Projects


 

 


  • Paper Sorter
  • Diamond Scale
  • Paint Mixer
  • Credit Card Reader
  • Laser Positioning System
  • Printing Press Control
  • Ventilator
  • Elevator Test Equipment
  • DSP Modem

The underlined projects are described in brief detail below, highlighting the technically significant




 

Cop8 Upgrade


The COP8 is a family of microprocessors developed and sold by National Semiconductor in the 1980s.  It has been discontinued.  One customer had production printed circuit board assemblies built and no COP8 devices.  We developed a plug in module that used a Renesas M16C28 CPU to replace the COP8.  The original code was written using the C language so it was a straight forward task to recompile the code on the Renesas tools.  In this particular unit there were two COP8 devices.  We replaced both devices with these plug-in modules.  Production was able to continue with little interruption.  The picture shows the replacement modules with the new CPUs plugged into the printed circuit board.




This is a picture of the modules replacing the COP8 Microprocessor.




Printing Press Ink Fountain Controller


Our customer had an existing board with a microprocessor and a separate analog to digital converter.  Both devices had become obsolete, expensive and impossible to purchase.  Additionally newer press designs opened a market for a smaller controller.  We designed two replacement board assemblies.  The first was a smaller unit for new printing presses.  The height was also much shorter which also permitted a much small enclosure.  The second design was a continuation of the first and we took three of the new smaller units and placed then on a board that could be used to replace the older larger units.  Support of the older design could continue and the new smaller assemblies could be used when required. 








Original Design.






New Design.







Smaller Design

UV Curing Lamp Controller



We were brought in on this project to help define the requirements and generate the embedded firmware that runs the single chip MCU.  This is a simple low cost single chip type of design.  The TI MSP430 was selected.  The first of four systems was designed and committed to production.  This project pulled together industrial, hardware, software and packaging designers to meet the customers requirements.




This is one of the controller boards designed as a result of this project.  Using the MSP430 with its simple JTAG debugging tools and a USB connection to a PC, design, debug and testing of the software is straight forward.




Messaging System


Have you've ever been on a moving sidewalk and an airport and heard the message ”Please watch your step the sidewalk is about to come to an end“, or at a highway construction site and been informed to tune to a specific radio station for more information, or at display at a museum or nation park and seen a sign to press this button for more information?  Behind these types of systems is a messaging controller, playing out the messages on queue or at specific intervals. 



ESC Inc. completed the design of such a system.  The design used an Altera FPGA which contains the processor, custom CODEC interface circuitry and connections to large amounts of memory.  The unit interfaces to telephone lines, RS232 and the Internet.  It can operate in industrial environments and run off a standby battery.  Optically isolated control inputs and relay outputs complete the basic system.  We worked with Analog Design Experts and Printed Circuit Design Services to complete this effort.  The finished unit had to meet FCC Part 15 and Part 68.






People Tracking


Mr. Bill Gates of Microsoft designed his new house as a technology showcase.  One aspect of this showcase was to have high resolution CRT and LCD display screens built into the walls.  As you entered the house and moved from room to room your music, pictures and messages would follow you.  Video information would be displayed on the screen you were facing.  In conjunction with Steve Ciarcia of the Circuit Cellar, who had developed several such systems, ESC proposed an infrared based system. 

 

The system consisted of a badge worn by the user with unique identification and built in sensors strategically placed in the house.  These sensors would interrogate each badge and receive the unique identifier.  The commands to interrogate the badges and the replies from the badges were sent across serial links into a concentrator and then placed onto the network.




The concentrator consisted of a STD BUS rack with custom serial interface cards that ESC designed.  Each of these serial interface cards contained 8 isolated serial interfaces with transmit and receive data buffers and interrupt control for each serial interface.  A maximum of 16 cards could be placed in each rack with a STD BUS CPU. 


Hundreds of these serial interface cards were built and installed in the house.  It was a big house (50,000 sq. ft).  A large software system was designed to manage all the data.  Months passed and we asked how the system was working, but never received satisfactory replies.  It seems that the software engineers had several problems and couldn't determine their source.


Eventually ESC received a request for a test system.  This test system would simulate the actions of the concentrators.  We decided to design a table driven test system.  Each entry into the table consisted of a message and the time to send that message.  Microsoft considered the actual messages confidential so we created the test table with dummy messages.  Once this test system arrived, the software engineers could determine if the problems were a result of bad messages being sent or good messages being processed with errors.


A company named  Corbis  was created to collect and manage all the images.  Corbis gathered images from museums, galleries, institutions and private collections and now makes these images available for your use.  So if you wanted your own personal copy of the Mona Lisa, you could obtain a high resolution scan of the original.



 

Disk Drive Pack Writer


CMX Systems Inc. manufactured an optical positioning system.  This system split the output from a laser into two paths,  a fixed length and a variable length.  The difference in these path lengths produces a signal that can be used to generate a quadrature type output.  The basic quadrature count was 0.6 millionths of an inch making this a very high resolution device.


ESC was asked to design the closed loop position control system that could be used to perform the disk drive pack write operation.  The position system moves a control arm which the disk drive could use as a reference when positioning the disk drive read write head.


Disk drives are manufactured with no information on the magnetic platters.  The pack writing operation writes data and control information onto the magnetic surface.  This information contains the digital track and sector information and it also contains analog information that is used to position the disk read write heads in normal operation.


In order to perform the pack writing operation, the control arm is moved to a position representing the center line of a track on the drive.  The drive then moves its read write head to push against the control arm with a fixed force.  The control arm needs to be moved to positions that represent fractional track locations across the drive.  The entire operation consists of writing a track then moving off the track a distance representing one quarter and one half of the track spacing distances.  Information is written on the track centerline and checked at the quarter and half track positions.  This is repeated for each of the tracks on the disk surface.


One requirement of the pack writing operation was to obtain the correct position in less than one revolution of the drive.  This time was nominally 10 msec.  If positioning took longer than 10 msec, a wait of one more complete revolution would be required to reach the beginning of the track.  A move and settling time of 11 msec would be equivalent to 20 msec. of waiting.


Another requirement was to remain in position during the pack write operation.  If the control arm was moved off position by more than a predetermined amount, a flag was set to indicate that this operation was suspect.  This equipment was installed in factories all around the world where earthquakes and different building techniques could cause the equipment to experience a bump.


A 6 Sigma operating performance was a requirement of this equipment.  This 6 sigma was defined as 3.4 failures in 1,000,000 pack write operations.  The disk drives were manufactured in a volume that was about 10,000 per day.  With an error rate any larger that the 6 Sigma faulty units will fill the factory in no time.  We developed an acceptance test system to measure the accuracy and stability of the system.  These systems were deployed at the CMX factory and the customer's receiving site.


As the drive manufactures reduced the size and increased the speed of their devices, the disk read write arms became thinner and more flexible.  This introduced mechanical oscillations that increased the settling time.  We discovered that these components had a resonance of 170 Hz.  We added digital filtering to remove all 170 Hz components in the position commands.   This was done completely in software and was field upgradeable.




 

 

Engine Parts Balancer


ESC was asked to update the design of the Stewart Warner Engine Balancer.  The original design was analog based.  It contained many input gain stages, tracking filters and several potentiometers for unit calibration.  The calibration process was complicated and time consuming.  We replaced the internal analog electronics with input filter, gain stages, analog to digital converter and a microprocessor that performs the digital signal processing.  Additionally, large liquid crystal displays (LCD) were added for ease of use.


The parts to be balanced were spun on a fixture that measured the out of balance condition at two hard bearing (mounting) points.  These points were not necessarily the end points of the part nor locations where material could be removed to fix the imbalance.  The imbalance signal at each of these inputs was a sine wave at the frequency of the rotation.  The phase and magnitude of this sine wave were the important characteristics of the incoming data.  These were extracted using a special case of the Fourier Transform.  We were not looking for all frequencies that a FFT would produce so a complete transform was not necessary.  The frequency of the rotation was known and the frequency of the imbalance would of course be the same as the frequency of the rotation.


This digital signal processing (DSP) type operation is applied to both the Left and Right inputs to determine the magnitude and phase of the imbalance at each of the inputs.  Next these imbalance vectors were transformed to locations on the part where material could be removed.                                                   


These units are typically used in a machine shop environment, close to large motors and welding equipment.  So special care was taken to make the device immune to these sources of interference.  Most of the leading NASCAR engine builders used this equipment as part of their operation.  This device is now marketed and serviced by Pro-Bal.


 

 

Camera Synchronizer


In the movie The Matrix, you will probably remember the action scenes.  These scenes showed the actors suspended in midair while the camera appeared to rotate around the actor a full 360  degrees.  This special effect won an Oscar and was supplied buy one of our customers, Playback Technologies.  This special effect was accomplished by placing several cameras around the scene and having all the cameras recording the action in compete synchronization.  Then in the lab, computers digitized the film images from the fixed camera locations and generated images that simulated images taken by a rotating camera. 


ESC provided the camera synchronizing device that forced all the cameras to take each frame in unison.  This device contained a very stable,  low drift oscillator and could connect to all the major brands of motion picture cameras.  This connection caused the motion picture camera to synchronize its internal timing circuitry to this master oscillator.  All these cameras were stable enough to hold that synchronization for several hours


The Camera Synch Unit (CSU) contains a battery, programmable logic devices and a phase locked loop.  These CSUs remain state of the art in the motion picture industry.  Programmable logic devices were selected to minimize the size and maximize the performance.  The synchronization logic could have been incorporated in the software of a microprocessor but this would have resulted in a more complicated design.


ESC is continuing to upgrade the CSU making it easier to take to remote locations, interface to additional camera types and consume less power for longer operation on fresh batteries.

 


Voice Conference Switch


Datacomm Management Sciences Inc. (DMSI)  manufactures a line of voice conference switches.  These switches range in speed and size from low (small office technology) to high (telephony company capacity).  One specific switching system they manufacture is for ship board applications.  Their VCS150 can connect 150 ports and is ruggedized for military applications, specifically shipboard use.  The features of this system are remarkable. 


ESC was involved with the software that controlled the switching electronics and detailed port interfaces.  DMSI has been in this field for close to 30 years so they know very well the requirements of military voice conference switching.  We were fortunate to be given a complete set of requirements and guidance for this software project.


Let me just list a few of the more interesting requirements.



A- The hardware was to use redundant controllers.

B- The operating firmware was to be upgradeable in the field.

C- The firmware was to recover and restore connectivity and status after a power interruption.

D- The firmware was to continuously verify the actual connectivity against the desired connectivity.

E- The firmware was to report status to the Supervisory System.


A- The redundant controllers communicated in the background sharing status, configuration and connectivity.  Each controller had a separate communications link to a Supervisory System.  Those links were physically separated in the ship so that damage would most likely be isolated to only one of the links.  Once a failed link was detected, information destined for that link could be sent between controllers and over the working links


B- The field upgrade ability requirement was particularly interesting.  If you have ever  installed new software that didn't work then you will appreciate this requirement.  New firmware was to be downloaded and programmed into the controller's memory.  This operation was to be done with the switch operational.  Then the new firmware was activated.  If the user did not like the new version of the firmware, the old version was reactivated.  All this could also be done at sea, away from home port with no special tools.  Oh the firmware could be transferred to the ship via the internet.


C- The VCS150 is designed to be operated 24/7.  In the event of a power interruption, the systems had to recover and restore the connectivity and configuration.  This is a fairly simple and straight forward requirement if a static status is assumed.  But now consider that you have redundant controllers that might not have received exactly the same commands.  The techniques for determining the freshest and most complete information, needed to be foolproof.




 

Radio Direction Finder


Doppler Systems Inc. needed a new radio direction finding (RDF) system that utilized digital signal processing to replace the hybrid analog/digital approach used on their older models. The new DF was implemented into a field programmable gate array (FPGA) that contains a 32 bit microprocessor, along with proprietary digital signal processing. This signal processing logic controlled the direction finding (DF) antennas and processed the received signal. That processing was done in real time and significantly increased the performance of the unit.


The image shows the RDF breadboard with the logic analyzer probes attached.



 

High Voltage Switch


ABB manufactures a high voltage switch.  This is the type of switch you would use if you were talking about disconnecting New York.  Typically these are 3 phase devices with each phase capable of switching  60,000 to 600,000 Volts and 10,000 to 60,000 Amps.  A common application for such a switch is power factor correction.  The switch adds or removes a capacitive load to compensate for the inductive loads that might be placed on the grid.  And unlike disconnection New York these power factor correction switches are operated several times a day.



The switch just sits there ready to make the correction 24/7.  Taking the switch off-line for service is a complicated expensive issue.  Now, what is amazing about such a large (big as a house) piece of equipment is that if you know some of the external conditions you can predict the operating cycle time very accurately. 


ESC was asked to design a controller that would measure temperature, hydraulic pressure and control voltage and calculate the operating time for each phase.  Then when a close (or open) command was issued, the controller would activate each phase of the switch such that closure was made at the zero voltage point along the 60 Hz wave.  Closing at zero volts meant zero current was flowing and almost no contact wear would occur.  This would extend the service time of the switch gear.


The controller monitored the voltage and current in each phase.  When activated it also recorded how well it performed and made the appropriate adjustments.  Additionally by monitoring the current we could measure contact erosion and predict when service is needed.


 

 

Copyright © 2003-2010 by ESC Design LLC. All rights Reserved

Last update: 15 August 2010