A KISS Approach to Embedded Health Management

A design philosophy that has been used in many problem solving situations is "keep it simple stupid" (KISS). The gist of the phrase is that simpler solutions are typically the best solutions. Where, depending on the application, \´best\´ can be defined as the most reliable, quickest to implement, easiest to use, etc. but it basically boils down to the lowest cost solution. So in the context of embedded health management what does a KISS solution mean? It simply means reducing the complexity of the design and development tasks of an embedded health management to yield a simpler approach and therefore lower cost solution. To this end, core processes of supervisory control and data acquisition system (SCADA) methods that are employed by industry to monitor and control processes will be utilized to provide an easy to use data acquisition tool for embedded health management systems. This paper describes the hardware and software of a data acquisition system that provides an intuitive approach to the implementation of an embedded health management system on a military platform. Thus, describing a KISS approach to embedded health management.