Microwave Control System Requirements

There are three sets of requirements for three separate areas that need to be addressed. These three areas are. One, the computer where the Microwave Control software will be running. Two, the microwave receiver and pan/tilt heads on the microwave receiver. And three, the Opto22 Ethernet Brain and modules that will allow the software to control the receiver and pan/tilt heads. Here are the areas:

1. Computer to run the software:

   • Pentium III 1Ghz with 256MB RAM. You could use less, but the software will be sluggish.

   • 100Mb/s Ethernet connection. You could get by with less as the amount of traffic is fairly minimal.

   • 17" SVGA monitor with video card set to 1024x768 resolution at 16K colors. The applications buttons and dials are too large to run at 800x600 resolution, and the application looks bad at 256 colors. You will need a mouse and keyboard to modify the settings and do the initial configuration work, but these can be tucked away when the system is operational if you want to use a touch screen monitor. We purchased a Magic Touch touch screen monitor from Keytec to operate the software because they support Linux. Keytec sales can be contacted at: http://www.magictouch.com.

   • 4MB Disk space on the machine for the application.

   • Red Hat Linux 7.0 or newer. I would do a minimum install and turn off any services that are not needed to give everything you can to the application. Also load any relevant security fixes.

   • Windows 98, Windows 2000 or Windows XP. Same goes for Windows as for Linux. Minimal install and turn off anything you don't need. Both Windows 95 and NT have issues with TCP/IP without loading lots of patches, but can work if necessary. Windows Me has serious network issues and I would recommend upgrading Me to 98, 2000 or XP if necessary.

2. Microwave receiver and pan/tilt control. Here is what I recommend you have:

   •  For optimum operations, the pan/tilt head should have controls that can run the pan and tilt mechanisms in either direction by simple contact closures. Pan/Tilt heads that use plus/negative voltage driver on a single pair for pan and/or tilt can work, but will need more work.

   • To have the software show current pan and tilt position, it is necessary to have some voltage returned from the pan/tilt head. We accomplished this by supplying 24 volts to each of the potentiometers on the pan/tilt head assembly and then running the resultant voltage back to the Opto22 analog inputs.

   • The microwave receiver should allow for remote control using contact closures. The BMC unit we used is low voltage and we were able to connect the receiver directly to theOpto22 binary outputs.

3. The Opto22 Ethernet Brain, necessary modules, and additional hardware are covered in the hardware installation pages.