1、Programmable controller designed for electro-pneumatic systemsThis project deals with the study of electro-pneumatic systems and the programmable controller that provides an effective and easy way to control the sequence of the pneumatic actuators movement and the states of pneumatic system. The pro
2、ject of a specific controller for pneumatic applications join the study of automation design and the control processing of pneumatic systems with the electronic design based on microcontrollers to implement the resources of the controller.1.Introduction The automation systems that use electro-pneuma
3、tic technology are formed mainly by three kinds of elements: actuators or motors, sensors or buttons and control elements like valves. Nowadays, most of the control elements used to execute the logic of the system were substituted by the Programmable Logic Controller（PLC）.Sensors and switches are pl
4、ugged as inputs and the direct control valves for the actuators are plugged as outputs. An internal program executes all the logic necessary to the sequence of the movements, simulates other components like counter, timer and control the status of the system.With the use of the PLC the project wins
5、agility, because it is possible to create and simulate the system as many times as needed. Therefore, time can be saved, risk of mistakes reduced and complexity can be increased using the same elements.A conventional PLC, that is possible to find on the market from many companies, offers many resour
6、ces to control not only pneumatic systems, but all kinds of system that uses electrical components. The PLC can be very versatile and robust to be applied in many kinds of application in the industry or even security system and automation of buildings.Because of those characteristics, in some applic
7、ations the PLC offers to much resources that are not even used to control the system, electro-pneumatic system is one of this kind of application. The use of PLC, especially for small size systems, can be very expensive for the automation project.An alternative in this case is to create a specific c
8、ontroller that can offer the exactly size and resources that the project needs3,4.This can be made using microcontrollers as the base of this controller.The controller, based on microcontroller, can be very specific and adapted to only one kind of machine or it can work as a generic controller that
9、can be programmed as a usual PLC and work with logic that can be changed. All these characteristics depend on what is needed and how much experience the designer has with developing an electronic circuit and firmware for microcontroller. But the main advantage of design the controller with the micro
10、controller is that the designer has the total knowledge of his controller, which makes it possible to control the size of the controller, change the complexity and the application of it. It means that the project gets more independence from other companies, but at the same time the responsibility of
11、 the control of the system stays at the designer hands 2.Electro-pneumatic system On automation system one can find three basic components mentioned before ,plus a logic circuit that controls the system. An adequate technique is needed to project the logic circuit and integrate all the necessary com
12、ponents to execute the sequence of movements properly.For a simple direct sequence of movement an intuitive method can be used1,5,but for indirect or more complex sequences the intuition can generate a very complicated circuit and signal mistakes. It is necessary to use another method that can save
13、time of the project, make a clean circuit, can eliminate occasional signal overlapping and redundant circuits.The presented method is called step-by-step or algorithmic 1,5, it is valid for pneumatic and electro-pneumatic systems and it was used as a base in this work. The method consists of designi
14、ng the systems based on standard circuits made for each change on the state of the actuators, these changes are called steps. Fig.1.Standard circuit for the pneumatic system.Fig.2.Standard circuit for the electro-pneumatic system.The first part is to design those kinds of standard circuits for each
15、step, the next task is to link the standard circuits and the last part to connect the control element that receive signals from sensors, switches and the previous movement and give the air or electricity to the supply lines of each step. In Figs.1 and 2 the standard circuits are drawn for pneumatic
16、and electro-pneumatic system 8.It is possible to see the relations with the previous and the next steps. 3. The method applied inside the controller The result of the method presented before is a sequence of movements of the actuator that is well defined by steps. It means that each change on the po
17、sition of the actuators is a new state of the system and the transition between states is called step. The standard circuit described before helps the designer to define the states of the systems and to define the condition to each change between the states. In the end of the design, the system is d
18、efined by a sequence that never chances and states that have the inputs and the outputs well defined. The inputs are the condition for the transition and the outputs are the result of the transition.All the configuration of those steps stays inside of the microcontroller and is executed the same way
19、 it was designed. The sequences of strings are programmed inside the controller with 5 bytes; each string has the configuration of one step of the process. There are two bytes for the inputs, one byte for the outputs and two more for the other configurations and auxiliary functions of the step. Afte
20、r programming, this sequence of strings is saved inside of a non-volatile memory of the microcontroller, so they can be read and executed. The controller task is not to work in the same way as a conventional PLC, but the purpose of it is to be an example of a versatile controller that is design for
21、an specific area. A conventional PLC process the control of the system using a cycle where it makes an image of the inputs, execute all the conditions defined by the configuration programmed inside, and then update the state of the outputs. This controller works in a different way, where it read the
22、 configuration of the step, wait the condition of inputs to be satisfied, then update the state or the outputs and after that jump to the next step and start the process again.It can generate some limitations, as the fact that this controller cannot execute, inside the program, movements that must b
23、e repeated for some time, but this problem can be solved with some external logic components. Another limitation is that the controller cannot be applied on systems that have no sequence. These limitations are a characteristic of the system that must be analyzed for each application.4. Characteristi
24、cs of the controller The controller is based on the MICROCHIP microcontroller PIC16F877 6,7 with 40 pins, and it has all the resources needed for this project. It ha enough pins for all the components, serial communication implemented in circuit, EEPROM memory to save all the configuration of the sy
25、stem and the sequence of steps. For the execution of the main program, it offers complete resources as timers and interruptions. The list of resources of the controller was created to explore all the capacity of the microcontroller to make it as complete as possible. During the step, the program cho
26、oses how to use the resources reading the configuration string of the step. This string has two bytes for digital inputs, one used as a mask and the other one used as a value expected. One byte is used to configure the outputs value. One bytes more is used for the internal timer, the analog input or
27、 time-out. The EEPROM memory inside is 256 bytes length that is enough to save the string of the steps, with this characteristic it is possible to save between 48 steps.The controller has also a display and some buttons that are used with an interactive menu to program the sequence of steps and othe
28、r configurations.4.1.Interaction components For the real application the controller must have some elements to interact with the final user and to offer a complete monitoring of the system resources that are available to the designer while creating the logic control of the pneumatic system: .Interac
29、tive mode of work; function available on the main program for didactic purposes, the user gives the signal to execute the step.LCD display, which shows the status of the system, values of inputs, outputs, timer and statistics of the sequence execution.Beep to give important alerts, stop, start and e
30、mergency.Leds to show power on and others to show the state of inputs and outputs. 4.2. Security To make the final application works property, a correct configuration to execute the steps in the right way is needed, but more then that it must offer solutions in case of bad functioning or problems in
31、 the execution of the sequence. The controller offers the possibility to configure two internal virtual circuits that work in parallel to the principal. These two circuits can be used as emergency or reset buttons and can return the system to a certain state at any time2. There are two inputs that w
32、ork with interruption to get an immediate access to these functions. It is possible to configure the position, the buttons and the value of time-out of the system.4.3.User interface The sequence of strings can be programmed using the interface elements of the controller. A computer interface can also be used to generate the user program easily. With a good documentation the final user can use the interface to configure the strings of bytes that define the steps of the sequence. But it is possible to create a program with visual resources that
