OSU : Advanced Nuclear Systems Engineering Laboratory (ANSEL)

DEVELOPED: Control Software - System Controls Multiple National Instrument's CompactRIO System, supporting hundreds of data acquisition channels. Graphical User Interphase employ's 6 displays and provides real-time information and control of High Temperature Test Facility

CHALLENGE:

This was an extremely complex project with hundreds of channels and very diverse data capture and performance requirements. A quick look at the ‘hardware used’ will give a sense of the scope and complexity our control software for this system had to manage and control with high accuracy and reliability. The Software also had to be extremely robust because of the extremely dangerous elements being controlled and monitored.

OSU: Hydro-Mechanical Fuel Test Facility (HMFTF)

DEVELOPED: 

• PXI chassis with 13 c-Series Modules
• cRIO chassis with EtherCAT Expansion chassis provide additional 13 c-Series modules
• Host PC also controls external PLC for water conditioning system using EthernetIP protocol
• Replay Experiment option. All acquired data and user actions can be replayed for analysis.
• Variable Acquisition Rate for 101 Channels.
• Graph display allows the user to select any signal and show up to one hour of acquired data
• Real Time Pump characteristics graphs
• User Interface (pipes/valves/indicators) adjust to selectable Hardware Configuration

PROJECT OVERVIEW: The HMFTF is a testing facility which will be used to produce a database of hydromechanical information to supplement the qualification of the prototypic ultrahigh density U-Mo Low Enriched Uranium fuel which will be implemented into the U.S. High Performance Research Reactors upon their conversion to low enriched fuel. 

ABOUT THIS CUSTOMER:

Lumencor is leading the life sciences with light engines for bioanalysis. Novel optical excitation subsystems are designed for an array of instruments including fluorescence microscopes.

Lumencor Pod Webpage: http://lumencor.com/products/other-accessories/controllers/

Lumencor Website: http://lumencor.com/

PROJECT OBJECTIVE: (in General)

The customer, Lumencor develops LED\Laser light sources that are used for bioanalysis and cases where the specific color spectrum and intensity of the light provided must be very controlled. The customer needed a controller that would allow a very simple way to control all their family of light engines from a single controller and with minimal complexity.

DEVELOPED:

Ashford Solutions designed a controller that employed two embedded processors, one Master which provided the user interface via a round graphical display, two buttons plus an optical encoder and managed the selection and control of the specific light engine to be controlled. The second Slave processor controlled all communications to and from the Light Engine and Host PC if connected.

Ashford Solutions in this case designed all the control electronics for the pod as well as wrote all the control firmware for both embedded processors which was developed using the C++ language on each..

CHALLENGES: There were many challenges with this product. There were design difficulties due to the specific USB Host controller chip we chose to use due to a defect in that part. We ultimately had to design around this to achieve the performance we required.

CUSTOMER: Lumencor Inc. (See previous Lumencor project for more info about this customer)

PROJECT OBJECTIVE: Ashford Solutions has provided development support to Lumencor for many of their products. In this case, they wished to control specific light engines from a tablet. (Android based) These Light Engines, supported Bluetooth interfaces and needed an application developed for the tablet to communicate with the Light Engine and allow real time enabling and control of light intensities.

DEVELOPED: Ashford Solutions developed several android applications using a language called Basic4Android to provide this control.

CHALLENGES: One challenge was the creation of software to allow auto paring of the light engine with the tablet as well as the challenge of keeping up with ever changing Android OS versions.

Android Based Tablet Light Engine Controller. Image to right is Customers Product Page showing the controler developed by Ashford Solutions.

CUSTOMER: SE Laboratories

SE Laboratories Test Automation

PROJECT OBJECTIVE: (in General)

The customer, SE Laboratories, provides equipment and instrumentation calibration services and needed a way to automate the control of a very complex Tektronix TDS series oscilloscope, (TDS7104A). Their testing required them to setup very specific windows and conditions that would define the portion of a signal that they would capture. To make this more complex they wanted the scope to conditional be configured based upon other measurements it had taken in previous captures. This was to provide calculated limits based upon the standard they were testing against. They also wanted to the scope to display info about the Asset being tested, applicable regulatory standard, and other parameters during testing. This was all then to be captured. The scope Tektronix scope in this case provided a means to control almost every aspect of the capture and display via GPIB/SCPI interface.

CUSTOMERS’ STATED OBJECTIVES FOR PROJECT:

To build software driven platform that will allow a calibration technician do the following:

 Control Tektronix TDS series oscilloscope

♦ Send predefined setup configuration(s) to TDS7104A

♦ Send Screen Text to TDS7104A (Asset Number, applicable regulatory standard, and other parameters specific to test)

♦ Provide selection mechanism to allow selection of predefined 'canned’ text (txt or xml) and sending to oscilloscope

♦ Collect Data from TDS series oscilloscope

♦ Download and aggregate all reported data from TDS7104A for analysis

♦ Download Screen Waveform (in Color)

 Data Analysis

♦ Calculations made upon measured data to determine if unit is within specifications.

 Save Capture Data

♦ Save parametric data captured from TDS7104A in manageable data format (Excel, xml)

♦ Save Screen Waveform (in color) as .jpg file.

♦ Save Waveforms in folder reflecting asset number

♦ Sequential Waveform captures will be named as such (01.jpg, 02.jpg etc.)  

DEVELOPED:

Ashford Solutions developed a LabVIEW control application that fully configured and operated the TDS7104A Scope throughout the test sequence with little to no operator intervention other than setup and configuration of the device under test.

The test program loaded test scripts and configuration files that defined every aspect of the test and the various standards that applied and would be later used by the test to highlight ‘on screen’ out-of-spec test results when they occurred.

The application program was quite extensible and because it was table driven could be altered as the standards changed without having to change the program itself.

CHALLENGES:

Development of this application posed several complicated challenges. We had to become intimately familiar with and control of various functions of both this oscilloscope as well as the customers test system and complex test metrics.