Problem Statement Objectives Project Scope

1.2 Problem Statement

From the internship period, I had observe that a lot of factories engineer or technician still do not have any idea on their device status such as sensor, actuator, motor and sort of automation devices. This had make hard for engineer or technician who going to run maintenance and also in the process of monitoring machine status such as the motor status, or the output counts; this is because not everyone know how to monitor the status of Programmable Logical Controller PLC ladder diagram, or directly from the LED indicator on the Programmable Logical Controller PLC. From this project, the low cost monitoring system will be developed and able to reduce operation cost of the factory for long term planning and able to prevent put engineer or technician into great danger while operate or running maintenance on the machine.

1.3 Objectives

The objectives of this project are: i To design a PC simulator that able to monitor the Omron CQM1H-CPU21 PLC current IO status. ii To apply the knowledge of Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Programming in automation monitoring process that controlled by Omron CQM1H-CPU21 PLC. iii To design and develop a low cost PC simulator that able to monitor the Omron CQM1H-CPU21 PLC current IO status. iv To develop a prototype of simple automation process to show the function of PC simulator.

1.4 Project Scope

This project will focus primarily on the software design types of programming language and hardware design to monitor the Omron CQM1H-CPU21 PLC IO status directly on the screen of PC via PC simulator that designed by Microsoft Visual Basic 2008. a Software part: 1. To program a PC simulator by using Microsoft Visual Basic 2008. 2. To read IO status from Omron CQM1H-CPU21 PLC only, not include write data into PLC. 3. The PC simulator only can be used with Omron CQM1H-CPU21 PLC only. 4. The PC simulator must connect to Omron CQM1H-CPU21 PLC by using RS232 cable. b Hardware Part 1. The automation process to be designed possesses not more than 10 IO on Omron CQM1H-CPU21 PLC. 2. The PC which equip with PC simulator must be connected to PC by using RS232 cable and the wiring connection must be refer to Omron CQM1H-CPU21 Operational Manual. 3. The total cost of the hardware must not more than RM500. CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction