Common Design

Building industrial systems is a time consuming task. When we started Qameleon Technology, we first focused on what made building these systems difficult.Three things stood out:

• User-interface on hardware devices
• Integration with existing systems
• Application-specific code

User-interface on hardware devices

It is better not to have one. The displays, buttons, and other controls just increase the cost of the hardware. It also makes it difficult to protect the hardware from the environment. Instead, use a common, off-the-shelf device for the interface. We designed our hardware to use PCs, tablets, and handheld devices (PDA’s, and phones) instead. To support this, all of our devices include wireless communications that enable real-time operation of the hardware.

Integration with existing systems

Our systems need to connect to other systems that our customers use. These include machine controllers, energy management systems, SCADA, geographic information systems, and asset management systems. All Qameleon products include multiple hardware interfaces for this purpose including RS232 serial (RS485 with adapter), digital input and output, and Ethernet. We support ModBus, TCP/IP sockets, SMTP and UART protocols.

Application-specific code

We learned from our experience building industrial and military systems for other companies, that developing code was the most expensive and time consuming part of building any system. Our goal was to build devices that could quickly change their application (like a chameleon). We developed our own programming system for embedded devices that allows us to build embedded systems up to 10x faster than traditional methods.

Let’s explore the common design principles of Qameleon devices:

• Time-critical information
• End-to-End Solution
• Security
• Survivability
• Communications
• Sensors and Signals