Assuming its something with a bit of power, I suggest you look at DC solid state relays. Google for "DC solid state relays"

As to reliability, the most important things are:

Click to continue "Tech Support: Isolating outputs, reliability" »

I am posting our Christmas arrangements a bit earlier this year. Our Boston office will be closed from now until December 22, while we all get together here in Melbourne for somewhat extended celebrations (and some serious work!). The Boston office will again be closed December 25 through January 1.

Our Melbourne office closes December 19 through January 4, re-opening Monday January 5.

Between now and December 19 all orders will be shipped out of Melbourne. From the December 19 through January 4 there will be no order processing.

Hi David Please --- is there provision on the MMi202 Board of a voltage supply to run the 0-20 mA current loop. I have a PT100 transmitter/amplifier which will run from 10 to 30v and is powered by the current loop itself and would like to be able to use this thing for temperature sensing for control. many thanks cheers

Click to continue "Tech Support: 4-20mA input" »

I was talking to a gentleman in Louisville KY yesterday, and he politely told me off because our website is not explicit enough about our custom controller offering. Not that I mind such critiques - how can we make our message clearer unless people give us feedback? Anyhow, here's a shameless plug for our custom capability:

We do make custom controllers. In fact, we make many more custom boards than standard boards, because we have some major OEMs as customers and make some of their products in very significant numbers.

Click to continue "Standard SPLat or Custom?" »

We have just released a new project management tool called Builder. In brief Builder makes it convenient to break large SPLat programming projects up into a number of individual modules. These modules can contain their own test code, so they can be tested independently of other modules in the project. Builder then allows you to "glue" together all your individual modules, leaving out the test code and arranging the various segments of the modules into the correct order. For example, it will make sure all the NVEM0 stuff is at the end and all mEQU directives are at the beginning, before any defBYTE (etc).

In short, builder helps you to work in a more systematic and structured way on large projects.

Builder is part of latest SPLat/PC, just released here.

Builder documentation

In the 15 months since its release the CC16 has become very popular. We have now upgraded the design and included a couple of new features, namely two analog inputs and a bi-color status LED. The new model is called CC18.

The analog inputs are very well suited to the new breed of sensors that produce a ratiometric output voltage between 0V and the + supply (normally 5V).

The LED is a red/green LED that can be set to light steady of blink in red, green or orange.

Everything else is exactly what you have become used to, only the 5V regulator is now flat to the board, reducing the overall hight.

More on the CC18

Karl queried:

I'm working on a project where I need to control a motor, based on the feedback from an quadrature encoder.

I'm trying to do on the fly speed calculations of the encoder but can't get my head around how to do speed calculations as I need to know the time constant between pulse readings.

Any suggestions ?

Click to continue "Tech Support: Motor speed" »