I'm looking for ideas to help me solve a problem. There might be a perfect device out there that I don't know about ...yet.
At work we have a line of 10 machines with very simple controllers. If a machine drops into 'safe' mode it sounds a pathetic sounder and a team member is supposed to go and sort it out. It is easy to not hear the sounder so I am going to build something to make life better.
My device will monitor the sounder supply using a PIC chip and flash a light to help indicate this state with a visual indicator.
Simple.
I then thought about running a pair of wires, daisy-chained through all 10 machines to end up at a remote box that can also trigger a light/sounder if any of the machines go 'safe'. This can even be placed in a separate room.
Now to my problem. I would like to have a display to show what machine has gone 'safe'. Running 10 separate pairs of wires is not an option so I am looking for a simple, robust circuit that could use a daisy-chain pair to transmit an I.D to a decoder to indicate what machine has activated.
I know that PIC chips can easily talk to each other when placed in a circuit but these 10 machines are spread over 100 meters. I think I need more power captain!
A self contained transmitter/receiver module might do the trick but I have no experience in such things. Any advise would be most welcome.
At work we have a line of 10 machines with very simple controllers. If a machine drops into 'safe' mode it sounds a pathetic sounder and a team member is supposed to go and sort it out. It is easy to not hear the sounder so I am going to build something to make life better.
My device will monitor the sounder supply using a PIC chip and flash a light to help indicate this state with a visual indicator.
Simple.
I then thought about running a pair of wires, daisy-chained through all 10 machines to end up at a remote box that can also trigger a light/sounder if any of the machines go 'safe'. This can even be placed in a separate room.
Now to my problem. I would like to have a display to show what machine has gone 'safe'. Running 10 separate pairs of wires is not an option so I am looking for a simple, robust circuit that could use a daisy-chain pair to transmit an I.D to a decoder to indicate what machine has activated.
I know that PIC chips can easily talk to each other when placed in a circuit but these 10 machines are spread over 100 meters. I think I need more power captain!
A self contained transmitter/receiver module might do the trick but I have no experience in such things. Any advise would be most welcome.