There is nothing as over as Christmas

Since the festive season we have all been very busy here at EI. Ross and I went on a big excursion to a sand mine and the rest of the guys spent some time investigating projects of their own choosing.

John has worked on writing a program to automate the testing of the APC UPSs. When servicing the APC model UPSs a serial connection to the UPS allows you to get access to a lot of the internal parameters and sensors (don't mess around with this though as you can wipe your eeprom which kills the UPS. We can reprogram them but no one else outside of the APC factory will be able to). Currently we just use a serial terminal for this task. In order to speed up the service process John is using Python (via pyserial) to automate the gathering of information and re-configuring of the UPSs. Hopefully this will skill will be very useful when interfacing with our own microcontroller projects.

Warrick had to swap hats for his project. Instead of reporting to customers he decided to think like one and write up the specs to some new equipment. Here is the scope of the two products Warrick is proposing.

GENERAL WEB CONTROLLER
In the printing industry there is a major need for a replacement of broken controllers of brakes and clutches to ensure correct tension and position of webs. These units are often supply companies of the OE manufacturer and the product is no longer supported. A professional looking, retrofit device could well be well placed to supply the needs of many press operators and suppliers.

IMAGE DISPLAY SYSTEM
In printing there is a need for replacement and retro fitting of a picture grabber for operator control without disturbing the web at full speed. There are several types of units available but it seems supply and reliability have left an opportunity for improvement.

We will be looking into producing these two items in the future.

unfortunately Bruce was somewhat limited in his freedom of project choice due to the heavy workload he is currently under. Fortunately one of his urgent jobs provided the opportunity to learn more about development on the EDM (EI's own microcontroller). More on this job in the future.

Ross and I had a successful trip out to the sand mine. We learnt a lot about programming Siemens PLC's with the Concept programming environment.