Entries for the 'Hardware' Category

I recently had the opportunity to spend a few days at Yaskawa America’s North American headquarters to sit in on an A1000 Application Programming class. As a YaskawaSolution and Service Provider PLUS, many DMC engineers have extensive application programming experience using Yaskawa’s inverter drives in the industrial workspace. In addition to being a Yaskawa Solution and Service Provider, we have... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Testing your BMS is a necessity. Determining a strategy to complete that testing is not so easy.  It is tempting to over focus on hardware cost minimization, which must be weighed against the cost of ineffective or incomplete testing.  Here we explore three different strategies for balancing hardware cost with performance.

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Recently DMC put together another BMS Validation Test Stand for testing the BMS inside a PHEV battery pack.  Before we shipped it, we wanted to demonstrate the basic capabilities of the battery cell simulators, software, and other electronics. 

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Since their conception PLC programs have been founded on simple programs. However in the past few years automation requirements have grown more complex and demanding, resulting in PLC manufacturers beginning to include some higher level programming concepts in their software packages.   

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Here are some simple guidelines for troubleshooting and working with Analog IO.  Although these guidelines are intended to help you think about the process of troubleshooting, this process will surely catch any specific issues you encounter.

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We are frequently asked to work on PLC systems for clients that we did not develop.  The job could be troubleshooting an issue or adding a new feature to the system.  Working with unfamiliar code has its own unique challenges, although we take pride in our ability to do so.  Here are some things you should keep in mind when asking an integrator or even your own internal maintenance ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Many consumers, including myself, have tapped into the ever-growing functionality of mobile internet.  Many people leverage this infrastructure for their mobile phone.  Others are beginning to use WiMAX connections for their PCs.  Not to be out-done, PLCs are also capable of communicating through wireless data plans.

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Norton Ghost's mulitcast cloning utility proved to be an effective way to reduce install and setup time on multiple identical PC based test stands running a custom LabVIEW test application.  The stored hard drive images were also very useful in the field for restoring the test stand to a known, clean operating state.

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Setting up communication networks or interfacing with devices is a common task at DMC.  Usually we try to prepare ahead of time so that we have all the hardware we need, but in a pinch, we do occassionally have to make our own cables or have a better understand of how things work so we can debug communications or monitor specific I/O lines. Crossover Versus Patch Cables I'll start by giving... [Read the rest of this blog...]

The Devcon command line utility is a versatile and powerful way to execute system level operations on any device connected to a computer.  It proved particularly useful for implementing a rescue strategy for unresponsive USB devices in a long term testing application.

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Today I had the chance to peruse more cutting edge testing technologies at the Automotive Testing Expo 2009 in Novi, Michigan.  It was good to meet a few new vendors and peers, as well as run into a couple existing clients.  Though apparently smaller than last year, the show has a lot to offer, including a robot-mounted Harley Davidson motorcycle (don't worry, it only rides on the d... [Read the rest of this blog...]

I'm looking forward to attending the Battery Power 2009 conference next week in Denver, Colorado. "This seventh annual event will feature more than 30 presentations on portable, stationary and automotive battery technology, as well as battery manufacturing, materials and research & development. Topics will include new battery designs, emerging technologies, battery materials, power management... [Read the rest of this blog...]

A few days ago, I was working on a project where I needed to control a stepper motor using the .NET Micro Framework on the GHI Embedded Master microprocessor.  Stepper motors are a unique type of motor - the velocity is controlled by a pulse wave input.  The faster the pulse frequency, the faster the motor rotates. It turns out that most stepper motors will tend to vibrate enough t... [Read the rest of this blog...]

I was working with Vijeo Designer 5.0 on a recent project and, overall, found it rather enjoyable to work with.  Vijeo Designer is the Schneider Electric / Telemecanique programming software for the Magelis XBT-GT HMI's along with several other SCADA platforms. The creation of variables let me organize my I/O into logical folders, the alarm setup was intuitive and let me creat... [Read the rest of this blog...]

For a DMC engineer it is not atypical to be faced with outdated, legacy technology.  Finding information on old industrial hardware, unfortunately, isn't as easy as looking up technical support on your new Dell computer.  The web of what corporation owns and supports a product line can quickly get unbearably complicated, but here are a few tips and tricks to help you find the answers you are looking for...

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Over the course of NI Week in Austin, National Instruments gradually introduced and demonstrated the new features that are being implemented in the LabVIEW 2009 release.  Many were logical steps forward in hardware and software development, some were long awaited and often requested functionalities or improvements, and a few were completely unexpected new features that were greeted with ooohs... [Read the rest of this blog...]

DMC has been working on several "Green Engineering" and "Clean Energy" programs to develop test systems for clients developing or evaluating Battery and Fuel Cell Power Systems. Along the way, we have run into some fairly common battery and fuel cell testing equipment in these laboratories, which are produced and sold by Aerovironment (AV).  What are your software options for automating and controlling this hardware?  Find out here.

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Back in the stone age (i.e. NI-CAN 1.2), us LabVIEW 6 programmers had to write our own parsing routines for dynamically-specified data inside a CAN frame.  At the driver layer, we were locked-in to only one layer of arbitration.  An oft-overlooked but extremely powerful feature in  contemporary versions of the NI-CAN drivers handle this automatically. Example:  a BMS... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Some time ago, the staff of the Advanced Powertrain Research Facility at Argonne National Laboratory asked me if we could create a robotic driver to control speed of a vehicle on their dynamometer.  There are off-the-shelf solutions for this task but it would be difficult to get the level of configurability and integration needed with these systems. We used LabVIEW to develop a relative... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Underscoring DMC's successes with National Instruments and the US Department of Energy, the Fermilab newsletter from NI featured DMC's work in electrochemical storage test systems at the Argonne National Laboratory. "Internationally recognized as a world-class center for research and development on lithium batteries, Argonne is one of North America’s most-capable facilities for the independe... [Read the rest of this blog...]