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After supplying all your  Embedded Development Tool needs for 42 years
 Computer Solutions Ltd and its web shop are now closed.

  

  
 

 Having reached the grand old age of 75 it is time to relax and fulfil other ambitions.

 Its been an exciting ride with you, our customers, often on the bleeding edge of technology
 and I thank you for your friendship, your trust, and your orders.

Stay well        I wish you all success in your future projects.

 Chris Stephens.

 

 R4

     But what to do with the web site ?  It has taken >12 man years of work to create a repository of knowledge on many aspects of the art and science of embedded microprocessor development and even after closing the shop it still gets over 4,000 visitors per month.  So as a service to my customers I have decide to keep it live providing my technical insights on the products and then redirecting viewers to sites where they can purchase the items they used to buy from us. Follow the link   "Home"

       The  "Information zone"  consists of articles produced as background tutorials on subjects of interest to those designing new products.  As different CPUs have became available this has lead to new development techniques and in particular to new ways of communicating between nodes.

 
Home Information Zone

MIMIC

A mouse driven PC plant control and data acquisition package

MIMIC screen shot

Mimic display area contains :

  • Background data
  • Graphics symbols
  • Operator input
  • Sensor values
  • Bar charts
  • Trend graphs
  • Pipe fills
  • Mouse hit areas
  • Most recent two alarms

Designed to be easily interfaced to your instrumentation, this package runs on an IBM-AT with a super VGA, VGA or EGA Screen. It can display a Mimic diagram of parts of a plant with animated symbols, updated values, trends, messages and bar graphs. Any number of Mimics can be held on the disk and selected by mouse hits from the keyboard, or as a result of an external event.

Changes in the sensor inputs can generate entries in a variety of Log files and, if needed, these may require the operator to acknowledge the event. Help screens and Shift Memos as well as these Logs may be reviewed on the screen. The package also provides output facilities allowing the operator to set demand values, which are first checked against pre-definable interlock conditions. Recipes and Sequences of outputs can be created for selection by the user and automatic execution by the package.

The package is designed for resale as a central instrumentation controller and full source code is supplied so that special requirement for I/O or display can be easily met. The Users Manual is supplied on a word processor file and has been designed so that it can be easily modified to be product or project specific. A password system allows our customer to select whether the end user may change the Mimics, Help Screens, I/O configuration, Sensor Database, Interlocks or Sequences.

Introduction

MIMIC is a new concept in plant mimic and control systems because:

MIMIC is configured by the OEM (or COMSOL ) to interface with the OEM's I/O devices and operational requirements. The resulting package is released as a sealed software system to end users who will retain the ability to amend the mimics, control sequences and database contents, but will be unable to reprogram the underlying system.

OEMs may install these control systems themselves, or sell the resulting package on to their customers as their own "badged" software product. A licence fee is payable to COMSOL for each installation, but this has been set at a low level, recognising the need to preserve OEM's margins.

MIMIC fulfils the needs of most users though it can, if necessary, be readily extended for special requirements.

Data Collection

MIMIC can handle any combination of analogue, binary, or discrete sensor information. Externally generated messages may be collected from intelligent I/O systems.

Since the I/O subsystem is supported in a high level language, it is even possible to define 'virtual' sensors whose values in the database are, for example, the result of combinations of other sensors. As a diagnostic aid, input sensor changes can be simulated from the keyboard by the engineer

Displays

MIMIC redraws displays at high speed. In addition to the basic drawing function, MIMIC provides a number of display features:

Trending

The trending system can be configured to record data from selected sensors at regular intervals. This data may then be either displayed as graphs on special trend displays or included in a MIMIC display. These graphs are then automatically updated in real time allowing the operator to monitor the plant's status. The operator can scroll the data backward in time to display old data. The number of sensors trended, the time interval and the numbers of samples are all selectable.

Error Handling

Handling event, alarm and error activity is an important function within MIMIC. There is considerable flexibility during configuration about how events are handled:

Control

Call for a demo disk

 

Home Information Zone
 
Computer Solutions Ltd
87 Briar Road,  Shepperton,  Middx,  TW17 0JB
 
Telephone: +44 (0) 77 4342 2526   
Email: sales@computer-solutions.co.uk      Web: www.computer-solutions.co.uk
 
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