Hi,
Bear with me on this I have to fill in some background information
so that you can understand the type of help I need.
I am about to embark on a project, which will do the following
A plasma deposition oven will coat a material with a compound
such as Silicon Dioxide and for arguments sake the material is
metal which has a high refractive index.
the material will be scanned by a laser interferometer
which will produce a diminishing sine wave output as the metal/material
gets coated (in other words it starts to become more and more opaque)
which in turn it's output will be fed to an Analogue to Digital convertor.
this AD convertor will be read by a PC104 computers (small footprint)
serial port which in turn will monitor the process and send a stop signal once
the process is complete.
before the process starts it is critical to log the start point of the plasma
deposition cycle and to log one complete sine wave.
bearing in mind that the start point could be negative or positive
depending on the refractive index of the material, so we could be
starting at plus or minus zero on the sine wave or indeed zero, but
that would be considered the "start point"
this would then have to be monitored and at the 90 degree point ignored
(half sine wave) until reaching the 180 degree point (full sine wave)
and then an allowance of say 10% (or whatever you set it to) of the total
sine wave time/distance added.
the extra bit on the end is to make sure that the whole surface is
uniformly covered with the coating.
the sine wave would complete it's 180 degrees in a minimum of 30 seconds
or at a maximum of 2 to 3 hours, depending on the coating and
the material to be coated.
What makes this project interesting is that the PC104 doesn't have
disk space but is 100% IBM compatible, so magnetic file data storage
is out of the window and although
it emulates disk space by using flash memory
I would prefer to process all this in it's RAM as flash memory is
finite in the amount of times you can flash it, and this would have
to run reliably for years at a time.
Now that you have some background, I would like to ask for some help
in getting this started on the right foot in the first place
I intend to develop it in PB 3.5 for DOS, as a Windows environment
is out of the question because of stability and reliablity.
Any pointers to some ready made code/routines that could be modified
would be helpful if only to get the project off the starting blocks,
and of course any sage advice on PB 3.5 and comm port usage would be helpful
let's see what you guys can come back with !!!
if you would prefer to email me directly or have any further
questions to clarify the project then please feel free
using the following email address
[email protected]
Regards
Derek Brabrook
Bear with me on this I have to fill in some background information
so that you can understand the type of help I need.
I am about to embark on a project, which will do the following
A plasma deposition oven will coat a material with a compound
such as Silicon Dioxide and for arguments sake the material is
metal which has a high refractive index.
the material will be scanned by a laser interferometer
which will produce a diminishing sine wave output as the metal/material
gets coated (in other words it starts to become more and more opaque)
which in turn it's output will be fed to an Analogue to Digital convertor.
this AD convertor will be read by a PC104 computers (small footprint)
serial port which in turn will monitor the process and send a stop signal once
the process is complete.
before the process starts it is critical to log the start point of the plasma
deposition cycle and to log one complete sine wave.
bearing in mind that the start point could be negative or positive
depending on the refractive index of the material, so we could be
starting at plus or minus zero on the sine wave or indeed zero, but
that would be considered the "start point"
this would then have to be monitored and at the 90 degree point ignored
(half sine wave) until reaching the 180 degree point (full sine wave)
and then an allowance of say 10% (or whatever you set it to) of the total
sine wave time/distance added.
the extra bit on the end is to make sure that the whole surface is
uniformly covered with the coating.
the sine wave would complete it's 180 degrees in a minimum of 30 seconds
or at a maximum of 2 to 3 hours, depending on the coating and
the material to be coated.
What makes this project interesting is that the PC104 doesn't have
disk space but is 100% IBM compatible, so magnetic file data storage
is out of the window and although
it emulates disk space by using flash memory
I would prefer to process all this in it's RAM as flash memory is
finite in the amount of times you can flash it, and this would have
to run reliably for years at a time.
Now that you have some background, I would like to ask for some help
in getting this started on the right foot in the first place
I intend to develop it in PB 3.5 for DOS, as a Windows environment
is out of the question because of stability and reliablity.
Any pointers to some ready made code/routines that could be modified
would be helpful if only to get the project off the starting blocks,
and of course any sage advice on PB 3.5 and comm port usage would be helpful
let's see what you guys can come back with !!!
if you would prefer to email me directly or have any further
questions to clarify the project then please feel free
using the following email address
[email protected]
Regards
Derek Brabrook
Comment