Internet protocol based digital counters for legacy fatigue testing machines

In presented paper we describe a design and implementation of an information system based on base of embedded client and Linux application server architecture. Presented information system serves for remote collection, storing and processing information on the number of carried out mechanical cycles for group of older existing fatigue test machines in an automotive components production. This upgrade of existing infrastructure we built on the electronic counter module with Ethernet interface and on the known Internet Protocol (SNMP). Eight electronic counter modules replaced existing electromechanical digital totalizing counters and they count of outputs from 8 pieces of mechanical impulse test machines (each of them with 2Hz output frequency). The web and application servers are built on the Linux operating system. The MVC architecture (Model-View-Controller) serves as the base for web application and it was written together with backend application server around the Ruby on Rails web framework. The database is built on the MySQL server. We carried out three ways to verify of accuracy of this manner counting and collecting of mechanical cycles and we reached results comparable with manual collecting of data. Thanks to automatic detection of ends of fatigue tests we reached more effective utilization of test machines (more than 25%). Our solution of upgrading of the existing industrial infrastructure for fatigue tests is very reasonably priced and is suitable for older industrial facilities.