The Remote Gate Diverse System

'Cloud Gate' - Millenium Park Chicago

Today's blog post is inspired by Anish Kapoor's beautiful 'Cloud Gate' in Chicago.    It is a public sculpture to play and interact with in any weather.  I aim to go see it touch it with one finger and look at the city go by one day. The blog post itself is just like that - a single touch to a gate of the kind of diverse engineering which takes place at remote locations. [The photo courtesy of  Lisa Yarost.]

Most people think of remote terminal units and remote systems as an atomic black box, doing a certain job, somewhere far off, with a means to communicate. The black box has become a citadel, a complex arrangement of interacting intelligent devices which need a gate through which to communicate.

What does it look like inside that far off citadel, and what kind of architectures support it ?.  What follows is a brief introduction to the story of the development of the Gated Diverse Architecture.

Switch On Switch Off and Sleep and Wake Up

Power Switch

It's been a while, since I switched on blog.  We make  SCADA technology which has to be there when the chips are down - powered down that is.  Something as simple as a Power Switch can create a whole design controversy.  This blog post is a discussion of how simple something like a Power Switch can get.

Front and centre on the SCD5200 CPU is a big red power switch. It has two states, On and Off.  What I like about this is that is means what it says.  When you switch it on.  Power is applied to the brain of the CPU and it's bus connectors and off you go things start up and operate.  Switch it off, and the power is disconnected again and everything goes dead. Or does it ?..