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...

Tim Jager

10/15/2009

4 Comments

This is part two of my series on the IEC-61131-3 programming standard. Here's a link to Part 1 for those of you that missed it. The IEC61131-3 standard contains 5 different programming languages. This article will give a brief introduction to ...

Dan Freve

10/14/2009

0 Comments

Recently, a colleague here at DMC was looking for a quick method of converting a drive-based path to its corresponding universal path name. Basically, he is writing a tool in LabVIEW that will run on computers that may have the same network drive map...

Nick Shea

10/13/2009

0 Comments

After working on several projects with Siemens S7-300 Safety PLCs, I was given the opportunity to contribute to an article for ControlDesign.com that presents cases for and against replacing hardware components with software solutions in machine cont...

Eric Anderson

10/09/2009

0 Comments

Last Thursday, October 1st, Ben Zeinz and I attended the afternoon session of an MSDN event entitled "Real World Azure". It introduced Windows Azure ahead of its upcoming release. The morning session was geared towards IT personnel while th...

Nick Shea

10/09/2009

0 Comments

While commissioning the automation controls for a manufacturing line, I acquired some tips and tricks for configuring a Profibus network on a Simatac 505 (formerly known as a TI 505). Using 505 Workshop version 4.32 development environment from Fastr...

Cesar Pena

10/08/2009

0 Comments

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

0 Comments

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

10/01/2009

0 Comments

DMC has entered an Integrator relationship with IFM Effector centered around their unique and exciting 3D Image Sensor. This is an industrial, cost-effective Time-of-Flight Camera that measures the distance to everything in its field of view based on...

Kristie Simon Shea

09/30/2009

8 Comments

A simple yet common problem when programming a Siemens Simatic S7-300 PLC is losing the data already stored in the PLC after downloading an updated data block. If you are simply adding items to the end of a flat data block (not adding items to a u...