The theme of my research work is designing the device wich connects a virtual model of the industrial process with the real industrial controller. The device is called a «CVO» or Coupler for the Virtual Object. The device consists of a microcontroller and digital and analog ports input/output, and power supply unit. These components is mounted on the two-layer printed circuit board (PCB). ADC of the microcontroller operates as an analog input, digital input based on transistors and diodes, as well as digital output. Analog output port has more difficult circuit, he consists of digital potentiometr and voltage-to-current converter, wich converts voltage on potentiometer to current in wires in a range from 4 to 20 мА. Digital signals has two states, 0 or 24 volt.
Interaction with the computer occurs through the USB interface. Circuit for interaction is called FT232, it is a popular tool for interaction via USB.
Brain of device, microcontroller ATmega32 is production of Atmel. ATmega 32 has 32 Kbytes of Flash Memory, 44 pins, 8-channel ADC converter with 10-bit resolution and 15ksps speed. Microcontroller works with speed 12MHz.
CVO is a software-hardware complex. Software part consist of driver for FT232 and dinamic library for VisSim. The dinamic library is written in C, as well as programm for microcontroller.
CVO can be used for training in control of industrial processes, such as boiler control, turbine control. Students will work with controller «Quantum» or «Simatic». they will make programm for controller, but test will be run on the virtual object on computer.
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