Polaris Corporation

The customer requested a data collection and control system to allow downloading of torque's and collection and display of faults and line failures. Also, the system was to report on the status of the assembled product at any point on the production line as well as provide a "Pass/Fail" indication at the end of the production line. All devices to be monitored and controlled on the production line had serial interfaces (RS232). The system would need to handle as many as 100 serial devices. The control system software was to be able to provide product model parametric recipes for use on various product models.

The system was designed using the Unix operating system and a serial interface controller with capabilities of 128 serial ports. Each of the devices on the production line was treated as a node on a network having an address assigned to it. TCP/IP protocol was used such that each device or node on the system was treated as a network location. In order to be able to be responsive to the customer's needs, a modem was also made part of the design. With the network protocols used and the modem access, OMNI was able to access the production line's data and view activity from remote locations. The system was very successful and was able to provide visual representation of the production line's content, parameters and pass/fail results with it's associated specific data.

Pentium Personal Computer using Windows operating system
Pentium Personal Computer using Unix operating system
C Programming Language
TCL/TK programming language

Joel Hoenk (712)336-3797