DMC recently completed a project that involved controlling an applied load using a hydraulic cylinder. Ramping the load at a controlled rate required a fast control loop with analog feedback from a load cell. The speed of the hydraulic cylinder was d...
There are many good options for automation and controls redundancy out there. Here is an example we just recently used in the field. The customer specified a requirement of complete redundancy for all IT, networking, and HMI components of one of a la...
One of the most interesting and fun projects I have worked at DMC was to develop a Dimensional Measurement system for our customer LTS Scale. In a nutshell, the system calculates the volume of an object on a forklift pallet. ...
Welcome to the Programming Tournament National Championship! For the sake of drama, I was going to make a Tournament Highlights blog first, but I figured that everyone was probably so overly excited that putting off the decision any longer would be i...
As the popularity of modular instruments grows in R&D development spaces, National Instruments technology, particularly Real-Time and FPGA hardware, is becoming more and more common in volume test, manufacturing, and control applications. As the ...
The days have certainly flown by, and, I’m sad to say, NI Week 2012 has run its course. The last day was shorter and leaner than the others, so, unfortunately, none of the sessions really stood out to me. I did learn a little more abo...
Recently, I needed to read a command line parameter within a VBA code (it's for an Iconics SCADA application, but I developed it with Excel VBA which is essentially the same). It doesn't sound like a big deal but there wer...
As many of you may know, we used last week’s Oktoberfest party as an unofficial house warming party for our new office space. In addition to having a great turnout despite uncooperative weather, the Kinect Demo team from FedEx Day 2010 put in s...
At DMC we pride ourselves on being tech-savvy and using appropriate technology to solve common problems. So as we moved to our new office space this month, we didn't want to be constrained by the wires that link to our new conference room p...
It is often desired to have "occasionally connected" applications where a device may not always be connected to a network and that makes the task of maintaining a central data store such as SQL Server 2008R2 consistent across...