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Colter
have the capability to design special OEM custom control modules
or embedded PLCs to suit your exact needs. These products can
be very cost effective for specialised applications where a
PLC is either a too large or costly solution. These products
will basically fall into one of two categorys: |
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Category
1. Modules / control boards based on our standard FMT-100,FMT-200,
FMT-400, BIS-100 programmable controller product technology.
These utilise the popular Motorola 68000 family of microprocessor.
The
modular circuit design and construction of these products
makes it relatively easy to design a product for you based
around our existing technology incorporating your needs.
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O.E.M.
modules / control boards based on our programmable controller
technology can be programmed either by yourself or Colter
using the powerful Flex32 programming software.
This
enables programming in both ladder code or Colter’s own text
based instruction language which has a format recognisable
to people who have programmed in high level text based languages
such as ‘ C ’ and ‘ BASIC ’.
Because
of the nature of these products the board designed for the
OEM may be quite general, if desired, with much final configuration
/ software written by the OEM
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Category
2. Modules / control boards based around the MICROCHIP
PIC microcontroller.
These
microcontrollers enable design of a control board that can
be very cost effective, previously these microcontrollers
tended to be used in simpler applications but the growing
complexity and power of the range of microcontrollers available
can make them suited to more complex tasks once reserved for
a full blown microprocessor suystem.
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Because
of the nature of the microcontroller the function of the board
utilising these products will tend to be tailored very specifically
to the application - generally there will not be a great deal
of user configuration - possibly user parameters altered by
via a built in LCD display / keyboard or via a serial communication
link. |
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Benefits
of a Colter OEM Control Board / Embedded PLC:
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- Fast
time to final product.
- Reduced
unit cost.
- Low
development costs.
- The
design can fulfil very specific requirement, far more specific
than an off- the-shelf PLC.
- The
physical size of the unit can be made to suit.
- The
design can be based around Colter’s proven standard products
therefore reducing design time and cost.
- The
design can enjoy free retrospective firmware enhancements
on parrallel with standard products.
- The
design can benefit from the large program storage capacity
of the FMT CPU boards, therefore allowing you to write programs
for very complex applications.
- The
product can utilise Colter’s easy to learn FLEX32 programming
language which enables programs to be written either in
Ladder Logic code or in Colter’s own high level text based
language which will be of a familiure format to anyone used
to ‘C’ or ‘BASIC’ or similar.
- Either
the customer or Colter can write the application software.
- Specially
written firmware is possible for particular applications,
please speak to Colter.
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General
Capabilities: |
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- CPU
boards based around the popular Motorola 68000 CPU family
- Control
boards based around the Microchip PIC family of microcontrollers
- Large
Digital I/O capability
- Large
Analogue I/O capability
- RS232
and RS485 communications ports
- High
speed inputs (for counting from optical shaft encoders etc.)
- Non
volatile data storage (Flash RAM)
- Real
Time Clock
- Flash
RAM plug in card capability (for data logging / program
storage etc.)
- Fieldbus
communications modules (for communicating with Fieldbus
networks)
- Signal
conditioning
- PID
(Proportional Integral, Differential) Control
- User
displays (LCD Alphanumeric & Graphic displays, LED indicators
etc.)
- Push
button controls
- Text
based and Ladder based programming
- Use
of mebrane keypads
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