Jan Dolinay

Microcontroller-based Data Acquisition Device for Process Control and Monitoring Applications

Process measurement is one of the most important tasks in the whole control system. It is determined by the fact that control accuracy is fully dependent on how preciously measuring chain works. Present-day there is available number of devices performing data acquisition tasks – standard cards for PCI or ISA bus which are suitable for standard personal computers and its industrial versions and modules for industrial automation usually equipped with RS485, CAN and other interfaces. Independent category is formed by smart sensors incorporating sensor, converter to unified signal and data acquisition device in one embedded system with very compact dimensions and low power consumption. They have number of advantageous features such as automatic diagnostic and calibration, high accuracy and immunity against electromagnetic interference due to short signal paths. On the other hand lower operating temperature range reduces their usage to laboratory applications, automotive and aircraft industry where compact dimensions and low weight are crucial. Quite often occurred situations when it is necessary to measure data in terrain where it is not possible to use standard computer equipped with DAQ card. In these cases laptop computer equipped with portable data acquisition device may be very advantageous. On the market are available devices equipped with USB 2.0 connectivity which can fully functionally substitute PCI cards. But they are not able to work without connected computer which must continually control all DAQ operations. Therefore it is not possible to use them in applications where is required long-term monitoring and archiving process quantities in distant areas without access to mains power. This contribution proposes design of multi-channel portable data acquisition device based on low cost general-purpose 8-bit microcontroller Freescale 68HC908GP32, which was developed in our department mainly for control and monitoring educational laboratory models. First part deals with hardware design of the DAQ device with focus on description of operation of individual functional blocks. After that follows description of internal software (firmware) based on real-time operating system RTMON for HC08, which was developed on our department especially for microcontroller-based embedded systems with CPU08 main processor core. Next chapters discuss DAQ device software support in form of program libraries for MS Visual C++, Control Web and Matlab/Simulink development environments, which can significantly improve development time of new process control or

Arduino Debugger

This letter describes our source-level debugger for Arduino which can be used to debug the code in Arduino using GNU debugger. The presented solution uses Eclipse as the visual front-end. It does not require any modification of the Arduino board or additional hardware; debug functionality is achieved by adding a program library to the user application. Standard functionality expected from a debugger is available, such as setting breakpoints while debugging, stepping through the code and viewing variables. This allows developing projects with Arduino more efficiently and also using the Arduino for teaching embedded programming at a more advanced level, including debugging the program.

C14: Software tool for program transformation from motorola 68HC11 to 68HC08 microcontrollers

Abstract This contribution deals with design of software conversion tool dedicated for M68HC11 program equipment transformation to new Motorolas microcontroller family M68HC08 which became a new 8-bit industry standard including number of new advantageous features. The main problem is that these new microcontrollers are not object code compatible. Therefore number of up to now created program equipment for M68HC11 can not be directly used on M68HC08. One way how to solve program transfer from M68HC11 on this new generation of microcontrollers is to design universal software tool transforming each instructions of M68HC11 program code to macros, which will have same function as original instruction and can be processed with same results by M68HC08 central processing unit.

Modern Control Methods On The Microcomputer Controllers

Abstract To support modern control methods on Motorola 68HC11 microcomputer several program modules were created as a part of program library. The created modules implement some algorithms from the province of adaptive and robust control. A module for recursive process identification was created as well as two modules for controller synthesis, which use the pole placement and the inversion of dynamic methods. A simple robust controller was also designed. Several applications were developed using both new and older modules to verify that the new code is fully functional and compatible with the library. Experiments proved that it is possible to employ modern methods of automatic control on existing hardware and achieve the benefits these methods offer, such as simple utilization, better quality of the control or energy savings.