New Waverley Escalators Flawed

[michael769]

Equally, though, surely it would be possible to monitor the motor just by how much (or little) back EMF is being created (because every moving motor doubles up as a generator), and a simple feedback controller could do the job without messy and un-necessarily complicated software.

Well for simple single purpose functions of course that is true, But guess what, virtually all feedback controllers you can buy these days are microcontrollers that..... you guessed it.... have software. As I already said fashion plays a big part of it.

Sad to say that "digital control", "advanced diagnostics" and "energy saving" are the sexy buzzwords that are very much in fashion and if you don't have it people won't buy it.

Fashion is not just about what clothes you wear - it is everywhere and even the smartest and most experienced business people can fall under its spell and cause them to set critical though aside.

Trains don't really need software (as the the HST proves so well), but I challenge you to identify any stock less than 5 (and probably 10) years old which does not have at least 1 microcontroller.....

 

[John55]

Well for simple single purpose functions of course that is true, But guess what, virtually all feedback controllers you can buy these days are microcontrollers that..... you guessed it.... have software. As I already said fashion plays a big part of it.

Sad to say that "digital control", "advanced diagnostics" and "energy saving" are the sexy buzzwords that are very much in fashion and if you don't have it people won't buy it.

Fashion is not just about what clothes you wear - it is everywhere and even the smartest and most experienced business people can fall under its spell and cause them to set critical though aside.

Trains don't really need software (as the the HST proves so well), but I challenge you to identify any stock less than 5 (and probably 10) years old which does not have at least 1 microcontroller.....

Tornado!

However given the cost and functionality available with processors we are not going to move away from digital controls.

The current HST has lots of software and any diesel powered vehicle which meets current and future emission requirements will have them.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Tornado has OTMR fitted, though. That will have software in it...

 

[John55]

Tornado has OTMR fitted, though. That will have software in it...

Out of curiosity what does it monitor and how?

 

[HSTEd]

The TPWS gear fitted to Tornado almost certainly contains microcontrollers as well.

 

[Blindtraveler]

to slightly back O/T, the middle down escalater which has been OOU for a week was running slowly in the up direction today with an engineer in attendance

 

[LE Greys]

Out of curiosity what does it monitor and how?

Presumably, a bit like the (entirely mechanical) Flaman speed recorders of LNER days, it observes the number of times wheels rotate. It might also have a few components observing regulator and reverser settings and perhaps boiler pressure and maybe what the AWS and TPWS are doing. Apart from the last two, that can be done with mechanical indicators as well.

 

[68000]

The TPWS gear fitted to Tornado almost certainly contains microcontrollers as well.

The GSM-R radio fitted has plenty of complex software as well

 

[PaxVobiscum]

Are some simple control functions not more in the "firmware" category than "software"?

 

[michael769]

Are some simple control functions not more in the "firmware" category than "software"?

Firmware is software! The term is simply used to denote the simple software software (usually stored in ROM or more recently NVRAM) built into a device. In practice there is no clear boundary between Firmware and Software.

It is possible to quite complex build electronic or even mechanical control systems that do not use any form of microprocessor (and this have no software or firmware), but this is relatively uncommon these days - as such systems require custom hardware components that tend to be quite expensive to design and manufacture, compared to the off the shelf commodity components that can be used in a microcontroller based system.

These days the rise of FPGAs means that even the lines between true hardware and software is becoming blurred.

 

[Blindtraveler]

i never thought Id learn this much when I posted a story about a few dodgy moving stairways

 

[Tomonthetrain]

Quite simple......boot it......works every time!

fixed it. If in doubt give it a clout!