power control

From: Douglas Quebbeman <dhquebbeman_at_theestopinalgroup.com>
Date: Tue Jun 26 07:17:31 2001

> >But as I said, it depends on what you want to do. If all the devices are
> >close together, a simple relay-driver + relays might is probably the
>
> Do you know what I mean by, the urge to engineer? It is the irresistable
> force that makes us tinkering types want to make something instead of doing
> it. ;)
>
> Maybe that is why I have ended up doing process control work so many times.
> Its just fun to turn stuff on and off with the computer, and the bigger the
> mess of stuff, the better.

Hey, I used to do distribution centers: sortation conveyors, vertical and
horizontal carousels, pick stations, etc. We used Quatech boards with Opto
22 modules stuffed in IBM PS/2 Model 80s which we stuffed in turn in big
Hoffman cabinets, and, contrary to my specs, unventilated. They ran like
gangbusters!

We'd gone in to Rose's Distribution center down in Raleigh-Duram area,
and found they had to keep a $250,000 inventory of spares *just* for
the custom controllers they used. We figured it would be a lot cheaper
to keep a couple Model 80s and some Quatech I/O boards around.

We were told that if we botched the timing of the sortation conveyor,
that the whole line could "explode"; the contractor said he'd seen
conveyor rollers embedded in a warehouse ceiling, once...

Lights going on and off, arms swinging lanes shut, packages shuttling
off into other lanes, etc. Some of the most fun I've had in computing!

And all on-topic, as everything described in the list is > 10years old.

Regards,
-doug q
 
Received on Tue Jun 26 2001 - 07:17:31 BST