{"title":"The case for solid-state switching","authors":"P. Costello","doi":"10.1049/CCE:20070202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/CCE:20070202","url":null,"abstract":"In harsh manufacturing environment, the twin goals of minimising downtime and maximising productivity are vital for all companies. Not only is it necessary to maximise returns for shareholders, for many companies it is as simple as whether they stay in business or not. As part of this quest for improved productivity, OEMs and systems integrators are looking to push their machines and processes to ever-increasing speeds. In modern machinery applications (such as packaging, palletising or conveying), it would not be considered unusual to switch three-phase electric motors every second or so. Even under almost ideal operating conditions, and specifying high-quality products, the electrical life of an electromechanical contactor is typically exceeded in fewer than two million operations. At this point, the contactor would have to be replaced, resulting in lost production time and increased costs with respect to labour and replacement devices. The whole life cost, including machine downtime and repair, needs to be included in any calculations when it comes to making the decision between the solid state and the more traditional electro-mechanical contactor.","PeriodicalId":401124,"journal":{"name":"Computing & Control Engineering Journal","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128886065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"World without wires","authors":"T. James","doi":"10.1049/CCE:20070206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/CCE:20070206","url":null,"abstract":"Wireless technology, now the networking backbone in homes and offices worldwide, is about to see widespread adoption where it will have, perhaps, its most profound impact: on the plant floor and out in the field. The desire for new and improved business processes extends across all types of manufacturing. A major factor favouring greater deployment of wireless technologies in manufacturing is the ability of wireless applications to enable new and better ways of operating manufacturing plants, and process manufacturing stands to feel the greatest impact. Field operations within a process plant are a classic case of the need for more information that can only be delivered wirelessly. Historically, process manufacturing has not been able to use wireless on a broad scale, but new sensor networking and WLAN developments wifi soon change this, presenting a huge opportunity for manufacturers who can use wireless to gain visibility into hidden processes, assets, and activities. These now represent 'invisible' assets still not well integrated into the enterprise.","PeriodicalId":401124,"journal":{"name":"Computing & Control Engineering Journal","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131926134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Confusion over safety","authors":"W. Baxter","doi":"10.1049/CCE:20070201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/CCE:20070201","url":null,"abstract":"Overcoming the barriers to successful implementation of electrical safety in manufacturing plants. Process industry managers responsible for safety in manufacturing plants have had their work cut out in recent years. Several factors have contributed to confusion across engineering disciplines on the necessary steps in ensuring manufacturing plants are as safe as they can possibly be. The paper describes the IEC 61508, an international standard that was developed with the express aim of providing a methodical approach to demonstrating the fitness for purpose of safety systems. As safety systems have become more complex, so the need has grown to provide confidence that they perform in the intended manner whenever they are called upon to do so. IEC 61508 provides a framework for all parties to work together to ensure that systems operate to the required level of integrity. However, the complexity that IEC 61508 was designed to address has led to the standard itself being complex and impenetrable to the uninitiated.","PeriodicalId":401124,"journal":{"name":"Computing & Control Engineering Journal","volume":"939 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127003900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Walking on air","authors":"Johannes Rock","doi":"10.1049/cce:20070209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/cce:20070209","url":null,"abstract":"PC technology helps keep the eye on the ball when it comes to outside broadcasting. Technology based on the PC acts as the core of the outside broadcast van for high-definition television (HDTV). A compact industrial PC calculates the video signals' path through the complex controller system in next to no time, and thereby assures that the right camera image is always shown on the right monitor. The innovation cycles in PC technology are accelerating and new processors and operating systems have to be integrated into the systems in increasingly shorter intervals.","PeriodicalId":401124,"journal":{"name":"Computing & Control Engineering Journal","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126438963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Code and chips","authors":"W. Huhn, Marcus Schaper","doi":"10.1049/cce:20070208","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/cce:20070208","url":null,"abstract":"The problems of embedded software are rooted in the legacies of hardware development. At companies that once focused on the mechanics of hardware, the primary challenge today is developing high-quality, reliable software to embed in these products. The focus and value in engineered products is shifting from chips to code. As the focus shifts, companies accustomed to managing the development of their hardware need to learn new processes and metrics for managing the development of software so that they can make the process more productive and the software more reliable. Automobiles make a good case study for demonstrating the challenges of this mounting complexity and the devising a road map to improve the quality and reliability of embedded software, which now drives most of the industry's innovations and accounts for a substantial and rising part of each new car's value. Embedded-software systems control a wide variety of automotive applications and handle a number of fundamentally different challenges, such as those of suspension control and satellite navigation all while exchanging information in real time.","PeriodicalId":401124,"journal":{"name":"Computing & Control Engineering Journal","volume":"715 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116126260","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Robots - Industrial robot specification - With the use of industrial robots growing it is important to correctly specify the format for any industrial robot cell","authors":"S. Paatz","doi":"10.1049/CCE:20070105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/CCE:20070105","url":null,"abstract":"Although global statistics suggest that the UK is still lagging behind other advanced nations in the uptake of modern robotics technology, falling prices, increased relative performance and smaller installation footprints are prompting more British manufacturers and processors to invest in multi-axis industrial robots. Identifying the potential applications and cost benefits is one thing however; choosing the right robot for the task and building it into a fully functioning automated work cell is quite another. Human input, in the form of operator commands, diagnostics and programming changes, is incorporated into the robot cell by means of a human machine interface (HMI).","PeriodicalId":401124,"journal":{"name":"Computing & Control Engineering Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130180458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Debugging building automation applications - Building automation has been hamstrung by the lack of practical and affordable communications technologies but ZigBee makes it practical to embed wireless communications into virtually any commercial building automation product","authors":"A. Wheeler","doi":"10.1049/CCE:20070107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/CCE:20070107","url":null,"abstract":"Building automation has been hamstrung by the lack of practical and affordable communications technologies, but ZigBee makes it feasible to embed wireless communications into virtually any commercial building automation product. ZigBee-based building automation applications are usually built on resource-constrained 8-bit or 16-bit microcontrollers, with the networking stack and application often sharing the same processor. Many ZigBee-based applications already exist in other forms, often using wired networks or no networking. Consider, for example, a ZigBee wireless thermostat. Its debugging challenges are similar to those posed by standard microcontroller unit (MCU)-based thermostats. But the debugging challenges are compounded when the MCU has to be shared by an application and a network stack, not to mention the non-determinism of wireless networking. As ZigBee systems grow in size, from a single thermostat to a complete building HVAC system, for example, the applications become more distributed with many processors and communications links involved. A new approach to debugging is needed to enable this type of application development.","PeriodicalId":401124,"journal":{"name":"Computing & Control Engineering Journal","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126805197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Signalling - Power distribution for signalling sytems - Power supplies to signalling systems and other trackside loads have a number of unique requirements to challenge the electrical engineer","authors":"C. Hunt","doi":"10.1049/CCE:20070109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/CCE:20070109","url":null,"abstract":"The complexity of signalling power supplies can be described through the load, the original solutions and their evolution into the systems currently employed upon the railways. Power supplies to signalling systems and other trackside loads have a number of unique requirements to challenge the electrical engineer.","PeriodicalId":401124,"journal":{"name":"Computing & Control Engineering Journal","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122148668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Analysis: Home help","authors":"K. Allan","doi":"10.1049/CCE:20060609","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/CCE:20060609","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":401124,"journal":{"name":"Computing & Control Engineering Journal","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122441550","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Wireless security - How safe is Z-wave?","authors":"Miya Knight","doi":"10.1049/CCE:20060601","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/CCE:20060601","url":null,"abstract":"It's becoming a wireless world. But while high data rate wireless standards like Wi-Fi and WiMax have been grabbing the headlines, the market for low data rate wireless could turn out to be even bigger. The US-based standards body IEEE organised a task group to develop a standard for low power, low data rate networks. As a result, the ZigBee Alliance was set up by a number of companies to work together to build on 802.15.4. However, a rival technology to ZigBee, called Z-Wave, has received the support of chip giant Intel, as well as networking heavyweight Cisco. In many ways, Z-Wave and ZigBee are similar. Both are wireless standards. Both use mesh networks. Both are designed for low power. Though ZigBee provides for a higher data rate than Z-Wave, both standards provide for relatively low throughput. But proponents of ZigBee claim that Z-Wave is considerably less robust.","PeriodicalId":401124,"journal":{"name":"Computing & Control Engineering Journal","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121775431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}