crchisholm
New Member
Current Situation: workers take a wide veriaty of objects and classify them into several price categories. The items are placed in bins cooresponing to the value (.50,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,other). Another person goes to each bin, makes tick marks on a tally sheet to count items by price, then sorts them into baskets to be taken to other processes.
Problem: Tick counts are extreemly unreliable and other methods of counting are two intrusive to the process (at this point)
Solution Attempt: Place a button in each bin that can be hit each time an item is placed in that bin. These button hits should be sent to a serial port or other port on a nearby computer. Once I can get a signal into the serial port of the computer, I can take it from there.
Attempt 1: Looking into PLC's and building ladder logic to count the button clicks and send to serial port. This seems to be kind of overkill. I would bet there is a simpler solution
Attempt 2: I have taken the logic board from a computer keyboard , mapped the imputs on the bard, carted switches to replace keys, found a way to distribute the buttons. It works, but is kind of kludgy and is a real wiring birds nest. There has got bo be an easier way (or at lest cleaner) using IC's
Anybody want to help brain storm this with me? There is no money to be made (all this is for a none profit thrift agency), but it may be an interesting challenge.
Charlie R Chisholm
Problem: Tick counts are extreemly unreliable and other methods of counting are two intrusive to the process (at this point)
Solution Attempt: Place a button in each bin that can be hit each time an item is placed in that bin. These button hits should be sent to a serial port or other port on a nearby computer. Once I can get a signal into the serial port of the computer, I can take it from there.
Attempt 1: Looking into PLC's and building ladder logic to count the button clicks and send to serial port. This seems to be kind of overkill. I would bet there is a simpler solution
Attempt 2: I have taken the logic board from a computer keyboard , mapped the imputs on the bard, carted switches to replace keys, found a way to distribute the buttons. It works, but is kind of kludgy and is a real wiring birds nest. There has got bo be an easier way (or at lest cleaner) using IC's
Anybody want to help brain storm this with me? There is no money to be made (all this is for a none profit thrift agency), but it may be an interesting challenge.
Charlie R Chisholm