Contact Switches to trigger text output, need help

[bnmorgan]

I have 2 tensile gauges, who's controllers will accept text through the serial port (rs232 f.w.i.w) and can be requested to send their peak readings, and then requested to re-zero themselves. I've been communicating with them from the computer remotely through hyperterminal. Now I need to be able to automate this reading and zeroing through a 72 hour test (About 3k cycles in that time)

I plan to have contact switches at top and bottom, the points where I need the zero and peak.

But how do I get the computer to understand the simple closing of the switch and send the proper text when it sees the switch close? actually, there even needs to be a short delay on the switch that will send the zero instruction.

And of course, I've got about a week to get it going.

Byron Morgan - Tupelo, Mississippi
1947 Mayline
SolidWorks 2008
NX4

 

[mikek10]

Just have a loop monitoring the switch and sending the message when relevant

 

[geekEE]

Are you asking for hardware or software help? Do you have any experience with either? If not, one week is pretty quick to come up to speed.

Do have a plan for interfacing these switches to the PC? If you don't have any external hardware, you can probably use serial port modem control input lines like DCD and CTS to read the switches. You can drive one end of the switches high with an output line like RTS or DTR. The inputs have pull-downs built in, so it's pretty easy to do it this way.

Do you know Visual BASIC or C or some other PC programming language? They should be able to set the serial port output lines, read the input lines, and output messages at the desired baud rate. Describing how to do this would be beyond the kind of help that you would normally get in this forum.

Good luck!

 

[danw2]

Serial Output Sensor Interface (SOSI) M2HV

- One channel configurable as a frequency counter,
an event counter, or as a digital logic input.

- RS-232 serial interface communicates with most
serial terminal software and hardware. No
requirement to install proprietary software. No
operating system requirement. Open
communication protocol.

http://www.statelogic.com/SOSI-M2HV_V1.1letter.pdf

 

[bnmorgan]

I have hardware experience, from the standpoint of building fixtures and test equipment. In the past, we've been able to do these things through PLC's, because we haven't needed data collection on the way this project does.

We have a programmer here who is exceptionally talented, but isn't sure about the serial communications part of the matter (so far as i've seen, he does a half dozen different prog languages quite well)

That second thing, soic, may work straightway. Thank you both very much.

Byron


Byron Morgan - Tupelo, Mississippi
1947 Mayline
SolidWorks 2008
NX4

 

[GonzaloEE]

Just try this:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/WinComm.shtml

I've used this freeware before to test modems, sending automatic AT-commands for several hours.

You can arrange serial commands in HEX/ASCII, setting the period for repeting in secs/msecs, or arranging automated answers to specific serial messages from your device.

Good Luck!