Buhl Automatic Inc.

Networked Sales Lead Tracking System

Designed and implemented a sales lead tracking system for the sales team with the company. The system ran on a Novell network and used the Btrieve file manager. The system kept track of all current and prospective sales leads for the company, by sales person assigned and point in the sale cycle.

Remote Diagnostics Software

Developed a remote diagnostics software package for operation with a range of industrial controllers that the company produced. The RDS system was designed to allow a support engineer to simulate any monitoring screen he wished by selecting set points from user-defined lists of set points, for a particular controller, placing them on the screen and adding auxiliary text descriptions. Once a screen was designed it could be used as a template for drawing data from a running controller anywhere in the world, via modem. The system had its own built in modem control and dialer. Once the system made a connection to a controller, the engineer could watch, in pseudo-realtime, the selected setpoints change and thus diagnose any problems that may have existed.

Smart Hopper Link

Created an RS232 link to a Luwa Smart Hopper, on the factory floor. The Smart Hoppers are used in the plastic injection and extrusion industry for dispensing raw materials to the injection or extrusion machines. The interface created was compatible with the WonderWare product and made use of DDE’s under MS-Windows.