City of Philadelphia

Data & Design has developed various packages involving embedded systems, and windows interfaces, including a  PLC interface for the City of Philadelphia's water department. The system was designed to replace a Wonderware Factory Link application. This software could be customized to fit any city's requirements.

The system monitors and controls the flow of waste water. Consisting of a Windows NT 4 server utilizing raid level 5 running on SQL Server 7.0, a data collection computer with a digi-board which interfaces with 16 modems is used to call the PLCs located at approximately 260 sites throughout the city of Philadelphia.  The computer calls the sites, triggering the sites to call in alarms in real time.

A Data Concentrator server was written in VC++ and calls the Modicon PLCs using a bank of 16 modems. This multithreaded application uses a Modbus protocol, collects all the information and stores it in the SQL server database. The information is then used for trending, reporting and alarms.

The MMI interface is written in VC++, and replaces an older Factory Link application.  Visual C++, Visual Basic and Crystal Reports were utilized, with Access and SQL Server as the databases.  Sockets were used to develop the real time portion of the system, which transmits the information to the client computers. This gives the field crews the ability to watch the activity in real time to aide in troubleshooting. Prototypes were developed to demonstrate how to upgrade the present system using Microsoft Net technologies as well as a PocketPC interface. This would allow the field crew to use a pocket pc equipped with a modem to view all the information available to the computer system. The Net technologies provide a means for the data to be available to the city through the intranet.

Examples:

MMI  

Reports  

Data Collection System