Comments for Project Mechatronics

Comment on Solar Power, Mechatronics and Economics by Dave Schiff

Dave Schiff — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:59:08 +0000

Does anyone know any specifics about where the shown solar array is, who the manufacturer of that system is, etc?

Comment on Solar Power, Mechatronics and Economics by Steve Arey

Steve Arey — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 03:29:26 +0000

I think it is important to develop a “standard” battery pack. This battery pack would be used in all cars, and houses, wherever. This battery pack could be charged with solar powered sites at gas stations everywhere and at homes everywhere. They would be exchangable and universal. They could also be charged by electricity.
Then there would be no limit on how far you could drive your battery vehicle, just stop in any gas station and exchange your cells for charged ones. A vehicle might have as many as 60 - 80 battery cells, the same for your home. The amount of cells should add up to 120 volts.

Comment on Facts or Fiction? Politics or Science. by Larry Coyle

Larry Coyle — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:33:17 +0000

Dear Mr. Steve Meyer:

Thank you so very much for your article. Here I thought I was the only one going crazy asking myself the very same questions as you. Two problems as I see it. One is that you have to have some form of common sense. The second is that you have to be able to THINK for yourself. On top of that there comes the possibility that you might need to express those thoughts and your common sense as it applies to the subject matter.

It seems as if today, politics is becoming more and more like a high school clique. Hey, if so and so says it and they make it sound reasonable then we had better get on that band wagon so we can be accepted. Otherwise, we might actually have to do some research (gosh I wonder if I can get some of my aides in my office to do some of my research and tell me what to say here) and think for ourselves and actually justify what we are saying just because we have a different opinion. Would someone please tell me where it says that just because a former Vice-President of the United States has made a movie about this subject, then it must be true!

I think we truly need to be saved from ourselves as sometimes, we are our own worst enemy.

Comment on Silicon and the Economy by Tim Ganstrom

Tim Ganstrom — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:43:16 +0000

Very well written article!! Indeed if we are going to make a switch over to Plug-in Electric Vehicles, and yet still give our critical industries the electricity they need, then either air-conditioners need to be banned, or the government needs to grant some permits for clean-burning power plants. According to my neighbor who works in the green-project-funding business, Alaska is forward thinking enough to allow a garbage-to-fuel converting plant to be build out of an old abandoned industrial site. And the garbage is shipped up there from L.A.!! L.A. pays them to take their garbage because they are so desperate down there.

And thank you for mentioning the safe nuclear technology. That would be the SMARTEST thing the U.S. could do to keep pace with the rest of the world, else we will become a ‘2nd’ world nation relative to Asia and Europe. They are smart enough to use nuclear in a safe manner and not be ’scared’ of it. I’m not scared of nuclear reactors because I took most of my Engineering labs directly across the hall way from an operational nuclear-fission test reactor in the basement of my Engineering building right on campus. Thankfully the uneducated liberal masses on campus didn’t even know it was there!

-Tim G

Comment on Got Control? by Yesid Hernandez

Yesid Hernandez — Sat, 31 May 2008 19:32:00 +0000

Hi interesting article,

But about SCADA, this acronomy doesn’t mean Sequential Control and Data Adquisition but Supervisory Control and Data Adquisition

Bye.

Comment on Got Control? Part 2 by Richard Person

Richard Person — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:18:33 +0000

with the advent of fully functional pc’s that are the same size or smaller then conventional plc’s. it would seem that specialized plc’s are no longer needed. i think its time for the industry to unite on one hardware platform to control the worlds factory’s. mini pc’s with 100 gig hard drives could store high speed data then send it to a server to collate into a very usefull database. lets put an end to the seemingly hundreds of proprietary hardware and software. and standardize under one universal standard. that i think would certainly not be a waste of time!!

Comment on Got Control? Part 2 by Industrial PC

Industrial PC — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:47:56 +0000

“So maybe by looking at the controls world with an eye toward control system and data requirements as bandwidth propositions, we can construct better boundaries for applying the control system hardware that is available.”

Hhhm, interesting thought. Thinking “outside the box” can be very productive but at the same time a waste of time!

Comment on Energy Policy by Chevy Volt Fan

Chevy Volt Fan — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 04:40:53 +0000

The Volt does represent a tremendous step forward in technology, but the constant problems and price increases are turning into a PR nightmare.

To learn more about the volt via oics, news and videos check it out online @ http://www.chevy-volt.net

Comment on E Drives Conference by Erlendur Kristjansson

Erlendur Kristjansson — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 21:19:47 +0000

The sad thing about the DSP craze in the motion control industry is that 90% of the things that are handled by a motion controller have nothing to do with signal processing. The only reason for such high usage of DSPs is that until in that last few years we have not had any options. DPS’ have been the only show in town and companies like TI have cashed in on it. Actually, most of the control tasks that happen in a motion controller are better handled by a microcontroller.
It is possible to say that DSPs are good for contouring calculations, but again there the reason is that they are available with fixed point or floating point capabilities at price points that are reasonable. There still no true signal processing going on.
DSPs are optimized to handled big blocks of data or data streams, and do complex calculations on it. This is not what motion control is about. Fortunately, as Steve Meyer has pointed out, there are options out there. Luminary was the first to introduce a microcontroller based on the ARM CortexM3 core, which is a very powerful core optimized for microcontrollers. Last year STMicroelectronics also introduced a product family based on this core, with even higher performance. Both have made their products very attractive to motor control. Also, compared to a lot of DSPs out there this micros can run at their maximum clock speed from flash memory and not RAM, which is the norm for most DSPs. Luminary and ST run at 50MHz and 72MHz, respectively, giving us 62 MIPS and 90 MIPS performance. More than enough for the most demanding motion control tasks at a very attractive cost (at least compared to the DSP

Comment on Common Terms are Not So Common by brenyw

brenyw — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 23:11:57 +0000

I tend to think of brushless DC as having electronically switched AC triggered by the shaft position, detected by some kind of sensor, so the frequency of AC is driven by the motor speed. I think of AC synchronous as the motor speed being driven by the frequency of the AC.