Entries for 'hardware'

Jesse Batsche

12/15/2009

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When choosing a piece of hardware, you will likely be confronted with many options from different vendors for what interface (PCI, PXI, USB, Serial/GPIB, LXI) that device will use to communicate with your software controller, so how do you choose? ...

Jon Carson

11/17/2009

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Ever wanted to use those very nice looking Siemens touchpad HMIs with a third party controller Siemens doesn't officially support? On a recent project I was presented with the following scenario: a customer already had several Siemens touch-scree...

Darren Jones

10/27/2009

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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 t...

Dan Freve

10/15/2009

7 Comments

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 inpu...

Cesar Pena

10/08/2009

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I recently deployed a system where I needed a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 to automatically logon after a shutdown, blackout or any other power loss to the system. Here's what I did to solve this issue: Disable Event Tracker In W...

Danny Budzinski

10/02/2009

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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 SC...

Ken Brey

09/03/2009

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I have been working on a 3D vision application using the SICK Ranger camera. My application involves precision measurement, so I want to get the best results possible from the equipment. The Ranger came with a Fujinon 35mm lens which focused shar...

Danny Budzinski

09/02/2009

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For a DMC engineer it is not atypical to be faced with outdated, legacy technology. Maybe a customer has come to us to upgrade a system that an intern did in the 90's; maybe a company's engineers have built up a system over the past decade an...

Brent Hoerman

08/04/2009

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Lately, 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 fair...

Darren Jones

07/29/2009

1 Comments

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 ...