Still waiting for go-ahead on Paint Flow Controllers but other work on a Satellite Communication Project

That's me again with painting by Heide in background.

Still no go-ahead on the Paint Flow Control Project. It had looked like UEI (Universal Electronics) was planning to get more controllers installed in the Chinese painting facility. The facility is in Guangzhou, fairly close to Hong Kong in the south of China. That's where UEI gets many of their remote control widgets painted. They were having QC problems, so UEI instigated the development project. I was working with Thomas Nguyen of VividInc (Vivid Inc.) on the controllers. We developed a control system using a Beaglebone Black micro with a 4D Systems touchscreen LCD and an analog interface board that I designed and developed. I programmed the BBB in Python 2.7. Thomas and I tested the system at the VividInc facility in Santa Clara, then Thomas installed four controllers in the Guangzhou facility. I have described all this in previous posts. During the installation of the controllers, Thomas also made several corrections/improvements to the painting systems such as straightening out the kinks in the paint flow tubing and installing filters to clean up the paint. The overall result was a halving of the reject rate and we had thought that the Chinese facility would go ahead to install many more controllers, maybe up to 24 or so. However, it turns out that they are unconvinced that the controllers are needed, instead suspecting that Thomas' fixes did the trick to improve the reject rate. So we are still on hold, awaiting a decision from the Chinese painting company.

Meanwhile, and actually a few months ago, Steve Hunter of LLNL (LLNL) contacted me about working on software for the Smart Sampler (Smart Sampler), software to enable satellite communication. I was happy to be working on it again and accepted an offer from Akima (Akima), the contracting company for LLNL. While employed at LLNL, I had originally programmed the systems in National Instruments LabWindows (LW/CVI). They were originally called Gas Samplers. Steve has since modified the code to add some features but he was too busy to add the software to effect satellite communications and so called upon me to help out.

I have been working almost entirely at home, using my old Dell Inspiron 3800 to simulate the Smart Sampler systems. The hardware is considerably different from the real Smart Samplers, without all the serial interfaces and sensors etc, but it uses the Windows XP operating system, similar to that employed in the Smart Samplers, so was a good surrogate. Steve and Charles Carrigan had set up a deal with ORBCOMM (ORBCOMM) for the satellite communication system and I worked with VitalVu on the software, mainly with Michael Saltsman of Vitalvu (VitalVu). The ORBCOMM Satellite Terminal (transceiver) looks like a Modbus Master and Michael suggested use of modbus

SkyWave IDP680 Satellite Transceiver

poll from modbustools (Modbus Poll) to get the communication working. I started with Modbus Slave code from Github (Arduino Modbus Code), adding much to the code and considerably rewriting it since the code was written for an Arduino micro. Modbus Poll worked out very well for testing my code and verifying that it was working properly.

Anyhow, with much help from Michael Saltsman of Vitalvu, Michael wrote special code for the Satellite Terminals to match up with our Smart Sampler data and also provided us with a website

VitalVu Liquistics webpage for Smart Sampler Project

that displays the data and enables us to turn on/off various systems and change the operating mode of the Smart Sampler. I got my LabWindows code fully operational on my XP PC. I set a Satellite Transceiver out on our driveway at home and got communication working to the ORBCOMM satellite and the Liquistics webpage.

Satellite Terminal on Driveway

Now it's time for Steve Hunter to recompile the code for the Smart Sampler hardware configuration and install it on a real Smart Sampler. Then real testing can commence. I expect Steve will get that done soon, and hopefully he'll have other work for me to do for LLNL.