| dc.description.abstract | The research proposes an architecture of distributed industrial electronic signage network.
First of all, we design an intelligent controller of 128x16 dot matrix LED electronic signage
and an embedded meta-program to show industrial message. Electronic billboards controller
can execute Grafcet Virtual Machine (GVM) which provides a working environment under
the condition without OS and compiler. In a manufacturing industrial environment, different
electronic signages are separately installed in different devices or different positions of
production lines. In order to communicate with all of them, we provide wired (wired RS-485)
communications links for our electronic signage controller, so that cellphones or tablets in the
remote end can easily customize and display the design of scenario by using the Internet
gateways to link to cloud servers. Furthermore, we can also make the deployment and monitor
on electronic signage controller.
We design a Triple embedded microcontroller (Triple-MCU) for electronic signage
network gateway. Among those MCUs, one MCU is used as a TCP / IP network controller
receiving and processing the instructions of design, deployment, and monitor from the remote
end, another MCU takes charge of industrial equipment such as PLC, DIO link interface or
HMI controller, the other MCU is for the engine of managing electronic signage which can
automatically detect the state of new, delete and fail etc… and transfer remote display control
instructions. Those three microcontrollers communicate with SPI serials.
On the communications of Digital signage networks, we adopt Modbus RTU between
gateway and Digital signage nodes. By Modbus which is a master and slave protocol, we can
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support up to 247 Digital signage nodes in each gateway. While gateway and Cloud are using
Modbus TCP/IP to communicate with each other. Controller can translate remote Modbus
TCP / IP instructions to Modbus RTU instructions and manage those Digital signage nodes in
the bottom layer.
In summary, we integrate all hardware and software modules developed in this research
and accomplish a model of distributed industrial electronic Signage system. Moreover, we
demonstrate the functionality and performance of the system by experiments. | en_US |